“We not only lived on the wrong side of the tracks,” David says, “we lived only a stone’s throw from the railroad tracks, causing our small-frame home to be in a perpetual state of vibration. My maternal grandparents lived next door to us.”³²⁶

David’s strong work ethic comes from his father, and emulating his father, as a boy, he mowed lawns, bucked bales of hay, and sold mail-order Christmas cards. “I saw at an early age what it takes to survive and provide for yourself and your family,” he says.

“You take opportunity when opportunity is there. We were poor, but I personally never felt like we were. I do, however, remember a time when my father’s shoes were falling apart, and he couldn’t afford a new pair, so he wrapped electric tape around his shoes. But we never went to bed hungry, and there was always a roof over our heads. We had a six-acre plot of ground, and we raised a few cattle and hogs. My siblings and I shared the responsibility of taking care of our farm animals. Before leaving for school, my daily chores included milking the cows and making sure the hogs were slopped. I attended Franklin Elementary School on the other side of the tracks. I started first grade in 1957, which was the first year that African American students were permitted to attend the formerly segregated all-white school in Clinton. There were two African American girls in my class, and I was the only African American boy. There were a lot of people that didn’t think I belonged there. There was talk about that the Ku Klux Klan was going to stop us. In anticipation, my father and some other black men went on patrol at the edge of town. To this day, I think about the courage those men had.”³²⁷

Growing up in a small rural community in the 1960s, David vividly remembers segregation—separate schools, sitting in the for-colored balcony at the movie theater, separate public bathrooms for whites and blacks, being barred from the public swimming pool, not being allowed to eat at the for-whites-only Wiley’s Restaurant, and so on. David’s most hurtful experience as a youth was when he finished Cub Scouts, and Clinton’s Troop 435, an all-white troop, refused to allow him to join. David recalls how he and his mother both cried that night. Shortly afterward, with some of his friends and their parents, they formed Troop 225, the first integrated troop in Clinton. David’s older brothers and sisters attended an all-black school that had only two teachers who taught grades one through twelve. The school was in a dilapidated building, and its worn textbooks were hand-me-downs from the school attended by the white children. David, along with a female student, were the first two African Americans to go through the Clinton school system and graduate.

David says, “When I was a small boy, my mother cautioned me against becoming bitter and resentful. ‘David, those feelings are self-destructive and a waste of time,’ she said, always citing scripture to support her comment.”³²⁸

Dorothy Steward constantly instructed her children, “You can do anything that you set your heart to. Someday, you will have all those nice things, too.”³²⁹

“My mother always took us to church and made sure we attended Sunday school classes,” David tells.

“She spent a lot of her time at that church, teaching classes, serving on committees, singing in the choir, and so on. It was a small, poor church that couldn’t afford a minister. Traveling preachers on the circuit would periodically visit to preach the gospel. Church and family were the two focal points of my mother’s life, and her values have strongly influenced my life. As a youth, I was blessed to be surrounded by loved ones—nurturing parents and grandparents who enriched my life with wholesome values. These hardworking, churchgoing folks showered me with love and were my introduction to the Word of God. Although they had few material possessions, they diligently taught me what really mattered. They did it by example—by the way they lived. Consequently, I feel as if I inherited considerable wealth from them.”³³⁰

David tried out for his high-school football team as a freshman, but at 5’7” and only 125 pounds, he didn’t make the squad. He switched over to basketball but was too skinny and didn’t make the team until his junior year. He recalls:

“I was a C student, and I had such a bad speech impediment that I had to take special elocution classes. I was painfully shy and had little self-confidence. The only thing I had going for myself was my perseverance. Once my mind was made up, I had the tenacity of a pit bull.

“During my senior year, my coach told me, ‘You’re a decent high-school player, but you’re too thin. Don’t waste your time even thinking about college basketball. Those big college boys will eat you for lunch.’ I thanked him for his advice, and in autumn 1969, I enrolled as a freshman at Central Missouri State, a co-ed school with 13,000 students, and I tried out for the basketball team. A Division II school, its schedule included nationally ranked nonconference Division I schools such as Illinois State and Texas Tech, so if I made varsity, I’d be playing big-time basketball. Amazingly, during my college years, my height shot up to 6’5”, by far the tallest person in my family’s history. My mother likes to say, ‘David wanted to play basketball so badly that he willed himself to grow tall.’ I was as skinny as a rail, but I was tall enough to play. I didn’t make the team during my freshman year, but I attended every practice. I must have impressed the coaching staff with my grit and determination, because during my sophomore year, I was given an athletic scholarship. By my senior year, I had put on some weight, and with my stick-to-iveness, I became a fairly decent college player.

“Playing college basketball was a wonderful experience. We flew to some of our away games, and I got to fly on an airplane for the first time in my life. And as a team member, I sat down to my first meal in a restaurant.”³³¹

Upon his graduation in November 1973 with a B.S. degree in business administration and a minor in industrial organization, David set out to find a job. “With only average grades and being African American, companies didn’t come knocking at my door with job offers,” he tells.³³²

A few weeks later, David took a substitute teaching job with the St. Louis public schools. As a part-time teacher, he earned little pay, so for a while, he stayed with friends. Five months later, he was hired full time by the Boy Scouts of America. His scouting as a youth helped him secure the position. Although he enjoyed the work, the pay was meager, so he kept mailing résumés to potential employers. In mid-1974, he was hired by Wagner Electric as a supervisor in manufacturing. The job lasted about one year, and he was laid off; again he was back in the job market. David estimates that he sent out more than 400 résumés between the time he graduated and February 1976, when he was hired by the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company as a marketing and sales representative. He says:

“The company was committed to hiring African Americans, and I was one of the first ones hired. I had landed my dream job! The company put me through an extensive fifty-nine-week training program, and then I was set to go. I will always be grateful to the company for giving me an opportunity and investing so much in me.

“I was fortunate to have a wonderful mentor, George Craig, a company marketing vice president who was my biggest supporter. At the time, there were some people who thought that sending an African American sales rep to call on customers was a big mistake. Keep in mind that my territory covered southern Louisiana and southern Texas. Mr. Craig made sure nobody within the company tried to interfere.”³³³

While he worked for the railroad, David and his family lived in New Orleans, Milwaukee, Houston, and Los Angeles. He explains, “I decided that moving from city to city was no way to raise a family. We moved back to my wife’s hometown, St. Louis, and in 1979, I took a sales position as a senior account executive with Federal Express.”³³⁴ David is smart, hardworking, honest, and extremely likeable—he has all the natural attributes to excel as a salesperson, and he did. In 1984, he was named Federal Express’s Salesman of the Year. Fred Smith, the company’s founder and CEO, presented a trophy to David, announcing his induction into the Federal Express Hall of Fame. “The trophy was an ice bucket with my initials engraved on it,” David recalls. “When I looked inside the bucket, I saw nothing. ‘Is this what I want in life?’ I thought to myself. A pat on the back, and ‘’Atta boy, get back out there and go get ’em.’”³³⁵

For his outstanding sales performance, David also received a raise in his sales quota from 100 to 150 percent. He says, “I saw the carrot being put a little further out there, and I thought, I don’t want to wake up when I’m seventy or eighty and wonder why I didn’t do more. At the time, Thelma and I had two small children, a mortgage, and a small bank account. We were living from paycheck to paycheck with all the trappings of success that keep you locked into a job.”³³⁶

Many people who knew how hard David worked at Federal Express, one of America’s fastest-growing corporations, were surprised to see him abruptly resign. After all, he was on the fast track to receive a promotion into a senior management position. How could he walk away from that to start his own company?

Perhaps what, above all else, catapulted David to start a business was his burning desire to build a company based on biblical principles. He explains:

“I wanted to operate a company that would have a mission to serve its employees and its customers. I knew that if such a company did this, it would succeed. We are here to serve each other, and as it says in Mark 10:43-45, ‘. . . whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ As Jesus gives these instructions to his twelve disciples, my management philosophy is based on these words.”³³⁷

David met with Leo Moore, a man who owned a consulting firm based in St. Joseph, Missouri, that did auditing and reviewing of freight bill charges for various carriers. Because of David’s work in the transportation business, they knew of each other mainly by reputation. David says, “Leo was sixty-five and planning to retire, and with my Union Pacific background, I felt comfortable making him an offer for his business. He didn’t have any other offers, so he agreed to sell his company to me for $100,000 with nothing down. I levered my assets so that I could pay him over time. This arrangement made it possible for the business to generate some cash flow. The company had a few customers, which were enough to keep it going. I left my $66,000-a-year job that had a car allowance, expense account, and generous fringe benefits. I said good-bye to my security blanket, one that comes with being employed by a Fortune 500 company.”³³⁸

“I didn’t want to wake up one day when I was eighty-five or ninety years old and wonder why I didn’t have the courage to step into the unknown. I wanted to someday be able to look back and think that what I did was worthwhile for my being here. This is the rent we pay for living on this earth. I also wanted to be the first member of my family to have ever operated a business. If I didn’t succeed, I would still have the time to recover. I was determined to start my own company, and no matter how some of my friends and family members tried to talk me out of it, I didn’t let their comments discourage me. One of the comments I kept hearing was, ‘They won’t let you do that.’ I kept thinking [about] who ‘they’ were. But when I thought about it, I realized this was a reference to slavery—a slave had to get permission from the master. This expression was from the South and passed down from one generation to the next. Even though sharecroppers were free, they also had to get permission from the landowner. This is a mind-set that I refused to accept. And hearing these comments made me all the more determined to start my own business. I wasn’t about to allow an invisible person out there stop me from doing what I wanted to do.

“You have to look beyond your circumstances, and to me, this is what faith really is. As the Bible tells us, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It also says in the Bible, ‘My people perish for the lack of vision.’ If you can see through God’s eyes what He has for you, it is always something wonderful, exceedingly above all that you can think, dream, or pray for. Of course, along with the faith it takes a lot of hard work. Naturally, there will be challenges and many distractions, and when you face them, you can’t give in to a naysayer that keeps harping that you can’t do it and are bound to fail. These are the times when you must remind yourself that there is a power that works deep inside you and that He is with you through all the challenges that you may be facing. This is when you must look at things differently, through another pair of eyes.”³³⁹

David worked for ten years in corporate America before starting his own company. Making such a transition to the role of sole proprietor is always difficult. As David puts it, “Suddenly I was my own boss and no longer had a supervisor to go to to approve major decisions I made. And if my poor performance resulted in a financial loss, it was my money that was on the line. The umbilical cord was cut. I was on my own to either swim or sink.”³⁴⁰

Another bold step David took was asking his wife to quit her nursing job so she could be a full-time mother to the couple’s two small children. Thelma says, “Dave wanted me to devote my full time to the children so he could give his complete attention to the business. This is when I realized how much faith I had in God as well as in David. I didn’t know anything about his new company. All I knew was that he was quitting his job, and we were giving up all of our health insurance coverage because we were on our own. I was 100 percent behind my husband.

“Another thing is that we believed that our business could serve as our ministry and allow us to do God’s work. It was an opportunity to serve our employees, and they, in turn, serve our customers. I believed David would be a wonderful model on how one should conduct business, and his example would filter out to others all over the world.”³⁴¹

David says, “God blessed me with an exceptional life partner, my wife, Thelma, and her faith in the vision of God is a great source of motivation to me. She demonstrates her faith in God by believing in me. While she doesn’t have a role in my business, from the very start, she knew it would succeed. I have an undying need to make a difference in other people’s lives, and knowing Thelma recognizes this inspires me to succeed, because I don’t want to disappoint her or our children, David and Kim. Nor do I want to disappoint our extended family—the men and women with whom I work.”³⁴²

David changed the name of his newly purchased company, Leo Moore Company, to Transportation Business Specialists, a firm that would specialize in auditing shipping charges for companies to determine if they were overcharged for their shipping services by freight carriers. Most of the company’s customers were freight companies that hauled liquid bulk products such as cotton seed oil, orange juice, animal seed, and linseed oil. David figured out a way to make tank truck carriers more efficient. Prior to his service, commercial and private fleets would make freight deliveries to a certain destination and then go back to their home base with an empty tank. As a broker, his company matched his clients with shippers, and as a result, their tanks were filled with bulk products on the return trip. As an incentive to induce the shipping company to use this service, it was charged a discounted rate. His customers enjoyed additional revenues for which David’s firm received a fee.

