110: Case Study: How my client would not become a victim w/Joe Horvath

Hello again everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

Hey everybody, what's happening today? Very excited for today. I've actually been thinking about it for a little while now. I'm going to introduce to you guys our senior lead consultant at We Inspect. His name is Joe Horvath. He's going to get on. You're actually going to meet our most senior level consultant that we have on staff that really helps people go through their house and runs, you know, runs a lot of the inspection processes for folks and everything else. So we obviously talk a lot, but the only way that we're able to serve so many people that we do is that I have to have people that are super good and competent and basically a.

I kind of joke around that we kind of made like a copy of me to basically go out and kind of help manage these processes. So what I wanted to do is give you guys an introduction to Joe. This could be his first FaceTime in front of anyone. So you can actually see who he is. He's been with us for years and years and years and is super smart and super good at finding where the, you know, the whole thing find, prove, remove process. Right? Where's it coming from? How's it getting there? How do we remove it? He's great at all of that stuff. And what we're going to do today is both he and I are actually going to talk through a project that we worked on and almost give you guys kind of like a case study of it so you can learn from it and get a feel for how this happened in a real life scenario and what. And how you can kind of apply that to you guys and take the steps that this same client took. I'm going to tell you everything this client did from start to finish. So you kind of learn from what happened there. So just to set this up, this client started with an army in their house. It's all that they started with and that's where they started from. They went through and understood what their ERMI meant. They had us come out and do an inspection. They then did remediation and then they had us come back out and do a post remediation inspection and look at all the work that was done, and it's a good thing they did, because there were things that were not done properly, and now they're at the point where they've got their house back and everything is good. This is a full cycle. So what we're going to talk through with you guys today is basically what it can look like from start to finish. And I have the notes. I'm going to be looking off calendar, off the camera here a little bit, because I have notes from, like, all of our conversations that we've had and different things. I really want you guys to get a feel of, like, how this works. And just so you know, this is going to turn into a podcast episode, too. I just thought I would, like, stick it here so you guys can see it here as well. So Joe is coming in right now. I just accepted him in. So let's see if he pops in here in a second. And that's the setup for today, everyone. Joe Horvath, ladies and gentlemen. Joe. What's up?

How's it going, Brian?

It's going awesome. All right, guys, so this is Joe. This is what I was saying. Joe has been with us for years and years and years, and I feel like, honestly is a copy of myself doing what we need to do out there and helping people. So I wanted you guys to sort of to meet each other, right? It's. It's always a lot of me talking all the time. So I figured you guys are gonna start seeing a little more Joe here, there, and Joe knows his stuff. All right, so, Joe, but what I was saying is we're gonna go through this project, Remember, we're not gonna say names or anything, right? So. So it's not out there, but we're gonna go through this project as a case study and just kind of talk about the flow of how they got started with us, how they even found it, like, all of this, because this is the path that anyone can take and so many people take. But a lot of times when you're, like, poking around on, like, social media and stuff, you see, like, one post here, and you see, like, one live over here, and you see one thing over here, and you're not getting how it all connects, right? So you look at stuff and you're like, oh, well, they did this sample, so I must need to do this. Oh, but they did this, so I must need to do that. But you miss, like, the connective tissue between all of that that makes the process actually work the way that it's supposed to. Work. And so that's kind of what we're going to talk through today. So what I wanted to do real quick was just kind of talk about how this person found us in the first place. All right, So a lot of you are out there and, you know, like, how do I know if there's a mole problem in my house? What do you know? What do we need to do? Right? And all so many of you will see, you need to do an ERMI sample, right? You need to do an ERMI and see what's going on. And that's what this person did. They do an ERMI sample. And I actually had a note of this. I wanted to talk about this on an episode anyway, so we're just going to, like, talk about all of it. But their ERMI sample came back. It was a negative 1.5 Ermi score, and the Herzd score was a 4, right? So you look at that as somebody who doesn't really, you know, who doesn't see thousands of these samples, right? And you see a score of negative one and a half. And you're like, man, I'm in the best house that's ever existed, right? Like, how does this happen?

And we've talked about, like, the flaw in irmi, right? And just to sort of rehash that a little bit for you guys, there's a couple things with ERMI that makes it challenging. If this person just looked at their ERMI score and said, well, my ERMI score says it's fine, so it must be my doctor or it must be previous exposures that are causing my problem. Because there can't be in a house right now, or my doctor is seeing stuff and they don't know what they're looking at or whatever, then they would have missed all this stuff that we found. And it would have all been because they interpreted their ERMI wrong, right? I talk about URMI a lot and talk about URMI code as well, which is the interpretation tool I created because. Because that one step in this whole timeline, if they did that wrong, nothing else would have happened. And I can't tell you all the stuff we found in this house, right? And this person would have still been sick. You know, like, I'm looking at the history of this person.

This. They've been in this home for 13 years. They have positive mycotoxins. Their blood is positive for mold. They have mast cell activation syndrome. They've tried detoxing and they can't tolerate it. Their daughter has behavioral changes. Their daughters both have immune imbalances right? There's this massive set of health problems that are going on. They do an ERMI because of course, it's what you do, right? Your doctors tell you to do one, you learn to do one. Right? You do this, you do your ERMI sample, and it comes back negative 1.5 and a Hersme score of 4. Right. Joe, how many times have you seen.

