16516 El Camino Real #101, Houston, TX 77062
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ)
What is an "environmental consultant"?
An environmental consultant is an educated, skilled, and experienced professional who helps businesses and government agencies comply with federal, state, and local environmental regulations.
While we tend to be an outdoorsy bunch, a good environmental consultant is more similar to a tax preparer than a "tree hugger". Our job is not to "save the earth" or pass judgment on your business -- our job is to help you to conduct your operations as efficiently as possible while advising you on the rules and regulations that affect you.
What is "environmental strategy?"
"Environmental strategy" is the process of meeting the requirements of environmental law at the lowest possible cost and then leveraging those requirements in your favor.
Environmental strategy is similar to tax strategy. Hiring a tax strategist often saves you more money than if you had tried to do tax planning and filing yourself. By hiring an environmental strategist, you not only meet permitting and compliance requirements, but it may also help increase your customer base, lower your insurance rates, meet your suppliers' risk criteria, help you get better property deals, minimize certain types of liability, save you from spending money on administrative penalties, or all of the above.
Why would I hire you?
Because Steele Environmental Services, LLC was a developed in direct response to your specific smaller operational needs.
If you are reading this, chances are that you are:
(1) Too big to ignore your environmental compliance issues,
(2) Too small to hire your own full-time employee to manage them, and
(3) Too tired of trying to assign environmental duties to other employees who are neither trained for nor interested in the work, and who are too busy with their own jobs to do it anyway.
In our experience, "compliance defiance" is rare. Entrepreneurs generally do not take the risks of starting a business only to deliberately leave themselves open to enforcement, and local governments do not want to be vulnerable to negative publicity. But most have not yet discovered a workable compliance management method, and so issues get pushed to the back burner, sometimes for a long time.
How is THIS company different?
To our knowledge, we are the only environmental company that was specifically founded to service SMALL BUSINESS and LOCAL GOVERNMENTS.
Our entire "service model" business approach is unique as a result. Our financial overhead is low, our investment in information technology is high, and we have developed proprietary organization and management systems to maximize efficiency in providing low-dollar services to large numbers of clients and to ensure compliance continuity over time. Why don't other environmental companies do this? Because they are designed for the opposite market - they typically operate according to a "commodity model" in seeking high-dollar repeat business from a small number of clients. Traditional firms are salary- and overhead-intensive and their financial success often depends on large contracts, to which they give priority. That's great for THEM but, as a consequence, they are just not set up to serve YOU in the ways that you need.
How can I convince my boss to let you help us?
That's the very FIRST job that we can make easier for you.
Try cutting and pasting this text into an email or memo to your supervisor:
Date: ____________________
RE: Environmental
Hey Boss -
Do you remember telling us that you wanted a better job done with our environmental stuff? Well, I think I found a way. There's an environmental company that sets up compliance systems and trains facility operators on what they need to know for their specific facilities. They aren't one of those large generic companies - they designed a system just for small businesses and local governments. I know you want us to take care of this stuff in-house but nobody here is properly trained to do that yet, so this could be the bridge to get us there. They have a web site set up at www.EnviroSteele.com, and they'll also tell us what we need for no charge. Do you want to call them, or do you want me to do it?
Thanks,
__________________________
We are what we serve!
Steele Environmental Services, LLC was founded to serve small and micro-businesses (including field facilities belonging to large parent companies but which are expected to manage themselves independently), and after 13 years in business, we remain committed to this market segment. After all, we are running a small business ourselves!