In 1987, David took a different approach when he started a sister company, Transport Administrative Services (TAS), that specialized in auditing undercharges for railroad companies. Although there were companies that did auditing services for overcharges, David did his homework and determined that nobody was auditing what charges were due the railroads that weren’t being collected. As he explains, “We were analyzing and reviewing freight bills because the railroads were undercharging themselves.”³⁴³

George Craig, David’s mentor from his Missouri Pacific days, was retired in 1987, but it didn’t stop him from supporting his former protégé. Craig was well respected in the railroad industry, and he opened a lot of doors by vouching for David’s integrity. “All Mr. Craig had to do,” David says, “is say, ‘David Steward is okay, and he’s someone you can trust, and I feel he is an individual you can do business with.’ He was so respected in the industry, and by giving me access to people with whom he had long-term relationships, I had instant rapport.”³⁴⁴

His first customer, Union Pacific Railroad, turned over $15 billion of rate information for David’s firm to audit three years’ worth of freight bills for undercharges, a sizeable contract from a single client. To handle such a large amount of information, David built a local area network (LAN) system to link all of the railroad’s operations. It was one of the largest in the St. Louis area. Considered state-of-the-art technology at the time, the LAN system was a group of personal computers that TAS linked together, as opposed to having a mainframe centrally managed on a huge database. At the time, LAN systems and PC-based systems had just been introduced.

David’s company performed a major service for Union Pacific, a huge customer that was by far his biggest account. “We worked day and night to make sure we took very good care of the Union Pacific,” David says.³⁴⁵ The young entrepreneur reaped the rewards of success. Then, one day in 1989, David received a call from his contact at the railroad company.

David remembers:

“It was time to renew our contract, and our work with them had been a big success. Our services had saved the railroad millions of dollars, and their people had always said how much they valued what we did for them. In my mind, it was a routine phone call to discuss the terms of renewing our contract, which I assumed would be automatic.

“Out of the blue, I was told that the Union Pacific made a decision to drop us. ‘We were completely satisfied with the work you did for us,’ the man explained. ‘You saved us a bundle, Dave.’

“I took a gasp to catch my breath and asked, ‘Then why?’

“‘I’ll get right to the point,’ he replied. ‘We have no complaints, and in fact, you did the work so efficiently that we’re now in a position to do it internally, so we’re not going to renew your contract.’

“‘I was so devastated that the only thing I could manage to say was, ‘I’m thankful for the opportunity you gave us to do the work.’

“The Union Pacific account was 80 percent of our total revenues. How we will pay our bills, and how will we be able to keep people on our payroll?

“I needed some cheering up, so I called Thelma to talk, but I didn’t have the heart to disappoint her with such horrific news. She could tell from the sound of my voice that something bad happened, so I confided in her. She didn’t say anything. That night when I came home, she prepared one of my favorite meals—fried pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy. Sitting with my family made me feel blessed, and after dinner Thelma said, ‘Don’t worry, honey, we’ll find a way to make it work. I believe in you.’ With all that warmth and love in our house, my business problems seemed trivial. I had my loving family, and that’s what mattered most.

“Losing Union Pacific was a mammoth setback at the time but was actually a blessing in disguise. I had been setting up technology to support the railroad industry, and had the Union Pacific continued to do business with us, I would probably still be in that business, still auditing undercharges for railroad companies. But having lost my biggest account, I had no choice but to regroup and figure out where to go from there. I remembered what my mama taught me a long time ago: ‘Dave, we serve a God that works in division and multiplication, not addition and subtraction. It’s an awfully poor rat that only has one hole to go to.’”³⁴⁶

“When Union Pacific didn’t renew our contract, I concluded that our core business should not be limited to the railroad industry. With my experience in linking Union Pacific’s operations through a local network, I recognized the benefits of effectively integrating technology to solve business problems. If it had not been for the experience that I had with setting up technology to support the railroad industry, I would not have seen the opportunity in the IT arena. I was blessed with having a front-row seat in witnessing the coming of the technology revolution, and I wanted to be part of it.

“In July 1990, I invested $250,000, money I accumulated during the past seven years as a business owner, into a new venture, World Wide Technology, Inc. At the time, a quarter of a million dollars was an enormous amount of wealth to me—a sum much more than my family or any of my relatives had ever had. I could have played it safe. I was under forty; plus, with my business experience, I could have landed an executive position and not risk losing my life savings. Starting a business now meant risking everything that I had accumulated over a six-year period. In retrospect, back in 1984, had I failed, my losses would have been minimal. I could have simply closed the business or turned it over to Leo Moore and walked away. In 1990, I had something to lose.”³⁴⁷

When World Wide Technology was first started, David had a partner who owned a minority interest in the business. David’s game plan was that he would continue to run Transportation Business Specialists and Transport Administrative Services, both of which still had a handful of customers. In time, he would shut down both companies and work full time at WWT. Meanwhile, as the owner of the three companies, he would oversee each company. WWT was five miles down the road from his two other businesses.

Just weeks after WWT opened its doors, the first employee, Jim Kavanaugh, was hired. Jim was a sales manager with Future Electronics, a Montreal-based manufacturer and distributor of electronics components. At the time, there was no way for David to know the important role the twenty-eight-year-old Jim would play in the company’s future, but as the two men have said many times since, their meeting was the beginning of a wonderful lifelong friendship and business association.

Jim came to WWT with an interesting background. He had attended St. Louis University in the early 1980s, where he was a soccer standout. In 1984, he was a member of the U.S. Olympic Soccer Team, and for eighteen months, he traveled around the world with the team. After returning home, he graduated from St. Louis University in 1986 with a marketing degree. He was the second player picked in the Major Indoor Soccer League’s draft and penned a contract with the Los Angeles Lasers. Jim spent the next two years playing soccer with the Lasers and then was traded to the St. Louis Steamers. “The following year, the team went bankrupt,” he tells, “and I debated on whether to play professional soccer for the next ten years and be in my thirties without any business experience, or should I leave sports and focus on a business career. I loved the game but didn’t think it was going to take me where I needed to go.”³⁴⁸

Jim was single at the time and was paid $35,000 to $40,000 a year, a pittance compared to players’ salaries today. In the off-season, he was interviewed by Future Electronics and took the job, making the decision to pursue a business career. Jim’s boss at Future Electronics introduced him to David. At the time, Jim and his boss had been talking about starting a business. David spoke about his two companies that he was in the process of closing down. The conversation also focused on company values. Jim listened intently and liked what David had to say about building a company based on strong principles. “I need someone who shares my values and has strong leadership skills to run WWT,” David said.³⁴⁹

“I was impressed with Dave’s vision of the company he wanted to build,” Jim tells. “I liked him from the moment we met. His deep passion was evident, and he came across as knowledgeable in his field. He was also someone whom I felt could be trusted, so when he asked me to join WWT, I accepted his offer.”³⁵⁰

In the early 1990s, it was unusual for a young white person to join an African American-owned company. When Jim was once asked whether he ever had second thoughts about joining WWT, he answered, “Not at all. I had the good fortune to travel around the world and play soccer with individuals from many different cultures. Consequently, I learned that the color of one’s skin has no bearing on an individual’s performance—on or off the field.”³⁵¹

David says that he was blessed to have people like Jim believe in him, especially when many people were predicting that it was only a matter of time before WWT would go belly-up.

Jim took a substantial pay cut, but he was willing to take a risk, knowing that if the company succeeded, he would fulfill his desire to be an entrepreneur. Because of his excellent track record at Future Electronics and his background as an Olympic athlete, headhunting firms courted him. “What could he possibly be thinking,” they questioned, “that he would take a low-paying job with a hole-in-the-wall company?”

He didn’t receive equity in the company, but he accepted the position on David’s word that he could, based on his performance, receive ownership in the future. “I was more interested in the company’s growth potential, so I was willing to earn less in the short term,” Jim tells:

“There was nothing in writing, just a handshake. My future would depend on my productivity. This I believed was a fair arrangement. When I started in July 1990, I was the only person working for the company. The other owner didn’t start full time for another six weeks. I brought three other individuals from Future Electronics with me, and at the time, Dave was spending the vast majority of his time with his other businesses. It meant that I had to run WWT on a day-to-day basis. It was just what I wanted, and even though it wasn’t my own business, I had assurances from Dave that I could acquire ownership in the future. I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and although I technically wasn’t an owner, I was taking a risk on a start-up company, and I worked as if it were my own business. Besides, I walked away from an executive position with an established company with $400 million in revenues. Talk about being a risk taker.”³⁵²

When WWT was first started, David had a partner who owned a minority interest in the business. Before the summer ended, the other owner was working full time for WWT. Three months later, on a Friday afternoon, Jim called David and said they had to have a talk and that it was urgent. David came over immediately. When he got there, Jim started the conversation by saying, “Dave, we have a problem, and you have a decision to make. Either you terminate him [your partner], or I leave.” Jim explained his reasons, detailing specific improprieties that didn’t reflect his values and that he felt were cause to give David an ultimatum. Although neither of them will disclose what the other owner did (or refer to him by name), the following Monday, David met with his partner, confronting him with the wrongdoings that Jim had pointed out. The other owner had no choice but to leave the company.³⁵³ The manner in which he handled the termination confirmed to Jim that Dave Steward was a man who would not compromise on matters of principle.

Jim says of the incident, “Needless to say, terminating an owner who is your boss is a challenging situation, but it had to be done. Dave and I were committed to building a company based on trust, and if a company’s principle is not trustworthy, the very foundation of the company will not stand the test of time. Dave and I had a level of trust that only required a handshake. We said, ‘Here’s how we are going to operate. Here’s how we are going to be compensated, and you will be paid the same way that I am paid.’ We set up a performance-based model for each of us. We shook hands on it, and to this day we have honored our verbal agreement.”³⁵⁴

“It was as simple as that,” David confirms. “On a handshake we agreed that Jim would someday have ownership in the company. Having explicit trust in each other, Jim knew that I would give him what he was due, and I knew he would do whatever it took to continue earning it.”

Jim says, “A company must have a foundation of trust. What I think destroys a company or causes one to deteriorate is when a leader starts to have selective memories and stops living up to the things he originally agreed upon. You see that a lot. Oftentimes success changes people. When some people come into money, they lose their humility. Dave has never deviated from his beliefs. He’s the same today as when I first met him—he has not been spoiled by success. With Dave, what you see is what you get.”³⁵⁵

Jim was named WWT president and ran the day-to-day operations. He brought to the table an expertise in electronics, distribution, software development, and component manufacturing—he had a lot of raw talent for a man who had not yet turned thirty. His strong suit was that he was a team player, a carryover from his soccer experience.

WWT was incorporated on July 23, 1990, and its revenues through the end of the calendar year were $812,000. David says, “It was enough money to cover our cash flow, but this is a capital-intensive business and requires large investments of money well in advance of any chance for profit. It’s the nature of the technology industry that we are in a high-risk business. Then, too, with continual technology changes, equipment and software can quickly become obsolete, and the window of opportunity for a company to get an adequate return on its investment can be limited. I credit my mother for instilling in me the belief that I could succeed if I tried hard enough and refused to give in to failure. ‘You have to take that leap of faith, David,’ I can still hear her telling me. I’ve been blessed to have a supportive spouse who has faith that God is working his vision through me. True, there will be setbacks along the way—if not, it wouldn’t be called risk taking. Risk takers encounter setbacks along the way but don’t allow themselves to be defeated. Instead, they learn from their mistakes and grow stronger, never doubting they will eventually succeed.”³⁵⁷

Jim calls David the “consummate risk taker.” With David’s sales and marketing background, his approach to business differs from his partner’s. An operations executive, Jim is a disciplined manager with a financial perspective. At 6’5”, the athletically built David has a commanding appearance coupled with a dynamic personality. More than a half-foot shorter, Jim is youthful and trim. He is soft-spoken and more reserved. Although different in appearance, both men are full of energy and likeable.

David explains their differences:

“There are areas where he is strong and I am weak, and vice versa. This works in our favor because we complement each other. Do our differences sometimes result in confrontation? Definitely. At the same time, they provide a healthy balance that makes us an effective team. Jim has never been shy about expressing his views, and when he disagrees with me, he is quick to challenge me. I know he does it with the company’s best interest in mind, and I welcome it.”³⁵⁸

Some WWT employees say that David is “Mr. Outside,” and Jim is “Mr. Inside.” David spends 50 percent of his time on the road, calling on customers, always building relationships. As Jim points out, “It is fortunate that we have different personalities as well as a different set of skills. If we both liked doing the same thing, we would probably be getting in each other’s way.”³⁵⁹ When either speaks about the other, it is with admiration and affection.

