How Steve Rosas Built a 22 Person Firm (Omega Environmental Services)

Lightly edited for readability.

Lucas James: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Green Decades. I'm on with Steve Rosas. His company is Omega Environmental Services. He is the president of the company, and their headquarters is in Newport Beach, California. They've been in business for over 14 years. Actually, he's been in business for 30 years, but the company is in its 14th year. So I'm very excited to talk to him today. They do all sorts of environmental consulting, have a deep background in the space, and have helped make the world better for a long time. So thank you so much, Steve, for being on the podcast.

Steve Rosas: Yeah, thank you for having me, Lucas. Pleasure to be here.

Lucas James: We were getting into a couple of things before we aired that I thought were really relevant to the conversation. Maybe you could start there and describe a little bit about Omega: how it got started, what inspired it, and how you've grown over the last 14 years. You mentioned that things are going really well right now, so maybe just a little context for the listeners.

Steve Rosas: Sure. Omega is, like you said, a little over 14 years old. We're heading into our 15th year. I basically started the office with myself and my partner, but really it was me starting in one office. In pretty short order, within a month after starting the company, we brought in a whole staff of people. We started moving pretty quickly because I've been in the industry a long time. I had a lot of connections and a big network of people, so fortunately we were able to start the company and bring a lot of existing or new clients on board in that short period of time. Why I decided to do it, I don't know. When you start a business there's always a crazy part to it. You feel like you're jumping out of a plane. But I'd been in the business for a long time. I had worked for a regional company here in Southern California, and prior to that I had worked for an international environmental consulting company with offices in the UK, up in Canada, and out in the Pacific. That was a great experience. I got to travel all over the country and outside the country a little bit as well. My career has been in this space, and I started from the bottom up, literally, doing microscopy analysis. Then I worked my way up into project management, sales, marketing, and upper management, and then decided to go out on my own with a partner. Why I did it: I just felt there was room for improvement. I liked the companies I worked with, but I always thought there were certain things I could do better and that I could be successful, so I went for it. That's it in a nutshell.

Lucas James: That's so cool. With your team right now, I see there are a few people on the website listed on the management team, but give us a sense of the team size and the different people working at the company, just from a high-level perspective so people understand.

Steve Rosas: Yeah. When we started the company, we had a couple of PhD toxicologists who were partners. One of them retired and the other is still here. They're a little bit older, so they were a great part of the company because they brought a different side to what we do here at Omega. We focus a lot on hazardous materials management for large corporations, Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies, and then medium-sized and smaller companies as well. That was really the core management team. Then we had some senior project management people who have been in the industry, some of them, like me, over 30 years each, and the PhDs over 40 years. So we have a lot of experience doing the type of work that we do, and we're able to add some other services as a result. Companywide we have about 22 people that work for Omega, and that's on a standard day. Depending on the type of work we do, we may bring other people in to help us on remediation-type projects, and then we could have upwards of 50 or 60 people working on a project with us at any given time. It really depends on where we're at, the type of projects we're working on, and the size of the company. We have our office here in Newport. We work all over the western U.S. primarily, up in Washington, California, Arizona, Nevada, and out in Denver on occasion. On the East Coast we've opened an office in Durham, North Carolina, and out of there we're working in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, with plans to move south, probably toward Florida.

Lucas James: Awesome. I see that you do both sides of the consulting and environmental process. You provide the assessments, but with the remediation or even the decontamination piece, you're also going in and cleaning these sites up, or overseeing the cleanup.

Steve Rosas: We can. Yes, we do. I think our focus is primarily on the assessment part, where we go into buildings or properties or land and assess whether there are any issues, any recognized environmental conditions, for example, or any hazardous materials in a building that, for whatever reason, is going to be renovated or demolished or redeveloped. That's really our primary focus. As part of that we also do things like indoor air quality in buildings and industrial hygiene for manufacturing processes. But we also get involved in the remediation side of things, more than we used to, where we're dealing with things like underground storage tanks, soil contamination, or groundwater contamination. Our goal is to help clean up the environment. We're helping our clients comply with regulations, but in that process they want to clean up the environment, or they're required to, and we're there to help them do that and to comply with all the necessary agencies. So we play on both sides, and it really depends on the type of project.

Lucas James: Super interesting. You're somebody who for 30 or so years has objectively made the environment cleaner and safer. How do you feel about the environment in general right now? How do you feel about the state of our world and the way companies are interacting with the environment? You have a firsthand view on this. Is there a case for optimism?

Steve Rosas: Well, yeah, I think so. Our environment over the years has been mishandled in a lot of different areas, and of course that's why there's an industry for us now, and why the government has agencies like the EPA, or OSHA, and here in California Cal/OSHA, that regulate environmental issues. That's a good thing to have in place. It doesn't force clients to comply, but they need to comply, and it gives us a business where we can go out and help them do that. So are we cleaning up the environment? In certain aspects, I think we are. California is a very stringent state when it comes to environmental and regulatory compliance, maybe versus other states. But overall I think there's a lot of good going on, and there's a lot of work to be done. When you look at this country, there's probably well over 100 years' worth of contamination, so there's a lot of work to be done because of that.

