One might say that David Steiner is in the business of good ideas, and that he has been cultivating this business all his life. To earn money as a child, he became the go-to gardener and lawn care provider for a neighbor in town. One season, duty called and he found himself raking leaves on Christmas Eve. “My fingers were numb through and through by the time I got home, but we got the job done!” he remembers today. “For me, the experience was like a metaphor for ideas. Anyone can provide a service, but good ideas are rare, and to generate them, you can’t be afraid of working hard and getting dirty. They don’t come easy. It’s about working hard to get the leaves out from underneath the bushes, like I did that frozen Christmas Eve.”
Once one has buckled down, raked out the hard leaves, and figured out what the idea is, the task then turns to how to best position it in the marketplace. And as David also learned as a boy, one is smart to undertake tasks sooner rather than later. His father had a garden, and Mr. Steiner would task his three young sons with its maintenance in the summers while he was at work. He wanted the green beans hoed, the weeds pulled, and the potatoes dug by the time he came home at the end of the day. “We could do it at the beginning of the day, when the sun was still low in the sky and last night’s chill still hung in the air, or at the end of the day, when the sweltering afternoon heat had set in,” he recalls. “It was our choice.”
Now the President and Chief Business Development Officer of D&R International, Ltd, an innovative government contractor specializing in data-driven energy efficiency solutions, David knows that the company has the option of resting on the laurels of what it’s already achieved, if it wanted to. “But we don’t,” he affirms. “By the end of the day, we’ve got to get these new ideas out there circulating in the marketplace, and the only way to do that is for us to put in the elbow grease to create them in a way that appeals to people. We could wait until we’ve got the perfect package in place, but instead, we’re taking the entrepreneurial route. We’re actually trying new things, not just thinking about trying them. We’re not waiting around for our clients and potential buyers to come to us. We’re going to them and showing them what we’ve got.”
As the son of two pastors, David’s childhood also taught him what to do next. “At this point, you’re going to have to say something new,” he affirms. “If your idea didn’t work, you’ll start the process over again. If it did work, you’ll keep telling it in a different way. My parents had to put new sermons together every Sunday. For ten minutes each week, they had to speak about something that was compelling enough that people would remember it and go out and want to change their lives. To tell the same sermon each week would be fruitless. People would stop coming. You ultimately have to come up with a different message, and a different way of telling the story. It’s the same way with business. We can tell the story over and over the way we think it needs to be told because we think it’s right, but we have to understand where each listener is coming from. We have to tailor it to the goals and objectives of who we’re working with and what level they’re on in terms of their needs to engage with us.”
D&R International was launched in 1985, but David did not come to know of the company until 2000, when he was working at the Maytag Corporation. “I became familiar with the team and was quite impressed by the detail of information and the quality of work they put out,” David explains. When Whirlpool bought out Maytag, David was invited to be a part of D&R. David had not thought much about owning a company, but the more he learned about it, the more it appealed to him.
Joining D&R was, in some sense, a test. With his extensive experience in government affairs and various other aspects of business, David had become adept at bringing experts together, making sure everyone had a seat at the table to enrich the discussion and unearth the best solutions. But did he have the fortitude to run a company? “The concept of running a company sounds great,” David acknowledges today. “It has a mystique. But when you actually get into it, you find out how hard it is. Some people don’t want it.” David accepted the challenge, committed to cultivating the collaborative culture, and embraced the power of creating ideas.
David now has a majority stake in D&R, along with six other partial owners who purchased the company in 2010. “We’re all partners to help drive the future of the company, keeping our focus on innovative solutions for energy efficiency in the marketplace,” he affirms. “We could all go on and be very prosperous in other firms, but we believe in what we’re trying to accomplish. We’re trying to promote a different type of market solution and a different way of analyzing the data and the marketplace. We don’t want to be confined by the pre-established ways of doing things; we want to open up and take a broader view.”
Today, D&R utilizes its extensive expertise in energy efficiency and applies it to the core fundamentals of data, helping its clients identify the realities hidden in the numbers and then developing the best solutions for these realities. It has traditionally contracted with agencies like the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, yet with recent changes in the government contracting and spending terrain, they’ve begun to look at competitive markets in the private sector as well. “We can offer data insights, solutions, and marketing and merchandising opportunities to help our clients better introduce energy efficiency technologies and better appeal to consumers and businesses to adopt them,” David explains. “It’s an interesting path to take because we’re doing it differently than most other contracting and consulting firms in the marketplace today.”
This path and approach led D&R to launch a new service called BETTER DATA BETTER DESIGN®, focused on bringing collaboration into the energy efficiency space to identify where they can get good energy savings to meet their regulatory or legislative mandates. Through this initiative, David and his team are delivering services to their customers to help them save energy. “It’s a huge gamble on our part,” he points out. “We’ve become very entrepreneurial with it in trying to sell the service to the marketplace, and it’s transforming the way our clients think of us. It’s a challenge to push paradigm shifts with this endeavor, but it’s a positive way we can be a market disruptor, and we believe the energy efficiency marketplace is now going through a period of searching for the next best innovations to help drive further energy efficiency savings in the market. There’s a lot to be done in energy efficiency that hasn’t been accomplished yet, and we’re committed to pursuing that.”