In 1991, the company’s first full year in business, sales increased to $3 million. This is the year the company revised its business plan to focus on doing business with the federal government. “What got our attention was hearing that the federal government was spending $25 billion a year on technology,” David says.

“Getting started with the federal government required a lot of time and energy because we had to learn the ropes, build relationships, develop political contacts, learn the government acronyms, its culture, and so on. A lot of companies aren’t willing to take the time to do their homework. They don’t because they become overwhelmed with all the forms that must be completed, plus the enormous amount of rules and regulations that must be followed. Getting a clear understanding of the government’s contracting process is a long, drawn-out event. We had to adjust our modus operandi to comply with government procedures. We knew going in that if we wanted this business, this was a requirement. Then, once you get the business, you must anticipate that the government is always making changes, and you must be willing to make changes to accommodate it. To be in compliance, a government contractor must constantly adapt. We figured that the potential for high-volume business makes it worthwhile. Many companies view all the changing rules and regulations as too restrictive and won’t compete on government contracts.”³⁶⁰

David gives a lot of credit to Maureen Brinkley, who worked out of the Small Business Administration’s St. Louis office, for helping WWT receive its initial government contracts. David explains:

“The federal government was seeking out small business contractors, and Maureen approached us to see if we, as a small, minority-owned company, would be interested in applying our technology to the federal government. Maureen and her team were absolutely fabulous to work with. They were not the stereotyped government bureaucrats that you hear about who bog things down. They were real professionals, and although they lived by the letter of the law, they were tremendously helpful in guiding us through what is an arduous process.

“At the time, there were few people in the Midwest that were doing government business on a large scale, and the doomsayers kept warning us to stay out of it. The people in my local community tried to convince me that an African American in the Midwest didn’t belong in the technology industry. I listened, but didn’t heed their comments. As far as I was concerned, the color of my skin or where I lived hardly qualified as valid reasons to stay out of this industry. I recalled a passage from the Bible where Jesus said, ‘No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.’ It was as if he had said those words directly to me.”³⁶¹

In 1992, sales rose to $8 million; however, David continued to reinvest in technology to operate the business, and the company struggled with cash flow problems. Jim had enough faith in the company to invite his best friend, Joe Koenig, to join WWT. The two had been college roommates at St. Louis University and teammates on the school’s soccer team. Each is the godfather to the other’s son. They often get together for dinner with each other’s family. For six years prior to joining WWT, Joe was with Computer Sciences Corporation and held various positions in sales, marketing, and project management.

Joe explains:

“In late 1992, WWT had landed a big Army contract. Jim and I would get together on weekends, and I always asked about how his new company was doing.

I remember one time he said, ‘I would love to bring you over and get you in sales, Joe. I think it would be a good move for you as well as the organization.’

“Jim knew I was on the road Sunday through Friday, and I was planning on getting married. He knew that I wasn’t happy about all the traveling my job demanded. However, anytime I’d push him, he’d say, ‘I wouldn’t ask you to leave yet because it’s not the right time.’

“‘Okay, Jim, just let me know when you think the time is right.’ I’d answer.

“In late 1992, Jim thought the time was right for me to join WWT. I didn’t actually start until June 1993. My wife and I had just married and were moving into a new house. We were getting ready to start our family, but because I had so much faith in Jim, I quit my job to work here at a much-reduced paycheck. Sure, I was taking a risk, but I was getting in on the ground floor with a company that I believed had a great future.”³⁶²

At about the same time Joe started, David was winding up his work with Transport Administrative Services and putting in a full day with WWT. In the previous twelve months, sales had risen from $3 million to $8 million, and it appeared as though the company was on the fast track. Then the bottom fell out. A major personal computer deal that the company had won in 1992 was not renewed by the Army Automotive Command. The reason: the company was twelve minutes late in submitting the recompete bid. As Joe explains, “With a government recompete bid, when you’re late, you’re late. This was Jim’s account, and it amounted to nearly 80 percent of the company’s revenues. Losing this account meant that the company had to reduce its workforce, and it fell from twenty employees to ten. My timing for joining the company couldn’t have been worse. Just the same, I had resigned from Computer Sciences, and I was beyond the point of no return. Although the company struggled, each of us was determined to make a go of it.”³⁶³

Right from the start, WWT focused on big customers—Fortune 500 companies, the government, and large institutions. David’s mind-set was to sell a big-ticket item to big customers. He enjoyed the challenges of solving problems for big companies, and he never shied away from thinking big when it came to prospective customers. The obvious upside to this approach is that when a sale is made, it is a big sale. The downside is that it generally takes a lot of time to open accounts with such customers because of the time required to make a major decision. In addition, the bidding process with the competition can be fierce, and it, too, is time consuming. Another disadvantage that makes it a high-risk business is the up-front money, time, and effort generally required to invest in engineering, designing, and other resources. And as a start-up company, WWT invested heavily in recruiting and developing people.

A cure to the company’s poor cash flow was to open new accounts. But the situation presented a catch-22 because of the high costs associated with putting new business on the books and the long waiting period before a new account generated a profit. Paraphrasing the Bible, David says, “We knew that we would reap what we would sow. With this in mind, we were willing to make less money in order to have highly qualified people. Plus, we believed that if we put our time, effort, and energy into nurturing and developing our clients, it would pay off in the long run.”³⁶⁴

It is these early struggles that cause most start-ups to throw in the towel. These are the times that test an entrepreneur’s mettle—when the weak fall by the wayside and the strong prevail. During the most difficult periods, WWT had so little cash in the bank that it had difficulty paying employees their salaries. But, David says, “No matter how tough times were, everyone received his or her paycheck, with one exception when Jim received his paycheck a week late.

“However, there were many times when I personally didn’t have the money in the checking account to pay myself. Like everybody, Thelma and I had our personal bills to pay, and sometimes there was nothing we could do to stop them from accumulating. Believe me, it’s not fun to come home and have to tell your spouse that there wasn’t enough money left in the till to cut a check for the family. In 1993, we were $3.5 million in debt, and with a wife and two children to support, I was under constant pressure. It’s not a pretty situation when bankers try to shut you down, monitoring your every move with your suppliers. When I think about it, I can still feel a pit in my stomach like I’d get when bill collectors hounded me, making accusations that I was a deadbeat. Overly aggressive creditors made house calls and pounded on our front door. Thelma made sure outside pressures didn’t follow me home at the end of the day. She saw my anxiety, frustrations, and sometimes sheer exhaustion. She made sure our home was a sanctuary, a retreat where I could reenergize and find peace with God. When bill collectors made calls to our house, demanding money that both the business and I owed, Thelma screened those calls, making sure I wasn’t hassled by their threats and insults. She understood what I was going through at the office and that I didn’t need to be coerced at home.

“When friends and acquaintances were aware of our troubles, they’d say to Thelma, ‘Well, you guys must like living on the edge.’ Another thing she’d hear was, ‘Oh, you can do bad by yourself.’ This is a rural Midwestern women-to-women [colloquialism] that’s said when a husband is going through hard times. It’s like saying, ‘Why are you wasting your time with that man? He will never amount to anything.’ Thelma and I quickly learned to discard conventional wisdom, knowing that what the world thinks is wise God thinks is foolish.

“Despite the name-calling by bill collectors and what people said to her, she never lost faith in me. Thelma has always believed in me and knew that I would always do the right thing. She never doubted my vision for the company would come to fruition. ‘I don’t know much about your business,’ she’d say, ‘but I do know you, David, and I know God works within you.’ Thelma’s faith in God is strong; she knows that He will always provide for her and our children through me.”³⁶⁵

Those close to David marvel at his glass-is-half-full attitude. He believes that the tough times are one way that God prepares us for the next level. “Think about the process it takes to become a butterfly,” he says.

“When it is ready to come out of the cocoon, it has to struggle until it can break out. An observer might want to help free the butterfly, not realizing that what seems like struggle is really nature’s way of building up the wing strength the butterfly will need. If you cut the process short, then the butterfly will not be able to fly. No matter what one’s calling in life, you cannot have a testimony with a testing.”³⁶⁶

Employees knew the company was struggling to keep its head above water, and some left to seek employment elsewhere. Jim was privy to the company’s dire financial predicament, and like David, he had faith the company would succeed. When a bank employee was dispatched to WWT to help run the business, Jim understood that the bank representative was a turnaround specialist and that the purpose of his being there was to protect the bank’s interests by finding ways to extract money from the company and reduce its debt.

David says, “During this trying period, Jim received a job offer that would increase his annual salary by more than 25 percent. Still he stayed. Jim didn’t leave because he and I shared a vision of what our company would someday be. When he stood by my side, it reinforced a message to employees and vendors that there was no need to panic—the company would survive.”³⁶⁷

Jim explains that poor financial discipline and structure attributed to the company’s problems in financing products. He demonstrated his commitment to the company when he once took $15,000 from his personal savings to pay for a product so WWT could deliver it to a customer. “I always felt extremely confident in what we were building,” he says, “and I didn’t want to see the company go down the tube.”³⁶⁸

The darkest hour occurred in 1993 when David was conducting a meeting and a collection company repossessed his car from the WWT parking lot. A tow truck arrived just before noon and was in full view from the conference room’s window. Other employees were leaving the building for their lunch break as the tow chain was being attached to the car. David explains:

“Everyone knew we were going through rough times, but taking my car drew attention to the deep hole we were in. A man’s car is his alter ego, and no matter how bad things get, he makes his car payments. In sales, you can’t call on customers without your car. Although I was humiliated, knowing that how I reacted would affect employee morale, I didn’t dare show my emotions. This was not the time to panic, I thought to myself. So what did I do? I calmly said, ‘Oh, they’re taking my car, and my briefcase is in it. Please excuse me. I’ll be right back.’ With that, I calmly walked to the tow truck operator to tell him that I had to retrieve my briefcase in the backseat. Then I returned to the meeting and said with all the confidence I could muster up, ‘Okay, now where were we?’

It was embarrassing to have everyone know that my car was being repossessed, and it would have been easy to give up. But I had faith in what we were doing. I’m a believer in the unseen, not the seen. I didn’t see this company as what it was. I saw it as what it would be.”³⁶⁹

Joe had just started to work at WWT and was present at the meeting. “Being the new kid on the block,” he recalls, “I should have been wondering, ‘What did I get myself into?’ But Dave handled it so nonchalantly, I just thought, ‘Well, sometimes you get knocked down, so you just get back on the bike and keep riding.’”³⁷⁰

Jim says matter-of-factly,

“The way I looked at it, sometimes unfortunate things happen. There are a lot of things that go wrong in business, and having your car repossessed is by no means the worst thing that can happen. The next morning, Dave drove his wife’s car to work and used it for the next two years until he felt comfortable being a two-car family. There is no question that we were struggling to keep our heads above water, and I’d say that the odds were better that we’d go belly-up versus staying in business. In retrospect, we learned a good lesson because we became more disciplined in our financial management, an area where we had been lax. We decided to take a more team-oriented approach to developing the company, and subsequently, we opened the company’s balance sheet to the key management team to show where we were and where we were going.

“At this early stage of our company, Dave and I started to talk about focusing on our company culture and how it would influence our future success. Dave emphasized how he wanted to build the company on the biblical premise of serving people. He stressed that our job as the company’s leaders was to serve our employees, and if we did this, and in turn they served our customers, we’d be successful. Although I am not a student of the Bible anywhere to the extent that Dave is, I shared his philosophy that we should always treat people with respect and be focused on doing what’s in their best interest. I believed that if we did what was right for them, they’d do the same for our customers, our vendors, our partners, and everyone that we interacted with. We both agreed that this was the right way to build our business. We concluded that the trick would be to have our people behave this way when nobody is watching them. If they only do it because they are being measured and held accountable, then they were the wrong people. We wanted to build with people who treat others this way because it’s who they are and it’s the culture of our organization.”³⁷¹

In 1993, the company’s sales increased from $8 million to $9 million, and in 1994, they jumped to $17 million. Meanwhile, Jim recruited more of his soccer teammates, including Tom Strunk, who signed on as the company’s vice president of finance. A certified public accountant, Strunk had formerly worked as a controller for a privately held construction company. Two years later, Bill McKeon, who as a junior was the captain of the soccer team during Jim’s freshman year, joined the company. Today, McKeon is vice president of Federal Sales, a division that serves all accounts with the federal government. “I wanted to build a team with people I could trust and who I knew would share our core values,” says Jim.