Lucas James: Let's say you're 20 or 30 years old and you want to do something about the environment. Would you recommend people get into your space and help companies get more compliant, or are there other things they could be doing, outside of personal choices and trying to be more sustainable? What's the most effective way to affect change, maybe outside of politics? Is there a kind of company you're seeing that could be beneficial, or do we need more people in this space working with businesses? What would you recommend to somebody who just wants to help?

Steve Rosas: I certainly think the environmental space is a great space, and there are a lot of different aspects to it. It's not just what we do. We focus on hazardous materials management, or what we call environmental management for our clients, but there's also wastewater, open land, and wetlands, where someone is going to build or impact an environment and we want to make sure they're not affecting the wildlife or the plant life. So there are a lot of different parts to environmental work, and if a person wants to get into this space, they can. Outside of the political side, I think recycling is huge. Reuse of materials leads to sustainability, like building products that are safe for reuse, or recycling so that material can be made into something else that benefits the environment. Anybody can do that. Everybody should be recycling, stacking their bottles and cans and taking them to the recycling center. People say, 'Why are you doing that? You're not making much money.' It's really not about making money. You make a few bucks, but it's about keeping the environment clean. You can go out into the ocean, unfortunately, and there's plastic floating around, and we want to avoid that. That's something everybody can get involved in. You don't have to go to school for it or have a career in it.

Lucas James: You said your business is doing well and growing. That's amazing. Do you think things are growing because more regulation is rolling out that these companies have to comply with, or because things have gotten worse over the years and there's more cleanup that needs to happen? What are you seeing as the big driver?

Steve Rosas: I think regulatory compliance contributes a lot nowadays, especially in California and certain states that are very stringent with their regulations on impacting the environment. The EPA over the years has gotten stronger and stronger and has more horsepower behind it. Thirty or forty years ago they really didn't have a lot, and people don't realize that. Now they do, and the local regulatory agencies we deal with are pretty strong, so that forces a lot of businesses to comply. But people are also more aware now. Business owners are much more aware of what's going on, and everybody as a whole is more aware of environmental compliance and sustainability, so you're getting a lot more people advocating for it, and that goes along with businesses. A lot of the businesses we work with have a whole staff of people who focus just on environmental, so we have to work through those groups to make sure that what we're doing is what they want us to do. Some of these businesses have requirements that are more stringent than the regulatory requirements out there. So people are much more aware, across the board.

Lucas James: We've talked about what people can try to do individually, and about recycling. I think there's a lot of recycling technology that could be created to make it even more efficient for people. Now, let's say you're somebody who has an environmental consulting practice and you're trying to grow it. What's your advice? What's been working for you the last 14 years? What are the practices you feel are best for growing a business like this?

Steve Rosas: Well, we're a service industry, number one, and we're a relationship-driven industry. The key to running a successful business is having really good-quality relationships with your clients, and building a network, building trust and loyalty with those clients. You can do all the sales and all the marketing in the world, but then you've got to deliver. That's where the key is. You've got to be able to say, 'We can keep you out of trouble, keep you on budget, and all these other things,' and you've got to prove it every day. It's not a one-time thing where you can walk away. You're only as good as your last job, basically. It's a constant thing, and once you do that over and over again, you start to build trust. We have a lot of clients who just come back to us automatically over the years. We get renewed contracts and are able to sustain those relationships. In some cases we got them out of a lot of trouble, and that really benefited them, and in the long run it benefits us. We're looking for longevity here. We're not looking for the big bang, where we go in, get a project, and walk away. You talk about sustainability in the environment; we're trying to sustain in the business world as well.

Lucas James: True. At this point you've grown into a sizable company, and you support a lot of people. What's next from here? What are you thinking about for the next couple of years, or a decade? How does this evolve over time?

Steve Rosas: We're in a growth phase right now. We opened that office on the East Coast, and we're going to build that part of the world. The reason we did it is that we had clients here who already had operations on the East Coast, and we decided this was a good time to have a presence over there. So we're in a growth pattern and we'll continue to do that. We're always looking for the next best thing we can offer our clients, the next best package of services, to help them stay in compliance, stay sustainable, and advocate for environmental sustainability. That's our goal right now: to continue to grow and add some new services. We've added new services over the years, including more recently, to the bucket of services we already provide, and hopefully that gives our clients more to select from.

Lucas James: That's really interesting. If you were a newer company, you talk about relationships. I'm assuming the way it works for most people growing in this space is you get your foot in the door, you're talking to people, and then when they need to, they'll reach out because it's part of staying compliant. How would you advise someone just getting started with that process? Should they be going to events in the space? Should they just be networking?