Today, D&R employs a team of around 45 people. It is no traditional consulting firm; rather, it also provides products developed through its unique mastery of certain segments of the energy efficiency market. It is currently launching various market profile reports for utilities, retailers, manufacturers, and investors that afford glimpses into what the market’s really doing. “It’s an alternate revenue stream that helps broaden our base of potential clients, which helps to smooth out the ebb and flow of the government contracting schedules,” David points out. “There are a lot of other entities out there that can benefit from what we’re creating, and I see our future growth in the way we’re positioned in the marketplace—not just as a government contractor, but as a provider of meaningful solutions to whatever program challenges are out there.
We also have relationships with many other people who are very experienced and knowledgeable about what’s going on in the marketplace in various sectors, like commercial building,” he adds. “By partnering with these sources, we can leverage that knowledge, with them leveraging us in return. It’s a form of growth in that we’re embracing a new technology or industry that brings energy efficiency solutions to the marketplace.”
Just as remarkable as its innovative approach to business is D&R’s company culture, which is characterized by dual senses of compassion and consensus. “We are very much about bringing people together,” he affirms. “The idea is that we’re all responsible for the future of the company, whether we’re working on a project or trying to bring on a new client. We may not all agree in any one moment, but we all strive to head in the right direction. That’s my focus on a daily basis.”
This leadership philosophy stems directly from David’s childhood, which began in Illinois but transitioned to Maryland when he was eight. His parents were pastors in the Church of the Brethren and co-pastored a church for several years, approaching each day with a passion, integrity, and hard work that molded the characters of their sons. “When your parents are ministers, you’re kind of on the front line in the community, especially in a small town like the ones we lived in,” David observes. “I learned that your world has to be bigger than your immediate family and friends—it has to entail taking care of your coworkers, of your community. You may not understand what other people need or approve of all that they do in their lives, but they deserve a chance. They deserve to be cared for. That’s sown into the culture of D&R today, trying to take care of each other in the same way.”
David grew up singing in the choirs and playing piano for the church, and there were times he thought he would enter into the ministry himself. “I could see myself going in that direction someday, and I see what I’m doing now as being kind of a pastor in the organization,” he says. “I stay focused on what we’re doing to address the mission we have and to take care of the people who are part of the team, trying to help them achieve the goals and objectives in their career path.”
The concept of team was also central to David’s youth through his passion for sports—a passion that expressed itself vehemently when he served as his school mascot during his senior year. “I got a little more animated than I probably should have been,” he laughs. “To this day, my wife won’t let me watch Redskins games while she’s around because I get too fired up.”
David’s paternal grandfather was a farmer in Ohio who also sold tractors, and observing him left a marked impact on the young man. “Being a farmer, you have to be your own businessman because you run your own operation,” he says. His other grandfather was a tinkerer who made watches and devised machines that would solve various problems around the house. “That sort of ingenuity always captivated me,” he says. “I wasn’t good with my hands, but I was fascinated by the concept of creating an environment that would inspire people to innovate. I don’t have all the answers, but I wanted to be able to offer an opportunity to the people who did have those skills. I wanted to create an environment where we could leverage the talent to create something that would respond to a need, a challenge, a question. That’s what D&R is all about.”
David attended college at Ashland University in Ohio, where he served as Student Senate President for two years and spent summers working on a farm and in a factory on the assembly lines. “I still have scars from the sheet metal I would put through the presses to bend into various forms,” he says. He also interned on Capitol Hill after his sophomore year through a program at Georgetown University. He had political aspirations, drawn to the meaningful work of engaging with the community to address its concerns, but as time went on, he opted for different paths.
After earning a dual degree in political science and religion, as well as a minor in music, David took a position in government affairs with The Timken Company in Canton, Ohio. Over the nine years he spent there, he moved into a number of other roles in human resources, manufacturing, marketing, and finance. “Experiencing all those roles, I realized that being in government affairs touches just about any part of the company, depending on the issues you deal with,” he says. “I was fascinated by the intersections that occur. It’s not just about building a bearing; it’s about the engineering, technology, human capital, sales, marketing, and continuous improvement that all go into making it happen.”
When David felt it was time for a change, he applied for a position at the Maytag Corporation and flew down to Washington on his own dime, where the man that would become his boss spoke with him for two hours without even seeing his resume. “I was stunned that he would take so much time with me, and he ultimately offered me the job,” David remembers. “He really mentored me along the way in how to deal with government affairs and government officials, and it was hugely beneficial. He taught me a lot about patience and process, which was essential when I came to D&R.”
In advising young entrepreneurs entering the business world today, David’s story details the importance not only of generating and expressing good ideas, but also of having the courage to embrace them. “Don’t be afraid to try something,” he urges. “When you’re 22 years old, a lot of people expect you to have all the answers figured out, but don’t get locked into that thinking. Keep your mind open about what else can be possible, because life is long, and you should be open to as many possibilities for achieving success, however you define that, as you can.”
For David, that success is defined in many ways. It shines most brightly through his son, who makes incredible strides each day toward becoming a man of his own. It shines through the music that laces the air with audible gusto and palpable emotion when he sits down at the piano bench—a place of refuge—and rains passion on the keys. And it shines through his leadership at D&R. “Six years ago, I never would have envisioned being here, doing what I’m doing and enabling the impact we’re making, because I didn’t think it was possible,” he says. “I had different ideas and tracks that I saw myself going down. But I’m very proud to be part of this team and what it’s accomplishing. Together, we tend to each idea like the community garden we steward just outside our office building—thoughtfully, diligently, innovatively, and for the good of our extended family, whether we know them or not.”
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