The foundation of the company’s core values is trust, and it starts at the top of the organization. David and Jim trust each other explicitly. Jim emphasizes, “What Dave says he will do and what I say I will do is what we will do. It starts with the two of us, and our management team emulates what Dave and I do, and it trickles on down. If this trust isn’t there at the top, you won’t find it anywhere. Strong management knows that it must walk the talk. People will judge you by your actions.”³⁷²

David stresses, “From the start, I told our people that we would always strive for excellence. This message was routinely repeated, and in time, everyone knew our mission. It is my opinion that employees want to believe in their management. They want to believe that it will stand behind what it says. It goes beyond the spoken word. When we talk about excellence and quality, there will be no compromises. Never. Only one standard is acceptable, and it can never waver. There will always be a temptation to relax one’s standard for the sake of convenience. For instance, a time may come when an order must be shipped to satisfy a customer, and someone will say, ‘Okay, let’s push it out the door this one time. It’s no big deal if it’s not up to our standard work. It’s a rush order, and chances are it wouldn’t even be noticed.’ The customer might not know the difference, but your people will. Once they realize you have more than one standard, they’ll think striving for excellence depends on management’s mood at any given time. It may not seem like much, but something has been lost. Your people will think that quality is not as important as they had been led to believe. They get confused, and now your goal about excellence was just plain talk. You’ve lost their trust.

“Another thing: people want to believe in their management, and they will as long as management never compromises its integrity. A company reflects who you are as a leader. By our words and our actions, it reflects on how we are serving our customers and one another within the organization. My commitment is to serve the people in our organization and to serve them well. To paraphrase the Scriptures, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and everything else will be added unto you. First, you must do what is right by your people, which includes your time, effort, energy, and resources. And you will begin to see everything else to be added unto you because you are sowing the seed of service, commitment, and investment in them. In time, they will begin to replicate within the ranks of the organization by serving one another better and first. They do this by getting outside themselves. Then they begin to permeate out, and they begin to service their customers and suppliers as well. In this respect, the company is our ministry relative to how we begin to get outside ourselves to serve by serving and supporting one another first. My most important job as CEO is to serve others. If I do this, then, like a pebble cast into a lake, its ripples eventually reach the shore.”³⁷³

“Back then, we had to find new business from one month to the next to keep our head above water. Jim and I wanted to make sure everything went smoothly with this first big government contract, so we decided that we would personally deliver the merchandise to the Army Corps of Engineers base located in Omaha. We rented a large truck that could do about 50 miles an hour, so the 350-mile trip would take us 7 hours. Jim and I met at the office on a Saturday morning, integrated these PCs, boxed them, loaded them on forklifts, and put them on the truck. On Sunday afternoon, we were on our way to Omaha. We shared a cheap motel room outside of Omaha and took turns sleeping while the other one kept an eye on the truck, making sure all those PCs were safe. The next morning, on our way to the warehouse, we drove past a flashing sign on the road.

“Jim was driving and asked, ‘Joe, did you catch what that sign said?’

“‘Don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.’

“We rounded a curve in the road, and I shouted, ‘That sign said low bridge!’

“Jim slammed on the brakes, stopping just a foot from the bridge. We wouldn’t have cleared it. We both let out a loud sigh. The PCs weren’t insured. ‘Close one,’ Jim said.

“He backed up the truck, and we took another road to the warehouse. Dressed in sweatshirts and jeans, we pulled up next to the loading dock and started unloading the truck. ‘Why are you guys doing this?’ one of them asked. We found out that drivers don’t normally help them unload. After the PCs were on the dock, Jim and I climbed into the back of the truck and changed into dark business suits. When we got out of the truck, the workers are like, ‘Who are you guys?’

“We drove away in our suits, dropped off the truck at an Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and we headed to another location for a meeting with some Army officers. The first thing one of them asked was, ‘Are you the two guys who unloaded the PCs and changed into business suits?’

“‘Yes, that was us.’

“‘Yeah, the guys called and told us what you did.’

“‘We wanted to make sure the PCs were there and everything worked out,’ Jim answered.

“From that day on, the Army Corps of Engineers has been one of our best advocates, and they still tell that story about the two guys who drove the truck and changed clothes afterward. That’s what we did. Whatever it took, we’d do it. Later, when we’d bid on contracts, we used them as a reference, and they gave us raving reviews. They helped us win additional government business. Back then, that $4 million order was huge to us, and it kept us in the game.”³⁷⁴

Joe smiles, recalling memories of the early days when WWT was fighting an uphill battle to survive. He says,

“Back in those days, we didn’t have money to travel by plane. I remember going with Dave on a business trip by car and driving from St. Louis to Kansas City to Omaha to Des Moines and back to St. Louis, putting on over 1,500 miles in a single week. It was just boom, boom, boom, making calls on customers. To keep expenses down, whenever Jim and I traveled, we’d share a room. One time when we drove from Washington to Norfolk, it was near midnight when we arrived at the hotel. We went to the front desk to register.

“The desk clerk said, ‘We don’t have any rooms left except for a king room.’

“‘That’s fine,’ Jim said.

“‘You don’t understand. It has just one king bed,’ the clerk said.

“‘No problem,’ I told the clerk. He gave us a strange look when he handed the key to me. Being old college roommates, it was not a big deal. We were beat and just wanted to crash for the night.

“Another time, there was a Marine Corps contract we were trying to win and were scheduled to meet with a major at the Marines Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. The account belonged to our WWT sales rep, and he wanted us to make the call with him. Jim and I got there the night before, and we reviewed the proposal during dinner. It was our first chance to see what our rep and some of our other people had put together. After the waiter took our orders, we started reading it.

“‘What do you think?’ Jim asked.

“‘There’s no way we can present this to them.’

“‘We’ve got to come up with something a lot better than this, or we’re not going to get the job,’ Jim said.

“We quickly ate our dinner, paid the check, and with our laptops, headed to a nearby Kinko’s. With our account rep, we spent the rest of the night revising the proposal. We put together a hard copy of the document, and at 6:30 A.M., we went to our hotel, showered, and dressed. Our rep picked us up and drove to the base. The rep acknowledged that the new version of the proposal was a vast improvement.

“We met with the major and some of his people at the base. Jim and I made the presentation. Looking back, we can now laugh, but our sales rep was sitting in the back, and he had actually dozed off. The major was not really happy with him, but he really liked our presentation. ‘This is good material,’ he kept saying.

“After we finished our pitch, the major said, ‘Man, this is good. Did you two guys put this together?’

“‘Yes sir,’ Jim said. ‘Joe and I did it last night.’ We explained how we were not satisfied with the original proposal and told him about the all-nighter we pulled to get it right for the meeting.

“‘Oh, that’s great,’ he grinned. ‘I appreciate that kind of effort. I am going to make sure you guys get this business. But I don’t want to ever see that guy in here again,’ he said, pointing to our half-asleep sales rep.

“We ended up with a contract from the Marines.”³⁷⁵

“At the time, we were treading on thin ice,” Jim says, “and we needed that BOA to keep us going. The major was very appreciative that we went that extra mile. He thought what we did was in the true spirit of the Marines.”³⁷⁶

In the autumn of 1991, David attended a luncheon for Black Republican leaders in Washington, D.C., where Jack Kemp was the feature speaker. While at the nation’s capitol, he planned to visit the Small Business Administration. He recalls:

“I checked my coat with two satchels of all my papers that I brought with me. I was seated next to Deborah Diggs, who by coincidence worked at the SBA. When I told her that I was going to visit the SBA, she said, ‘Come back after this is over, and I’ll introduce you to my boss.’ She introduced me to Frank Ramos, who had worked most of most of his career with the government and then at the Department of Defense and the Small Business Administration.

“I told Ramos what we were doing and the rejection we had received with the SBA at the regional level. ‘Let me check it out, and I’ll see what I can do on it,’ he said. Frank was instrumental in helping us get through the process successfully.

Ramos has since retired, but during his time with the government, he saw many companies submit bids for contracts. When asked about his impression of Dave Steward, he says, “I’ve witnessed a lot of minority-owned companies come to Washington and try to use their minority status to get the business rather than saying, ‘Look at my capabilities and see what I can do.’ I’ve dealt with these contractors, and that won’t cut it with the government. I’m a minority myself, so I’m not knocking anyone because he or she is an 8A, which is what the SBA certifies as a small, disadvantaged business. But I’ve seen so many people come in here and say, ‘Here I am. What are you going to do for me?’ They want a free ride, and then they jump all over you for it. That’s not the way it works. This is what sets a person like Dave Steward apart from the others. When he came to the SBA, Steward sought the business based on his capabilities rather than his minority status.

“Over the years, I witnessed so many of them come in, hand in glove, and say, ‘I need your help.’ And I say, ‘What do you do?’ They answer, ‘I’m a systems engineer.’ ‘Well, so what? There are thousands of them here,’ I’d tell them. I never meant to be condescending to anyone. But I remember how impressed I was when guys like Dave Steward came in and said, ‘I’m a systems engineer, and I think I can provide you with a solution.’ I recall like it was yesterday seeing how well-prepared Dave was. He knew what he wanted to do. He needed some help. He was ready to provide a service for the client.

“It’s a competitive environment, and people measure you on past performance. If you have a good track record, it means a lot when you’re seeking a contract with the Department of Defense. Understandably, DOD people are very reluctant to do business with an unknown quality. It is an environment where they are adverse to risk. Risk equates failure. Failure puts the war fighter in jeopardy.”³⁷⁷

In 1994, WWT’s sales were $17 million, nearly double the previous year’s $9 million. During the year, the company worked overtime preparing its bid to win a large contract with the Army. David says, “Over a period of six months, we invested thousands of hours in our pursuit to close this deal, including having $150,000 in out-of-pocket expenses. We did everything possible to get this business and, in fact, considered it a make-or-break deal for our company. The contract was so large that it would have tripled our annual revenues. We were still having major cash flow problems, and we badly needed to get this order. In the first rounds of bidding, we beat four companies that were competing for the job, and finally it had been narrowed down to another company and us. We both submitted our final bids. We were confident that we’d get the job, and knowing how hard we worked, we believed we deserved it. The other company, however, ended up winning the job, and all of our hard work, time, and money was for naught. We were down in the dumps, scratching our heads, trying to figure out what to do next.”³⁷⁸

Joe recalls the disappointment.

“Having put so much into our work to get that Army contract threw us for a loop. We thought we did everything right and were confident we’d get the job. But we didn’t. We had built up our hopes, and losing it was devastating. Just afterward, while we were still licking our wounds, I got a call from the major at Quantico. He was a happy camper, and I needed a pep talk from a satisfied customer. We chatted for a while, and then he got to the point. ‘For your information, I am giving your name to someone at General Services Administration. I told them how pleased we were, and he wants to talk to you.’

“‘We appreciate it, major,’ I said.

“‘Well, I don’t know what the GSA has in mind, but he’s been telling me they’ve got some new ways to do business, and they have a lot of contracts to put out. I highly recommended your company to him.’

I called the GSA person, and it sounded interesting. I set up a meeting and drove with Dave to Kansas City to meet with the GSA.

“‘The major highly recommended you,’ the officer said.

“‘Yes, he’s a good customer of ours,’ I said.

We talked for a while longer and were told, ‘We’re looking for a company with technology expertise to assist us with a new start-up program. Yes, we know your company is small, but we’ve heard some good things about it. Thank you for coming out to see us. I’ll get back to you.’

“When we saw the GSA’s interest, we considered our company a viable candidate for its business, and we focused all of our energies on winning the contract. At the time, our cash flow was so tight that our survival depended on getting this order. Miraculously, within sixty days, we had a deal, signed, sealed, and delivered. That was an incredibly short period of time considering that we worked for nearly a year trying to get the Army contract. By July 1995, we were off and running. It was a $75 million contract. I remember one month when we did $25 million with the GSA—that was more business in a single month than we ever previously did in our entire time of existence.

