We were lucky to catch up with Brook Sarson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Brook thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

When I started my company, it was just me. I quickly realized that had a lot to learn about contracting and that being passionate about Rainwater and Greywater Harvesting and willing to do all the tasks was not enough. I found a plumber who was willing to work with me and learned some things from him.

When my business was small I needed help occasionally. I was involved in the sustainability and food justice community and could always find people willing to jump on a project to help dig, carry a tank over a fence, etc. But as my business grew I needed people more regularly, and especially people that knew the specifics of how to implement our projects. I wasn’t interested in finding conventional laborers. Through classes and workshops I offered, I always had people approaching me about job opportunities. Workshops were a great opportunity for me to see how people worked.

To this day, if anyone expresses interest in working for my company or “hopping on projects” with me, I ask them to attend an upcoming workshop or training as a first “date”. This gives them a chance to get to know me and my style as a project leader, and gives me a chance to see how they show up, and step in to lend a hand where needed. At this point our company has about 10 mostly part-time employees. All of them attended a workshop or our Water Harvesting Certificate Course before joining the team. Most of our employees have other jobs and responsibilities with their families and community and it’s important to our company to honor that so we manage our schedules appropriately. Every one of our employees is PASSIONATE about water harvesting and growing food, which works out great for our clients!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

After getting degrees in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics, I pursued a career in engineering until my first son was born. After my kids reached school age I decided I needed to apply myself to something that was going to make the world a better place for them. I did some soul searching and found myself excited about water and especially the water issues that plague Southern California. I knew about Rainwater Harvesting from my trips to Australia and had learned about Greywater Harvesting from my research. At the same time I wanted to create a conversation about this in San Diego, the Food Justice Movement was really getting started here and the convergence of these two topics was ripe! People wanted to grow food in their backyards and drought was complicating matters. After getting my Permaculture Design Certificate and developing a pilot project in my backyard where I could invite people to learn more about Water Harvesting by seeing it, my company H2OME started taking off. Throughout the years, I was fortunate to collaborate, rather than compete with Rosalind Haselbeck. As our companies coexisted we passed projects back and forth to each other and discussed appropriate technology. After many years of this we decided to partner to ease some of the burdens of owning a small business by pooling our resources. Turns out we make a great team! Rosalind loves to get technical and develops advanced pumped systems while I like to educate people and share knowledge around simplified solutions. This partnership is something I am extremely proud of. Together we better serve our clients and we are able to support our employees by providing more consistent work. Plus we are able to really identify what works and what doesn’t so that we are implementing systems that last for the long haul.
Although I started my business with the intention of creating change at the policy level, I quickly realized how hard it is to build momentum for change at the government level. So I reverted to grassroots work, hosting workshops, speaking to garden groups, teaching in schools. But over the last several years I have been honored to be involved in some state funded grant projects, and join the San Diego Integrated Regional Water Management (SDIRWM) Regional Advisory Committee (RAC) to not only provide a voice for the community I represent but also to learn more about how water management works in San Diego and beyond. Implementing a state funded grant project and learning how lopsided water management decisions are in the county has led me to learn more about social and environmental issues. I have joined in many equity seminars around water through the IRWM and other organizations at the state and local level and have chaired the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion workgroup for the IRWM RAC to help shift the process of distributing state grant funding to organizations and communities that need it but don’t have the resources to apply. This is some of my most meaningful work to date, and I hope to learn more and participate in ensuring our limited resources are available to everyone in the community equitably.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

We have built our team over the years from people who have attended workshops and professed interest in getting more experience. This has really helped us bring aboard people who are already invested in what our company does. After that, keeping people around for long periods of time while not having consistent full time work has been challenging. Some of the best teams that we’ve had stick around the longest become friends with each other and friends of ours outside of work. We all share common and overlapping interests and genuinely care about each other. As a manager, I have to admit I push people pretty hard at what is a pretty physical job. One thing that I think helps keep everyone motivated and inspired is that both myself and my business partner lead by example. We have been doing what they are doing for over a decade and we get down in the trenches and work, hard when we are not busy doing the other things required to make the business function . Doing that also helps me to know what the limitations of my asks are. If I can’t do something, I don’t expect others to be able to do it.
I know that the people that are on my team are there because they want to be there. Everyone has other things going on whether it’s another job, family obligations, or other personal obligations (like co-owning a farm). We take everyone’s schedule into account and create our schedule based on what works for the team. Our hours are realistic, and if team members need to leave early or arrive late, no one is penalized. Sometimes we ask them to work late to finish a project and they do if they can. Each person that shows up shows up to learn something new, see their friends, and work toward a common goal of providing more local water for more local gardens to grow.
Finally, I think one of the best aspects of the job for my team is that we are never doing the exact same thing twice. Every home is different, every project has a nuance that creates an air of newness.
So at the end of the day I think creating a job that someone can be inspired by, creating a team of people who you genuinely like and care about and they about you, respecting your team as peers and co-collaborators by working with them and valuing their feedback, and finding ways to challenge and interest people in their day to day is what will keep good people in your corner over time.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I first started my business I had no contracting experience. I didn’t get into the business of installing rainwater tanks and greywater systems on purpose. I just wanted to educate people and be part of the change. I quickly realized that people were hungry for the information, but if I didn’t have experience with the materials, costs, and designs I wasn’t really helping people feel empowered. So I jumped in with both feet by myself and it was HARD. I also didn’t know anything about business. I was fortunate to have several clients in the first couple years who trusted me and I ran with these projects. Unfortunately it’s not straight forward to get a 250 pound 1300 gallon rainwater tank into position all by yourself when there are fences and trees and slopes in the way. Instead of hiring people I asked friends in the community to help with some of the pieces that required more hands. People were intrigued and it was fun and weird so that helped. Sometimes I would offer money. Sometimes I would invite them over to my house for a potluck. Sometimes I would just answer their questions about rainwater harvesting.
However, when it came to doing technical stuff, I was starting from scratch. I would go to Home Depot and stand in the aisles trying to figure out what part or material I needed for a particular aspect of the project and I would ask the guys in the orange jackets to describe in detail how it worked or what I was supposed to do. And then I would go back to the site and fail several times until I figured it out.
This creative problem solving process has helped me evolve my processes to include efficiency, practicality, and minimizing waste. Sadly these values are not generally taught or practiced in the contracting profession, so I am able to offer clients lower prices. Since we are working in an industry that requires plastics and “things” to create sustainable solutions, it’s a bit of a conundrum, but knowing that we at least aren’t being wasteful or implementing things that are designed to fail/break in a couple years helps us come to terms with that.
At the end of the day, I have been so committed to the necessity of local decentralized water systems becoming part of the solution for our limited water supply, I just couldn’t leave the conversation. Probably being an Aries, and my parents daughter had a lot to do with my stubbornness and unwillingness to give up. The biggest thing I learned from those early days is probably compassion. Starting something is hard. Doing something you care about can be hard. It’s ok to not be perfect. I feel more willing to understand what clients, employees, other business owners are facing rather than judging them and it allows me to be a better friend, business partner, boss, and designer.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.h2o-me.com/
• Instagram: sd_smartwatersavings
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sandiegosaveswater

Image Credits
CatchingH2O