Steve Rosas: Certainly it's helpful to have a science-related background and education. That helps to some extent, but it's not everything. I'd definitely recommend going to events that are relevant to environmental work. There are a number of large associations, like the American Industrial Hygiene Association, which has local chapters. That would be one thing to go to. Indoor air quality associations, too: go and see what those people are talking about and what drives the industry. We know there's a regulatory side, then there's a technical side and a business side as well. Then it's about building a network of people. We do a lot of business development here, and I've done a lot of it over the years, trade shows and all that. But my very first client, the first one I marketed to and sold to, is still my client today. I tell people that story and they say, 'Oh wow, that's a long time.' When I started there, the people were much older than me and they've gone on to retirement, but we've sustained that client through all the changes they've gone through, management changes, companies sold. They always come back to us, and I'm really grateful and fortunate to be able to say that. We have a number of clients like that who've been long-standing, and we're still working with them today. So for the 25- or 30-year-old who wants to get into this business: it's a lot of work, and there's nothing easy out there, but anybody can achieve whatever they want to achieve if they put their mind to it.

Lucas James: I love that attitude. There's a lot changing in the industry right now, with a huge influx of things like artificial intelligence. I'm of the mindset that, just like with compliance and the environment, if you're going to use these tools you want to be conscious of your usage, because they can be very damaging. That being said, with the right awareness of how you're using them, I do think they can be useful. I'm curious whether it's with some of these new technologies or something else: is there a resource, a tool, or a website that has been very helpful for you, whether on the operations side, in understanding trends in the space, or on the marketing side? Something you feel is a really cool tool for other environmental consultants or people doing assessments?

Steve Rosas: AI is kind of a crazy thing. We got into it a few years ago. When it came out, I said in our weekly marketing and sales calls, 'I want to be an AI company,' which is great, but what are you actually doing when you're doing AI, and what are you really creating? I just saw the news the other day that AI is going to take over the human race, so it's kind of crazy. We're certainly not trying to take over the human race here, but we are trying to use AI to our benefit, and I think there are a lot of companies like us that are. From a marketing aspect, we're using AI as a tool to look at trends, our own trends in particular: what are we doing here, how is that affecting us, and how can we improve? We get some pretty interesting reports on how we can improve as a company, and we're also using it for marketing in general, to help us develop content. I think that's pretty basic nowadays. You've got kids doing their college term papers probably using AI, and if I'd had AI when I was in college, I'd have been using it too. Why not? It's at your fingertips, and in a couple of seconds you can have answers you couldn't have had years ago, when you'd have to go to the library. Used properly, there are a lot of great benefits. It is a little bit scary when you hear all the other crazy news out there about what it's going to do for our industry. Is AI going to take over? I don't think so. Are robots going to come in and take over what we do? Who knows. My watch can talk to somebody on the other side of the country, and that used to be a cartoon. Maybe people like plumbers will never have AI or robots take over, because their work is such a practical thing, and I think there are a lot of industries like that. We're sort of on that borderline, but who knows. Most of what we do with it is on the marketing side and, like you said, trends. We also use it to research companies we're interested in working with and to get detailed reports on them. There are some pretty good benefits to it, but it's not running the company. I don't see it taking over Omega.

Lucas James: I completely agree. I like using it when I'm working in this space because I feel the most appropriate place to use it is one where you're already doing things to offset its negative impacts. Everything you're doing is making the environment cleaner and safer. For a company whose only goal is to make money, using AI, which drains a lot of resources and potentially contributes to global warming and climate change, to sell something like a non-sustainable t-shirt and burn a bunch of carbon, I think that's where we have to ask ourselves what the point is if it's just going to make things worse. But in this space, using it appropriately, with the right limits, and also doing things that are already cleaning up the environment to counteract its negative effects, I think that's an appropriate use of the technology. This has been a great conversation. Thank you for being on the podcast; I really appreciate it. For anybody who is listening, how can they reach out and get involved, whether they're a consultant or potentially a client who needs to stay in compliance? What's the best way to reach you?

Steve Rosas: For me, always the phone number here at the office, (949) 252-2145. That's our main number, and they'll track me down from that. A lot of people have my mobile number, but I don't know if I want to give that out. I get a lot of calls already, and I work seven days a week. That's one of the other things: you want to run a business, and people say the higher you get up, the easier it gets. Not really. You end up working seven days a week. But yeah, that number, or go to our website, www.omegaenv.com, and that will direct you to a lot of different places. There's a lot of information on there about our blogs, historical projects, white papers, things of that nature. We've had a great opportunity to work on a lot of really interesting projects, major disaster-type projects and unique building projects. So they can always call and look us up, or Google us, and get a lot of information nowadays off the website or the internet.

Lucas James: Well, thank you, Steve. Really appreciate it. For everybody listening, this is another episode of Green Decades. We're really excited about what Steve is doing to improve the environment: over 14 years of cleaning up the environment and making it safer for everybody, companies, us as individuals, and the planet at large. Thank you for everything you've done. And for everyone listening, if you happen to know somebody who should be on the podcast and who has a great background just like Steve, feel free to send them our way. We'd love to interview them. Until next time, thank you.

Steve Rosas: Thank you. Bye-bye.