“It was all hands on deck. We had to bring in a lot of people quickly to help service the amount of business we were doing. We wanted people we could trust. We wanted people who believed in our values and would fit in here.”³⁷⁹

David explains that it generally takes close to a year to close a deal as large as the GSA one. “We were so close to the brink of shutting down that we could not have lasted that long. Instead, the entire process was completed in sixty days,” he says.³⁸⁰

In 1995, the company’s sales skyrocketed to $74 million, up more than 435 percent from the previous year.

On September 11, 2001, at 9:40 A.M., American Airlines Flight 77 departed Washington Dulles Airport bound for Los Angeles. Ninety minutes later, the aircraft, which was hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists, slammed into the side of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. At a speed of an estimated 350 miles per hour, the plane penetrated the outer three rings of the building. The Pentagon is the headquarters of the nation’s Department of Defense. Later that afternoon, Joe Koenig received a call from EDS, which was the prime contractor of certain computer products for the Navy. He explains:

“I was told that they urgently needed 400 laptops reimaged with a specific image that we did for the Navy. The request included PCs and servers. ‘Joe, I need them shipped ASAP.’

“At the time, all air travel was shut down, so there was no air transportation. We needed as many WWT people we could muster up to pitch in at the warehouse to do an all-nighter. It was amazing how everyone was willing to drop everything and volunteer to help. The order was: ‘Get these things ready to be shipped immediately.’ Our logistics people called the trucking company. They sent two drivers instead of the usual one driver. It was amazing how everyone wanted to do his or her part. Not just our people—the freight company, the Navy, and EDS, which was our supply-chain partner for these products. Everyone worked together that night: we had executives, inside sales reps, and secretaries down in the warehouse, moving crates, un-boxing packages, and working their hardest to get this order out the door. I was touched by the way everyone worked together because they wanted to be involved in the fight against terrorism. I was so proud of our people that night. It reminded me about how Americans got behind our troops during World War II. Everyone wanted to do his or her share to win the war. I was so proud of our WWT people that night. I thought to myself, ‘This is really what World Wide Technology is all about. We are a team that will go that extra mile. When there is a crisis, we will do what we have to do to get the job done.’”³⁸¹

For its above-and-beyond efforts, the Navy presented WWT with its Small Business Award.

WWT today is a prosperous entity, yet the company has never lost its passion and intensity to serve its customers. There is no evidence whatsoever that indicates the company has abandoned its do-whatever-it-takes mind-set to win customer loyalty and build lifelong relationships. An example of this all-out effort occurred in 2006 when the company bid on and won a large supply-chain contract with AT&T, one of WWT’s first customers. Jim explains:

“AT&T was consolidating all of its warehouses throughout the U.S., and it was a complicated operation because the technology at these warehouses was not all the same. As a consequence, AT&T didn’t have a handle on how much inventory was out there. It turned out that there was much more than anticipated, and the velocity and quantity of equipment that was flowing into our warehouse to serve AT&T was overwhelming. To make sure everything was done properly, Joe Koenig, Mark Catalano—who was president of Telcobuy, our division that serves the telecommunications industry—and I went down to the warehouse at three in the morning to manage this through. We were dressed in shorts and T-shirts and worked side by side with our warehouse employees. We didn’t just do it this one time—this went on for months. From a technology perspective combined with the amount of physical work that was needed, plus from the business solutions perspective, this was one of our most challenging tasks ever.

“There was a continuous line of tractor trailers showing up at our docks, and we were running out of space to put everything in our 150,000-square-foot facility. I remember standing at the dock door, and I started counting tractor trailers filled with equipment. They were backed up one after another. I counted twenty of them. I’m looking at them, and I’m thinking out loud, saying to myself, ‘I cannot believe this. Our building is at capacity, and we’re expecting more trailer truckloads coming in every day for several months.’ The sheer volume was causing technology issues on top of our physical resource issues, and there were lots of logistics issues. This had become a humongous problem, and it wasn’t one that could be solved by throwing some people and resources at it to straighten it out.

“Then I got a call from two AT&T executives. I was out in the warehouse, and one of them said, ‘Jim, we know you’re working overtime on this thing, and you said you were committed to making this happen. Just how are you going to do that?’

“‘I’ll tell you,” I answered. ‘I just made the decision to move everything from this 150,000-square-foot building to another building that’s about 400,000 square feet.’

“‘I don’t agree with your decision, Jim,’ he said. ‘The move will put us at risk from an inventory accuracy perspective.’

“‘I understand, sir,’ I replied, ‘but this is my best judgment, and I will tell you that we will do whatever it takes to make this right.’

“‘Are you so sure of your decision?’ he said. ‘Do you understand what’s on the line if you don’t get it right?’

“‘I understand, and I know there are no guarantees in life. But please trust me to know that we will do whatever it takes.’

“‘You’re out there right in the middle of this,’ he said, ‘so you do what you think is best. But remember, you’ve got to get it right.’

“‘Yes sir, I get it.’

“We proceeded to move everything into a new building, and while it didn’t happen without challenges, it turned out to be the right decision. We had some bright people within our organization that were quite vocal in expressing their views on why we couldn’t do it. ‘We are over our heads on this one,’ some of them said to me.

“Later, we received some awards from AT&T for this job. We appreciated the honor, but more importantly, we earned their respect and trust. This is something that you can’t buy. You earn it by your actions.”³⁸²

It is rare in corporate America for senior managers of a billion-dollar company to dress in shorts and T-shirts and do physical work to inspire their employees to do their best to serve a customer. Jim explains that this is the way that things are done at WWT. “I’m a big believer that you must lead by example. People will respect you for that. Look at how many companies stopped doing what made them successful when they got big. And look at where are they now.”³⁸³

Tim Harden, president of AT&T Supply Chain and Fleet Operations, talks about how his company was making major changes in 2006.

“We were expanding our video product, bringing it online. We were also accelerating our investment, hiring thousands of technicians, and we were building at a rapid pace. We needed a company like WWT that could keep up with our pace, and they stepped up to the plate. Despite a lot of risk, they were determined to get the job done. They moved into the larger facility even though it wasn’t known how long we’d require the additional space. It turned out to be a smart move on their part, because the facility has since been expanded. They had the foresight to recognize the upside potential beyond the scope at the time of the initial bid for the job, and it has paid off for them. We consider WWT a trusted partner, and as a consequence, we have expanded the business they do with us into other areas.

“We use them as a model. When I sit down with a large OEM, I talk about how WWT is a shining example on what it means to develop a relationship of trust that can do one thing well and demonstrate that it is capable of swimming upstream with that supplier, doing four or five things in their supply chain as a result of how its business has grown. It’s a win-win-win situation. I win because I have a supplier that I know can deliver. The OEM wins because it can shift the margin responsibility to WWT. This is where WWT has done an exceptional job demonstrating it can provide more value-added capability by taking on additional supply-chain services. And WWT wins because its business grows. When a company tells me that they aren’t able to bring a diversified supplier on, I say, ‘Well, here’s a $3 billion diversified company that can do five things for your supply chain—and they can do it tomorrow. Here are the results. Here is what they have done. It is unimaginable to me why you wouldn’t sit down with WWT and consider what they have to offer your company.’ Then I’ll add, ‘By the way, I don’t even look at WWT as a diverse supplier. This is a company that executes exceptional delivery and support.’

“Dave Steward is a great role model, and from a company-to-company relationship, we feel as though we have a valued strategic relationship. I am sure that if you ask Dave, he would tell you the same thing. It’s a relationship that is based on delivery, personal involvement, and just has an overall outstanding track record for running a business.”³⁸⁴

Like all senior people at WWT, Mark Catalano knows the importance of retaining customers. Catalano was a regional vice president at TIE Communications for thirteen years prior to joining WWT in 1997. He served for two years as vice president and general manager of WWT’s Telco business unit. Catalano was then named president and chief operating officer of Telcobuy.com, a subsidiary of WWT. He is in charge of the WWT sales organization with the exception of the federal government sales, which is headed by Bill McKeon.

“Our business grows from existing customers,” Catalano emphasizes.

“Most of our customers are big, such as our federal and state accounts and international companies such as AT&T, Cisco, and Dell. There are obstacles to entry with organizations of this size. It generally takes us a long time to get traction and engagements with such customers. We put in considerable time, effort, and money to get an initial order, and being in a highly competitive field, we don’t bat 100 percent. But what we do strive for is 100 percent customer retention. Once we get in, keeping that customer becomes absolutely critical. We have built a successful company because we’ve been able to figure out how to keep that customer. We are constantly asking ourselves: ‘How do we differentiate WWT from the competition?’ ‘How do we ensure we are providing service that is over and beyond?’ ‘And if there is a problem, how do we fix it?’ We do whatever it takes to make sure our customers knows we have their best interests at heart. We want them to know we will be there for them whenever they need us.

“We have two approaches to maintaining customers. The first focuses on our technical competencies. We want to assure our customers that they are getting the products they need and what we do adds maximum value to delivering those products. By doing this we are able to differentiate WWT as a service company. This makes it possible for us to expand the relevance we have with our customer. We are constantly discussing our second focus, which is to trade places with the customer by asking, ‘What would we want if we were the customer?’ We find the answer when we address such questions as: ‘How would you like to be dealt with?’ ‘What would you expect in this circumstance?’ ‘What do you think is fair?’ We take this same mentality and then we ask ourselves, ‘What is fair?’ ‘What is equitable? ’ ‘What would you want that you think will solve your problem, or what would you want to negotiate?’ We are constantly looking for ways to serve our customers that result in a win-win for both parties. We never try to negotiate a deal with a customer that is tilted in our favor. We want it to be good for both sides, because we want the customer to come back again.”³⁸⁵

When Catalano joined WWT in 1997, the company’s revenues were $137 million. He says,

“When I first met Dave, I asked him, ‘Where do you see this company in ten to fifteen years?’

“‘Our revenues will be multibillion dollars,’ he said.

“We both laughed, and I said, ‘You’re crazy.’ Dave just smiled.

“We’re there now. What made this growth possible are the kinds of organizations that we do business with. For the most part, they are large multibillion-dollar enterprises, and the kind of work we do for them is substantial. Once we get our foot in the door, and a new customer experiences firsthand how committed we are to serve his needs and he sees the results, it leads to more business in different areas of his or her organization.”³⁸⁶

To people who have never conducted business on a large scale that involves millions and hundreds of millions of dollars, such large numbers can be overwhelming. They think that anything associated with high finance is complex and beyond their grasp. David simplifies it by putting it into proper perspective when he says, “It’s all about the Golden Rule, which is perhaps the most quoted scripture in the Bible. Matthew 7:12 says it clearly: ‘In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you.’ This advice has been around for two millenniums, and nobody has yet come up with a better way to treat people. A Golden Rule attitude is deeply ingrained in our company culture, and it permeates our relationships with customers, employees, vendors, and partners. When it comes to doing business based on the Golden Rule, it is appropriate with small and big companies alike.

“We are particularly pleased with partnerships we have with vendors. This is a major part of our business, and we are delighted to engage in joint ventures with them. We’re aware that they could have selected one of our competitors, and we feel honored because companies partner with people they care about and trust. I view these partnerships as cherished relationships. When we form an agreement with another company, I pray and ask God to bless the union. I ask Him to bless the coming together of both parties and ask that it be profitable for both sides. A business deal can never be successful if it is one-sided.”³⁸⁷

Jim agrees:

“Just as we have a customer who is a paying customer, internally, our sales operations may be a customer to our operations people. Our IT logistics is a customer to IT. We have strived to get everybody to understand that there’s not just one customer out there. We have customers all over the place. Each of us has these different customers, and each internal customer is treated with the same level of focus and caring that we also have on our external customers. When this is done properly, it has a very positive impact on our bottom line. We are continually working on getting our people to understand that the more we take care of our customers, they will help take care of us.”³⁸⁸

WWT has built a strong reputation for its integrity and high principles, and its people work hard to keep it intact. As David says, “We’re not infallible, and we do make mistakes. But when we do, we’ll do whatever it takes to get it right. We’ll take whatever resources we have to assure that we make it right for the customer, even if it costs us money to give the value that’s expected of us, which is above and beyond. Our attitude is we are only as good as the last deal we did.”³⁸⁹

Although the company has a 100 percent retention goal, it never compromises its principles to achieve this mark. Joe recalls an incident that happened with a company that partnered with WWT in the early days.

