March 28, 2024

Black Entrepreneur History

#1 Source for Black Entrepreneur History

Forming Solid Relationships Is Key To Growing a Successful Business

David Steward is the founder of one of the largest Black owned companies in the United States of America, and one of the ways he grew his business is through forming solid relationships.

In 1990, David Steward founded World Wide Technology, and what WWT does is function as a systems integrator, basically bringing subsystems together to function well together as a whole. It provides digital strategy along with supply chain solutions and innovative technology to companies.

How World Wide Technology grew to the size it has today is through business relationship development. The formation of relationships is one of the vital keys to any business expansion. Relationship development is important for these reasons:

  • Development & Expansion – Getting to know those who are already part of an industry in which you would like to develop or expand into is vital for future success and growth. This is what David Steward did for the expansion of WWT.
  • Build a Great Reputation – What people know about you and hear about you from others is crucial in business. Therefore, be certain that you and your business represent what people want to gravitate toward and not away from.
  • Team Building – Being a solopreneur is one thing, but if you want to expand and gain more out of the business, one needs to build a team. Building a team requires building trusting, solid, dependable relationships.

The technology company broadened its relationship with others, entering a partnership with Cisco, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Tanium, VMware and Intel in order to resell hardware and software. While all this networking and partnering contracts were happening, it was in 1996 that World Wide Technology opened its first warehouse.

World Wide Technology is truly worldwide as it has integration labs all the way in Mumbai, Singapore and Europe as well as Asia. The company continued to expand, acquiring St. Louis’s Asynchrony software company.

To date, World Wide Technology is one of the largest Black-Owned companies in the United States of America.

World Wide Technology’s revenue is in the billions, well over ten billion a year, all this coming from a Chicago born, son of a stay at home mom and a father who was a mechanic, in a family that didn’t have much, but he went on, despite the discrimination of the 1950s through 1970s, to gain a degree in Business from Central Missouri State University, work for various businesses before he founded his very own.

He didn’t do bad for himself at all now, did he? If one takes a closer look at what his business does and how he lives his own life, business and spiritual, it’s all about how things work together in relationship with each other.

Read his books titled Doing Business by the Good Book and Leadership by the Good Book.