“I was working with partners that both represented million-dollar contracts—each at the time was a significant source of revenue for us. I won’t mention either by name, but Partner A was considerably bigger than Partner B. When it passed on a proposal we presented to it, we explained that we were going to offer it to Partner B and were told that wouldn’t be a problem.

“After Partner B agreed to partner with us on the business, Partner A came back and said, ‘We changed our mind and decided that we want to do it.’

“‘We approached you first,’ I said, ‘and you turned us down, so we took it to this partner. We’re sorry, but we’re committed to Partner B now.”

“Partner A wasn’t happy with us, but if somebody is going to take us to the dance, that’s who we’re going to dance with. Win or lose. It’s a matter of honoring what we say we will do.

“The guy at Partner A called me and chewed me out. I said, ‘I understand that you are upset, and I am sorry about it. But if you’re upset with me because we are living by a commitment that we made to Partner B, then our partnership with you isn’t going to work out for us. We made a commitment, and we intend to honor it with Partner B. Would you go back on a commitment that you made with a partner to give a piece of business to us?’

“The guy said, ‘Well, that’s a totally different story.’

“‘No, it’s not,’ I answered. He was upset with us for about a year, but he finally admitted that he saw our point of view. There were other times when companies wanted to partner with us, and if we suspected they didn’t have integrity, we turned down the business. For instance, if a company with a dubious reputation wanted to sub some work to us, and if we thought they weren’t on the up-and-up, we’d pass on the business. Even during our early days when we were hungry for business, we never put our reputation in jeopardy by doing business with anyone untrustworthy.”³⁹⁰

David says that in 1 Thessalonians 5:22, we are taught: “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” He explains, “This tells us that in business, we will be judged by the people we associate with. There is truth in the adage, ‘Birds of a feather flock together.’”³⁹¹

“We developed a solution for Dell that fundamentally changed how materials are delivered to the company. For instance, multiple supplier deliveries have been replaced by a single-truck delivery containing all replenishment products, arriving in forty-five-minute intervals. Using radio frequency devices, our site coordinators on the factory floor generate demand signals to Dell’s co-located distribution center, initiating the pick, pack, and delivery to the factory just prior to consumption. This was an entirely new area for us, so in the beginning, we didn’t have a picture-perfect start because we were in uncharted waters. We had to build several interfaces between their systems and our systems to make them compatible. Admittedly, it was tough out the gate. The way this works is we buy units from a component supplier, and just how many we purchase is based on Dell’s forecast. We warehouse these parts and supply them to Dell manufacturers. We manage the supply demand, which can include managing the ordering, fulfilling, and warehousing. When Dell tells us how many units they want shipped in a month’s time, our job is to analyze what they need.

“It only takes one item, something as seemingly insignificant as a label, packaging piece, or a specific screw—just one slipup of one of these items can shut down Dell’s production line. One time, during the first six months, we had to shut down the line. It happened because some software documentation wasn’t available. It was the fault of one of our vendors, but since we were the prime contractor on the account, we were held accountable, and we had to take the heat. All I can say is that it wasn’t a fun conversation with Dell when the line was shut down. To get everything back on track, we had our people sleeping in warehouses down in Austin to get the line up and running. It’s amazing when I think about where we were back in 2002 with Dell and how far we’ve since come. We recently won their Supplier of the Year award, which we feel is quite an honor. Mark Franke is our vice president who manages this account, and although he’s based in St. Louis, he spends a lot of his time in Austin. Mark and his team of more than one hundred WWT employees are constantly coming up with innovations to enhance Dell’s supply chain; this is something that this group does very well. Since getting that first job in Austin, we’ve opened warehouses in Winston-Salem, Nashville, and Reno to support Dell. Today, as they change their model, we make changes to accommodate them. We view what we do with Dell as a trusted partnership.”³⁹²

Ying McGuire oversees global supply diversity at Dell. In this capacity, she is in charge of a program that provides equal access to key opportunities for historically underutilized groups including minorities. “We help these companies grow their business in the U.S. as well as the global marketplace,” she explains.

“The size of a company isn’t a concern, so WWT is classified as a minority-owned business. Therefore, I still manage the relationship. WWT is not only our supplier but our customer as well. They are extremely customer-focused and very technology-driven. They are exceptionally nimble and fast, which make them a valuable partner. They provide superior customer service support, and they are focused on continuous improvement, always looking for ways to improve their service to customers.”³⁹³

McGuire recalls saying to Steward: “Dave, your company is called World Wide Technology. There is nothing worldwide about it. Let’s see if we can make it worldwide.” As McGuire tells the story, “He grinned and said, ‘Sounds good to me.’ We were so pleased with our partnership with WWT that our leadership team sponsored and mentored them and then took the company to Brazil. Today, WWT runs a Dell Brazilian operation. Then, in 2009, some of our senior members made several trips with their people to Asia, where we introduced them to local leaders. We opened doors for them with suppliers. We coached them with the culture in those markets and helped them establish roots in the Asian market. As consequence, WWT opened an office in Singapore that serves as its headquarters for their Asian Pacific operations. Shortly afterward, they established an office in Shanghai.”³⁹⁴

WWT first sold Cisco products to the GSA in 1994. “Our first five orders with Cisco went through that GSA contract,” Joe tells.

“This marked the first time that the company did business with Cisco, and initially, the orders slowly increased. This was the beginning of a long business relationship between the two companies. Jim and I paved the way on this account, and Jim is the executive sponsor, which means he’ll work closely with high-level Cisco people. Dave will also meet with their senior people. There’s nothing like bringing in the company’s founder and chairman of the board to meet with a customer’s top brass. He’s the consummate goodwill ambassador.”³⁹⁵

“We started by reselling Cisco products,” Jim explains.

“Today, Cisco is both a customer and a partner. It’s a relationship based on trust that is deeply appreciated, and we never take their business for granted. We are constantly looking to find ways to better serve them. Cisco is a $40+ billion company, so there are a lot of opportunities for us to serve them at home and abroad, and since its inception, we have found ways to expand our business with them.”³⁹⁶

With $1 billion in annual sales, today Cisco is WWT’s biggest single source of revenue. David explains:

“It took us several months to become integrated with their systems; plus we incurred sizeable up-front costs. We are one of a handful of suppliers and vendors that is fully integrated with Cisco. By developing an expertise in their technology so our systems are compatible with theirs, we are able to do a lot of business with them.”³⁹⁷

An estimated 100 WWT engineers (of the more than 150 WWT employees who work with Cisco) hold in excess of 500 individual Cisco certifications. These engineers keep abreast of the latest technology developments through continuous training and close working relationships with Cisco personnel. At a 2009 Cisco Partner Summit, WWT received awards as its U.S. and Canada Theater Partner of the Year, U.S. Public Sector DVAR (Direct Video Assisted Redressal) of the Year, and Central Region Security Partner of the Year. It’s a two-way street; Cisco also has a deep appreciation for its relationship with WWT.

In the IT industry, it sometimes takes years to open a new account, so a lot of patience is required before the right door opens and an order is placed. “It took us seven years before we did business with the state of Missouri,” David says.

“For years the state were doing business with GE Capital, and it didn’t matter that they were out of state and we were headquartered here in St. Louis. Being Missouri-based, employing Missourians, and paying state taxes served as no advantage. Nor did it matter that we were supporting the governor and other politicians in Missouri. But when GE was unable to deliver certain solutions to the state, a door opened for us to come in, and we were right there. That’s because we were persistent, and even though we weren’t doing business with the state, we wanted to keep in their faces. Over the years, I’ve learned that there are times when you don’t think you’re making any progress, but when you keep yourself in front of people, and they become aware of your passion and commitment, they start to think, ‘They keep coming back, and I keep saying no, but they’re adamant about how they can improve the way we are doing things.’ Of course, we had to go through a competitive bidding process. The initial orders with the state were a relatively small piece of business where we provided desktop service and product. Today we are the single IT provider for the state of Missouri. In this capacity, WWT processes an average of 1,100 purchase orders a month. We coordinate sales forecasts with key suppliers in order to reserve, build, and stage inventory to be ready for callout and delivery. Suppliers include Dell, IBM, Microsoft, Gateway, and Lexmark, to name a few.

“We’ve been doing business with the state of Missouri since 2001, and once the state saw how good we were, they gave us more business. The state has since expanded the contract to include the university system, and doors have opened for us to do business with local municipalities, police departments, and fire departments.”³⁹⁸

Joe emphasizes that going that extra mile for customers is not only an excellent way to win customer loyalty, it is also a great way to attract more business. He says, “The state of Missouri has recommended our services to other states, and today, we have contracts with Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Texas and Washington. Today, when we want to solicit new business and haven’t had any contact with a particular customer, we ask one of our partners to make an introduction for us.”³⁹⁹

While WWT partners with some of the world’s biggest companies, it treats all customers equally, regardless of size. David explains:

“Those small customers can say wonderful things about us that could open a door to a big customer. And of course, the small customer can someday turn out to be a big customer. I remember how we were treated by some companies when we were in our infancy. There were people who wouldn’t give us the time of day, and then there were others who couldn’t have been nicer. Well, when you do become bigger, these are the things you never forget when you’re in a position to place an order. You’re definitely going to go out of your way to do business with those people. There’s a story about how Coca-Cola wouldn’t sell to Bill Marriott when he opened his first hotel. They were worried about his credit. But Pepsi was willing to take a chance. As a result, when Marriott became one of the world’s largest hotel chains, it remained loyal to Pepsi. The Scriptures tell us to be faithful with a little, and the Lord will bless you with much.”⁴⁰⁰

A WWT account manager is assigned to each customer. “This person is like a general manager to the account,” Mark Catalano explains.

“Depending on the size of a customer, an account manager might only have one account, such as AT&T, Cisco, or Dell, while other account managers might serve five or six customers, and then others might be calling on as many as a couple of dozen different customers. Of course, it’s not just the sales organization that is in contact with our customers. For every one salesperson that’s out in front of a customer, there are multiple people behind the scenes to support that customer. It starts with a salesperson, front and center. Then there’s an inside sales customer service person who supports the tactical requirements, who does quotations, assures orders are entered, and follows up on delivery and customer satisfaction. We also have presale engineers and postsale engineers that support the salesperson by making sure the product is correctly implemented and being properly used.”⁴⁰¹

Opening new accounts and retaining WWT customers isn’t dependent on super salesmanship. It’s a long process that involves competitive bidding. A lot of follow-up service by a support team is required to maintain an account. Still, like in every business, strong relationships play an important role in achieving maximum results. This is why Dave Steward spends approximately 50 percent of his time on the road, getting out there in front of customers. “Dave does anything we need him to do,” Catalano says. “Whether it’s a big customer or a medium-sized customer, he gets very involved in customer engagements. A salesperson just has to ask him, and Dave will do it. Knowing that they can count on Dave to meet with their customers means a lot to our people in the field.”⁴⁰²

Tom Strunk was one of Jim’s closest friends since their college days when they were soccer teammates at St. Louis University. Strunk had a high-paying job as the controller and CFO at a successful construction company. Jim says, “I had been talking to Tom for months, and in 1993, when we didn’t win a big contract that we thought we’d get, I told him that the timing wasn’t right for him to come aboard. A few months later, when we won another contract, I felt times were better, so I talked to him again about becoming our CFO. I explained that the company still wasn’t on a rock-solid foundation, but we were in a better place than before. I made it clear to Tom that we were by no means out of the woods, and he joined us with eyes wide open. It’s an enormous responsibility to hire your friends and in particular those who have families and good jobs. During those years when we were struggling to survive, I had a lot of sleepless nights worrying about whether I made the right decision by recruiting them to join WWT.

“When you hire your close friends, they must be held at a higher level of accountability than other individuals in the company. You have to understand that people are going to look at them and say, ‘Well, you’re hiring only friends.’ This was not the case. I had other close friends—and guys I played soccer with—that I would never hire. The upside of hiring people I knew well was that I knew they had the right work ethic. I also knew they had the intelligence and right values to do what we need to do. My view is that you will limit your organization if you are not willing to tap into people that you know. Certainly, there is the perception that these people are given undeserved jobs and opportunities, and I left myself open for criticism, so this is the downside. However, I wanted to make sure that we built a strong foundation with the right people in the right place—and as a collective team, we then could continue to supplement that team as we moved forward. Definitely, we also brought in some very good people that I didn’t know previously, and a lot of them started in low-entry positions and have since risen through the organization.”⁴⁰⁴

Joe Koenig agrees that it’s okay for good friends to work together in business. He says, “I know some people think it’s a bad idea, but when you’re surrounded by people you trust and know will be loyal, it can be very effective. Frankly, I like some guy watching my back to be a buddy of mine. Jim brought in a lot of his buddies that became a trusted circle of friends that we know are loyal, and through our most difficult times, we all stayed on board. This nucleus of people was the foundation of trust that permeated the organization. To Dave’s credit, he recognized and trusted Jim’s judgment and supported him when he recruited his friends and old soccer teammates.”⁴⁰⁵

Jim points out that when friends are recruited into an organization and their work is not satisfactory, letting them go is an unpleasant task. “At times, you bring people on, and it’s not a perfect world,” he explains.

“Friends or not, you must do it with a level of integrity, and you have to let them go. When this happens, you have to coach them out of the organization. This is part of leading and managing a business. So if someone doesn’t fit or can’t perform his job to the level that he needs to, this is something that must be done. This is an organization that has high expectations of what our employees need to do. What people sometimes don’t understand is that when you manage somebody out of the organization, there is a proper way to do it with a respect to that individual. You do it by sitting down with this person and having candid conversations about what he needs to do to improve. And you say that you want to help him. It is inhumane when a manager is not willing to have a constructive conversation with an employee and fires him without warning. I think that is grossly unfair.

“However, giving advance warning on what’s required of him is a win-win scenario. This way the person knows that there are consequences if he doesn’t perform. You made it clear that the company prefers he performs and does a great job. He knows that you want him to continue working for the company. But if he doesn’t perform, there is another option that probably neither one of you is going to like, but it’s likely to happen. I feel that when you put it like this, it is no longer the responsibility of the leader. It’s his responsibility. He’s been given every opportunity, and you tried to coach and train him.”⁴⁰⁶

Prior to joining WWT as director of human resources in 1997, Ann Marr had worked in human resources for Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Anheuser-Busch Companies. She has since been promoted to vice president of human resources. She recalls:

“I was introduced to Dave through a mutual friend. My friend said, ‘When you meet Dave Steward, believe me, you are going to want to work for that company.’ I wasn’t actively looking for a change in jobs, but Dave had a reputation in St. Louis as an up-and-coming business executive, so I thought he’d be a nice person to know. He’s so warm and has such high principles, I immediately liked him. Then I met with Jim Kavanaugh, and the next thing you know, I was leaving the largest car rental company in the U.S. to come to work for a small technology company. People thought I was making a big mistake, but Dave and Jim told me about their future plans, and it sounded so exciting to become part of a company with so much potential. I was impressed with the fact that both Dave and Jim were the kind of executives who will roll up their sleeves and work side by side with their people. They wanted me to build a human resources department from scratch, and I liked the idea of being able to start something from the beginning. It didn’t scare me at all because I felt they’d give their support to help me do it.”⁴⁰⁷

What Ann liked most about her new employers was that they exhibited a high level of respect toward others in the organization. “This has to come from the top,” she explains.

“I learned the importance of respecting others by growing up in a very large family as one of thirteen children. My mother and father taught us to treat each other as we would want to be treated. In a family the size of ours, we had to respect each other! I learned that this is the way you treat everybody. It doesn’t matter who they are, or in an organization, what level they’re at. If someone is the janitor or a VP, you treat them equally, and when you do, that level of respect is going to come back to you. I grew up with these values, and I wanted to work for a company that embraces those same values. It’s a simple concept—the Golden Rule—one that everyone understands. We practice it throughout the organization, and our respect for each other creates a sense of loyalty and camaraderie.”⁴⁰⁸

Although Jim recruited several personal friends, Joe is quick to point out that a lot of friends weren’t hired. He explains:

“There are some you hire and some you don’t. You know which ones are the ones you want and those you don’t. You know it from what you observed in the way they played on the soccer field. You know it from how they behaved when you went out with them for a few drinks. So yes, we brought in several friends but not as many as the ones we didn’t want because we knew they weren’t what we were looking for.”⁴⁰⁹

Today, the company has more than 1,200 employees, and it’s not possible to recruit friends and former teammates to fill every position necessary to run the company. What worked with personal contacts when the company was small isn’t applicable on a large scale. Different criteria are required. Ann explains:

“We have core values that we live by, and when we interview prospective employees, we use these values as a gauge for hiring people. We evaluate an interviewee based on certain qualities to determine whether he or she will be a good fit within the organization. This determines whether this individual qualifies for the next level of the interview process.

“There are certain characteristics we look for. For instance, is a person a risk taker? When I was interviewed here, the fact that I would leave Enterprise for a job with a much smaller company indicated that I was not opposed to risk. On the other hand, if a person has had many job changes, it could be signal he might not be a loyal employee. And certainly, we look for people with passion and a positive attitude, two qualities you can almost see the minute you shake someone’s hand. Although not everyone plays team sports, a former athlete can indicate that someone will be a good team player. There are a lot of little things to look for during an interview. For example, when someone keeps on saying ‘I’ instead of ‘we,’ that is a clue that he might not be a team player. We also like it when a job applicant’s résumé shows that he or she has participated in nonprofit events and community activities. We spend a lot of time interviewing people to assure we get the right ones. By being particular about who we recruit, we have a low turnover of employees. High turnover is expensive and bad for morale.”⁴¹⁰

David stresses that although it is crucial to put the best talent into the right slot within the organization, it is essential that those individuals have good character. He says, “This is why we seek out people with the right attitude and why we emphasize qualities such as integrity, loyalty, and trust. We look for people who are giving and want to make a difference in this world. Jesus tells a parable in Luke 6:43-45 that provides an excellent lesson on hiring the right people. He says that a good tree will not bear bad fruit, nor will a bad tree bear good fruit. Hence a tree is known by its own fruit. Jesus explains that figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. Likewise, a person with a good heart does good deeds; an evil person will do evil deeds. In this parable, Jesus says that you can separate the two by listening carefully when people speak. To do this, you must listen not only to what is said, but you must hear what comes from within. This is true, because what comes from the heart reveals character and attitude. I believe this scripture is helpful in recruiting the right people.”⁴¹¹

For the past twelve years, WWT’s internship program has hired college students from across the United States to spend a summer working for the company. In 2009, thirty-five interns participated. Interns are engaged in different training programs, and they are given opportunities to learn many areas of the business. At a mini- boot camp, different department heads are invited to speak to the interns, thereby giving them exposure to many areas of the company. Then, at the end of the summer, an internship lunch is held in the home office’s main conference room, and top executives including David and Jim are featured speakers. A question-and-answer session is conducted that encourages these young people to ask questions. Questions are asked such as: “What made you successful?” “When you were in my shoes, what gave you the courage to do what you did?” At another luncheon, some former interns who have since moved up the ranks at WWT attend, and again, they also do a Q&A session. The internship program has been highly successful, with 85 percent of the participants becoming full-time employees. Several interns have moved up the ranks, including Mike Moriarty, who today is a regional sales manager; Mike Taylor, who is an IT operations director; and Krista Bush, who has been promoted to a finance controller position.

“We want to retain good people,” Ann says, “and to encourage employees to stay with us, we invest a lot in them. In addition to training programs, we are continually educating them to sharpen their technical and managerial skills. Providing them with opportunities and encouraging them to grow, our turnover of employees is low.”⁴¹²

The company is particularly generous with providing comprehensive health-care coverage for its employees and their families at low premiums. “This sends a message that we care about you and your family,” Ann states.

“With health-care costs skyrocketing, this commitment is a huge financial undertaking. Our coverage is more extensive than most companies, and we study benchmark data and do surveys to make sure we are competitive with other companies. Recently, when I told a newly hired person what the health insurance costs were, he commented, ‘That’s really a low weekly cost for our family.’ When I replied, ‘That was the monthly cost,’ his jaw dropped.”⁴¹³

Joe Koenig reiterates that the company’s health-care coverage is exceptional, but he says, “Sometimes it’s the little things we give our people that excites them. For example, at the town hall meeting with our employees, Jim announced, ‘Next year, our health-care coverage will remain the same, and there will be no increase in what you will pay for it.’ This generated a slight response. Then Jim said, ‘Based on employee feedback, we went casual last year. This year, again on what you told us, the company will allow appropriate people to wear flip-flops to work.’ This evoked a huge ovation. We are committed to taking great care of our people, but we sprinkle it with some nuggets to keep it interesting.”⁴¹⁴

David states that the heart and soul of the company is apparent on a visit to its headquarters.

“It’s the spirit of our people. You can see it and feel it when you walk through the corridors here at our world headquarters. It’s the commitment they have to give service to others. Our people are excited about being a part of a company that cares about them and their best interests. A visitor picks up on this spirit when he receives a warm greeting by our receptionist. Callers hear it in the friendliness in the voice of the person who takes the call. It comes through everywhere from the front desk to the warehouse.”⁴¹⁵

The warmth that David describes is not an exaggeration. But what he doesn’t say is that it is a reflection of his own conviviality. It is, in fact, a testament to his authenticity. To find this spirit in a company, you must look at its highest echelons. People know he cares when a family member is sick and he promises to say a prayer for a speedy recovery. They know it when he sends a Bible or some healing scripture to an ill person. They see it when he invites them to attend a Sunday school class he and his wife conduct at their church. For years, the Stewards have been heading a class called “Doing Business by the Good Book.”

People know Dave Steward is respectful and caring when they see him at a company social gathering and approach him with a question. “What are your thoughts on how today’s weak economy will affect the company?” “Do you think the government cutbacks will change the way we do things in our department?” His wife, Thelma, says, “On some topical subjects, Dave can be asked the same question again and again during an evening, and he will answer it with the same intensity as if he’s hearing it for the first time. I know there are times when he would rather talk about something else, but respectful to the other person, he always feels obliged to give a complete answer. Dave doesn’t want to slight anyone.”⁴¹⁶

Not long ago, a regional sales manager invited a prospective sales representative to visit the St. Louis headquarters. The manager passed by David’s office, and looking in, he saw that Dave was alone, so with the job candidate, he walked in. “Hi, Dave. Just want to take a minute of your time to introduce you to his young lady from Florida who might join the company.” David stood up from behind his desk and walked over to greet his guests and chatted with them for about twenty minutes. “I want to do everything I possibly can to help you be successful,” he said. At the end of the meeting, he autographed a copy of his book, Doing Business by the Good Book, for her. “This book will tell you about our company and what I believe.”

The woman was so overwhelmed that she started to cry. Afterward, she said to the sales manager, “I can’t believe such a company exists. I want this job so badly I’ll work here for nothing. I’ll work strictly on commissions. You don’t even have to put me in the health program because I am covered under my husband’s.”⁴¹⁷

David said it with sincerity when he told her he wanted to help her. He regularly makes himself available to accompany sales reps when one requests his presence. This kind of assistance from WWT managers is not restricted to David. Jim, Joe, Ann, and other executives also make it very clear to sales reps that they are available to back them up. This teamwork spirit is practiced throughout the organization. Again, it starts at the top.

“I get so excited,” David says, “when I hear about our people buying new houses, new cars, and sending their children to private schools and colleges. These kinds of things reflect that, had we not taken a leap of faith, these opportunities would not have been there.”⁴¹⁸

On May 2, 2008, President George W. Bush visited WWT’s headquarters, where he spoke to an enthusiastic audience of company employees. The president said that he had heard a lot of good things about WWT and wanted to personally know more about the company. Bush commented on the economic times and said that WWT was a shining example of entrepreneurship at its best. He said that the company demonstrated how technology in the Midwest is making a difference in people’s lives, and it is providing jobs and opportunities while setting an example for the rest of the world. “I accompanied the president on a tour, and he graciously shook hands with our employees,” David says. “He kept repeating that we are a wonderful example of the American Dream.”⁴¹⁹

“They have something special that I refer to as WWT’s ‘secret sauce.’ The source of that secret sauce starts with Dave Steward, but it really comes from God. I think Dave truly exudes the teachings of Jesus. Those teachings have created a cascading value system that flows through the company. With everyone at WWT knowing Dave is a true believer with unshakable core values, he has created what I refer to as an unmarked ministry. So many business leaders claim that their job is to serve their people, but they don’t actually mean it. Dave does. And although he models Jesus, he never tries to force religion or his faith down anybody.

“What Dave does I call the business blueprint of Jesus. Dave is the ultimate servant leader. We’ve all heard, ‘What would Jesus do?’ To a great extent, I think Dave has created a business blueprint that really reflects how Jesus would operate a business. I say this knowing that Dave hasn’t just built a highly successful company and created net worth, he’s elevated people’s life worth. I believe this is significant, because in today’s society, the workplace is the number-one place where you can impact people’s lives. It can be the greatest engine to develop people, and conversely, it can be greatest engine to damage people. The difference is in the leadership. What’s more, Dave brought in two highly gifted people, Jim Kavanaugh and Joe Koenig. Jim is an outstanding CEO, and Joe is one of the most talented presidents and sales leaders I’ve come across. They are best friends, and those guys are more than the sum of their parts. Their friendship is so strong that they can disagree and still respect each other. And what that creates is a modeling behavior in the company culture that says, ‘We can have healthy disagreement, and we don’t have to attack each other personally.’”⁴²⁰

Styrlund emphasizes that the three key ingredients of WWT’s secret sauce are capability, highly competitive products, and extraordinary solutions. He says, “It goes back to the blueprint of Jesus. It’s an excellence that comes from doing things good and right. The entire company oozes authenticity. I hear it from their people, their partners, and their customers. They say that everyone at WWT is real. Everyone there tells the truth. They are honest. And because of this, people say, they are easy to do business with.

“Dave has modeled the teachings of Jesus to apply to his business better than anybody I have ever seen and has personified it in the leadership he brought in. I say this because part of the teachings of Jesus is to understand your giftedness and [use] it to serve others.”⁴²¹

Ann Marr says that David’s strong religious beliefs are admired by employees and customers alike. “You see people who go to church every Sunday but they don’t practice their beliefs in the workforce. I admire Dave because he applies his biblical beliefs to his work. At the same time, Dave is respectful of other people’s beliefs, and he never preaches or tries to convert anyone.”⁴²²

“There is a great diversity of ethnicity and religion, and even a lack of religion by some WWT employees,” claims Mark Catalano. “So religion is not the element that fuels our culture but rather the way people are treated. Respect, honesty, and integrity—this is what permeates the entire company.”⁴²³

Prior to starting WWT, David had been exposed to many mission statements when he worked in corporate America. As a consequence, he is one of a small percent of entrepreneurs who had a mission statement from day one. His was short and right to the point: “People, quality, and technology.” He practiced it to the letter. He brought in good people, provided high-quality products and service, and focused on state-of-the-art technology to build his business. For anyone starting a company today who is not sure how its mission statement should read, he advises, “You can apply the Golden Rule to every business as well as all walks of life. You can also use what Jesus teaches us in Mark 12:31: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Both of these verses are simple, easy to remember, and can serve as guiding principles on how to conduct business every day for as long as you are in business.”⁴²⁴

Starting around 1999-2000 during the dot-com bubble crash, Jim studied successful companies as a source for ideas on the right core values that could be incorporated into the daily way of doing business at WWT. He observed how many CEOs shared common values and used the same buzzwords to describe what their organizations stood for: honesty, integrity, transparency, accountability—the list went on and on. He then composed a list of the core values that he thought would best guide WWT. He says, “The easy thing to do would have been to list every strong value that you could ever think of, but then you would end up with fifty different things that seem crucial to the organization. However, it was a matter of less is more. Too long a list would be hard to remember and make it difficult to implement on daily basis.

“By this time, our company culture was in place. We adhered to Dave’s religious beliefs and built our company on the principle that if we serve our people and our customers, we will be successful. By 2000, our revenues were in the $800 million range. As a smaller company, you can communicate in person or through some type of correspondence, but as you get larger, you need to build a more systematic way to get that message out. As we became a larger organization, we realized that we should commit our beliefs to writing. But we had to figure out what very simplistically conveyed our basic core values and would stand the test of time. By this I mean core values that will drive the culture and the personality of the company, not just for today, but twenty, forty years out. I wasn’t interested in something that was time sensitive that just drove a specific action, an internet craze, or a market meltdown. I wanted it to be structured and be a value system that would stand the test of time. I wanted it to guide the company long after our current management was gone. I started to put everything in writing and spent six months coming up with five core values. During this time, I had some discussions with Dave, but it wasn’t necessary to spend a lot of time with him, because I knew what he and I believed, and we were on the same page. What made this exercise difficult was that I didn’t want to have twenty-plus core values. That would make it difficult for people to remember. It would also make it hard for them to figure out how to apply them, and as a result, it’s all wallpaper! I wanted these core values to provide alignment for employees on how they were expected to act. It had to be brief and easy to refer to—something that could fit on a card and carried in one’s wallet.”⁴²⁵

When Jim was through, he came up with an acronym for WWT’s core values: EPATH, which is referred to as the company’s EPATH for employee and company success. It stands for embracing change and diversity of people and thought, passion and a strong work ethic, attitude and being positive and open-minded, being a team player, and honesty and integrity. “I put down what I thought was most important,” Jim explains.

“You’re never going to capture everything, but I think it’s critical that you keep it simple enough that people can understand it, and you also keep it consistent. Honesty and integrity is the most important core value. It is the foundation upon which the value of embracing change, passion, work ethic, and attitude are built. If you have honesty and integrity as one of your core values and you respond consistently each and every time someone crosses over the line, the message gets delivered.”⁴²⁶

Jim emphasizes that the CEO needs to do what is right.

“When the organization and the people see those types of decisions being made with consistency, that begins to resonate and drive the values and the culture of the organization. We expect you to treat people with a level of respect and integrity, and your actions need to demonstrate that. We all know what we need to do. You need to have an organization that is willing and ready to make those decisions. For example, it could be a business deal in which you are asked to break a commitment to generate more money. To some, it would be an easy decision if it were a choice of going with another partner and abandon[ing] your current partner. We absolutely believe it’s the wrong thing to do from an integrity perspective. If we are committed to a partner, we are going to stay with that partner. We’d rather jeopardize our profit margin than jeopardize the integrity of our company and our people.”⁴²⁷

To let it be known throughout the organization how important the core values were, Jim integrated them into the employee assessment process. Employees are measured not only on how they perform their jobs but also by how they measure up to the core values. He explains:

“If you’re a sales rep, you have a quota to hit. You could hit 130 percent of your quota, but there is also a list of core values and behaviors that we expect, and if you are not performing on those behaviors, there will be consequences. For example, if you’re not a team player, or if your communication is deemed disrespectful, we may ask you to leave, because it has been determined that we are being suboptimized as an organization. We won’t ask anyone to leave immediately, because we advise one to change his behavior, and then we will attempt to coach him. We make it clear that just because you are over your quota, there is more that also matters. We are totally committed to our core values to the point where there have been times when we have had to ask some star performers to leave. While they were performing their job requirement, they weren’t performing relative to the behavioral aspect and core values aspect. Consequently, we didn’t feel it was a good mix for the company.”⁴²⁸

Mark Catalano states that EPATH summarizes the company’s core values, goals, and fundamental management concepts.

“It is absolutely central to the philosophy of our company. It is ingrained in every manager. Everything that EPATH stands for is essential. If there is somebody in the organization that has some of those core values but not others, that won’t cut it. Can we overlook a guy that is an A player and producing but isn’t a team player? The short answer is no, we cannot. Such an individual won’t flourish in this environment without embracing all of those core values. We take this very seriously. EPATH is something you will see on walls in every building of this company, on displays on desks, and on our people’s badges that they use to get in the door. You will also hear our core values discussed in all management meetings. And while mandatory evaluations are done at the end of the year, typically there are quarterly informal reviews based on real-time performances. When we sit down to do assessments with employees and talk about expectations, there is a matrix that includes their job performance and tactical expectations around their job as well as how they are embracing the core values.”⁴²⁹

Jim insists, “When you put an emphasis on your core values, you must communicate them, hold people accountable to them, and you must live and breathe them. When we look at our employee performance matrix, we look at how you recruit, how you retain people, how you motivate people, and how you terminate people. This way there are no surprises to your people. They know what you expect.

“Another thing about core values: you must be very careful about what you put out there. If you can’t hold people accountable for them, you are better off not putting them out there, because now your integrity is at stake. You’ve sang one thing, and you’re doing something else.”⁴³⁰

AT&T’s Tim Harden says that WWT has a stellar reputation. He explains:

“They are known for their outstanding work and doing everything they can to meet a customer’s requirements. We think they are very business savvy. Having said this, what I admire about them is that if they don’t think they can do a particular job, they have enough business acumen to say, ‘This is not something that’s in our sweet spot. We cannot do that, so you will have to give it to another company.’ This is why I say it is a relationship of mutual trust, one that has evolved into a strategic relationship.

“Dave Steward is an exceptional leader. In my role, I’ve worked with a lot of companies, and in this capacity, you can tell the people who are involved and know their business and yet they have enough trust in the people surrounding them, so they can grow and make crucial decisions. Dave excels in this area. He has a clear understanding of his business at the detail level, so he is able to have necessary dialogs to resolve issues and bring in new business. And, at the same time, he is able to step away and let his team manage day to day and grow the business. I’ve been very impressed with what I’ve seen of him.”⁴³¹

Since 1999, David and Thelma have taught a Sunday school class called “Doing Business by the Good Book.” The idea for the class came from Dr. Lynn Mims, the pastor of Union Memorial United Methodist Church. Mims had visited WWT on many occasions and was familiar with David’s commitment to building a business based on biblical teachings. The pastor asked the Stewards to conduct a class that would help others follow David’s lead so they, too, could prosper. Today, the weekly class is attended by a diverse group of businesspeople, ranging from heads of small start-up companies to successful business owners. Mims has since retired, and the class is now conducted at the Salem United Methodist Church, a larger church closer to the Stewards’ home.

David is heralded today as one of St. Louis’s most prominent business leaders. Many WWT employees are inspired by his leadership, and they, too, are actively engaged in the community. For example, Jim is an active board member of the St. Patrick Center, an organization that serves the homeless. He also supports other charitable organizations such as the the National MS Society, Ronald McDonald House, Toys for Tots, and the United Way. Ann Marr is also a community leader and serves on the board of the St. Louis Minority Business Council, Focus St. Louis, the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, and St. Louis Forum. She also serves as chair of the WWT Charitable Foundation. Again, it starts at the top. Employees are encouraged to support charitable and civic organizations, and the company matches their contributions dollar-for-dollar, 100 percent—there is no limit. The employees appreciate that the company supports what they support.

Ann says, “In addition to matching contributions, the company frequently supports organizations in which our employees are actively involved. In addition to making financial contributions, if a WWT employee is involved in a fund-raising event that has an auction, the company will frequently donate items such as computers, laptops, and iPods. The company owns luxury suites for professional football, baseball, basketball, and hockey events, and sometimes it will donate the use of the suites to be raffled off to raise money for worthy causes. For the most part, the suites are used to entertain customers. When there is a cancelation, we will make some last-minute calls to local groups so that they may bring young boys and girls who otherwise might not have the opportunity to see a professional sports event. When so, we provide catered food and beverages to our special young guests.”⁴³²

A 2009 survey by America’s Research Group states that 81 percent of American consumers claimed they are more loyal to a company that is active in the community. The survey also reveals that 95 percent of American employees boast about their bosses’ civic activities, and it makes them feel proud to work for the company. Although these reports were not the reasons WWT is actively involved in the community, the survey discloses that companies can benefit from their philanthropic endeavors. As Joe says, “All those things that Dave, Jim, and other executive team members do to support the local charities are visible to our employees, and it’s something they can wrap their arms around and get behind it. It’s something we all appreciate at WWT.”⁴³³

On April 12, 2008, Thelma and David Steward were named Pillar of Strength awardees by Friends of Epworth. For more than 140 years, Epworth Children & Family Services has helped thousands of children overcome severe emotional and behavioral challenges. The awards event was held at the Ritz-Carlton in St. Louis. Dell Computers’ Ying McGuire says, “I was Dave’s guest at the ceremony. I flew in from Austin to attend the event. I was one of a handful invited that were non-family members. The Stewards have done so much for the community, and we at Dell are proud to be partners of WWT, a company that is the epitome of outstanding corporate citizenship.”⁴³⁴

When asked about giving his time and money so generously to the community, David humbly says, “This is a part of my life that I cherish. As it says in Luke 12:48, “To whom much has been given, much will be required.”⁴³⁵