Where you could look at it and if you just took it just straight for like what it says at the bottom, how, how something like this happens?

Guys, this. This happens all the time. And that's why it's. It's important to understand how that score can give you such a false sense of security. I love when Brian explains it like this. He says the score doesn't really make sense. We're subtracting mold from mold to get less. How does that work from a mathematical perspective? Yes, we understand that there are certain types of mold that are less harmful than others, but the score, the way we unpack the data from the lab results is so different than what the score actually tells us. There are certain limitations with how the panel was put together. The amount of homes that were tested, the age of how long this kind of interpretation has been around. There are so many different variables, and we really need to understand exactly what the numbers are telling us so we don't get caught into a situation like this. If this particular client would have used this score as whether or not the house has been compromised, they would not be dealing with the set of issues that they have now. We would have not done this deep dive. And when we actually start to unpack some of the samples that we took, we're going to show you guys why the sampling process is so important. Because in certain areas, we found Kutomium that didn't even show up in the samples that we pulled. Only when the remediation company started to come in and remove some of the building materials did we actually find these problems that were hidden underneath tile underneath the subfloor of the house. And they would have been living in this environment without even knowing had we not gone down the dive and done this whole process.

That's a good point that you have. I don't know if we'll have time to do it today. Maybe we'll dive into that. Secondly is when. When you do a sample and a sample shows that there is something going on, and maybe it doesn't seem incredibly significant, Right? But there's something that's a little off there. We have to understand that, like, every sample has its Limitations, right? If I'm trying to figure out what's, what's behind this wall over here and we do a cavity sample on this wall and we try to get there. Well, what if the really bulk of the problem wasn't right here? What if it was more over here? Right. We did the sample as close to where we see it. If this sample right here showed that there was like a slight elevation or something, or something seemed off. But when you look at the lab results, it doesn't look like that big a deal. You say, oh, that's not that big a deal. We can't look at it that way. Right. We basically have to look at everything like, is there something abnormal here or not? And if there's something abnormal here, we need to go into remediation. And to Joe's point, there were some areas in this project where there was a little, you know, there's like an almost like a little red flag that came up versus like this is a massive problem. Right. When the lab result came up, it was enough for us to say, listen, we got to, we got to talk about remediating this thing. And then to Joe's point, there's ketomium behind the wall, like two feet over to the left or in the floor under the toilet. It was a great example in this one, which we'll probably talk about the initial sample. So let's, we'll get into that in a second. But to kind of wrap up ermi, here's the thing. So what this client did, they did their ERMI and they looked at all of their clinical labs and they talked to their doctor and they're like, something here isn't lining up. I can't have an ermia that says negative one and a half and have mycotoxins and hormone imbalances and all the other symptom sets that I said that doesn't line up. So what she did is she actually did ermicode. Okay? So she went to ermicode, which is the interpretation tool that we created off of the last three years of all of our inspections, and she input all of her data into ermicode. I'm not gonna do like a hard sell on ermico, guys. It's 27 bucks. If you actually want to know what your ERMI means, it's a freaking no brainer to go plug this into Ermicode and figure out what it actually means. And I'll tell you why, because that's what triggered the inspection for this person. Right? And so basically what they did they go through there. Okay, so their code fell into group three. So the IRME code has five groups. Their ERMI code fell into group three. Now, keep in mind, their ERMI score says negative one and a half. You look at this, it's like, oh, man, this is the best house you could ever walk into. There's no way that there's a problem here, right? The ERMI code falls into group three of five. What does that mean? It means that there's an average mold load in this house based off all the data we have from the last three years of inspections. And to kind of unpack that a little more, on average, an ERMI sample that looked like hers. Now, keep in mind, the analysis is happening here on the back end. The algorithm that we built has nothing to do with ERMI score. It has nothing to do with hertzme. That stuff is pretty meaningless. It has to do with the actual molds that were detected, right? How many of them were detected? What were the levels of the individual molds that were detected? And then how does that compare back to the last three years of inspections that we've done when we can correlate that to the number of sources of mold we found in the house or the. Or mycotoxins being present in the house and so forth? If you guys want to know how this works, you go to ermicode.com I have a video where I talk about it, explain it. There's infers. So I'm not going to, like, spend a bunch of time here on that, but you can go there and check that out. So they do ermicode. They're in group three. Group three says on the average mold sources that we. That we found in a house in our inspections with an ERMI that looked like this was 11 sources of mold that were found in a house with that type of ermi, with that type of ermine result. Okay, so just stop there. She has an ERMI score says negative one and a half. And she could think that everything is fine, Right? But instead, she comes through, goes through ermicodes, like, oh, wow. There's a pretty good likelihood that there's multiple mole problems in the house. Additionally, the ERMI code report that came out off of her sample said there was a 7% chance that there was. That there was mycotoxins in her home. Based off of our data and what her ERMI looked like, looking back to her sample results after we do the inspection, there was equivocal levels of trichophisine group. This is like A gray area, essentially. It's almost like an inconclusive result if you think of it that way, but it's not negative. Which means not only did we kind of identify, like, where there were sources, and there was multiple sources in this house, but in addition to that, there was an abnormal mycotoxin condition going on. And she knew that that was a possibility from the URMI code report that was generated off of hermi. Right? So this is what she did. Doctors say there's a problem. She runs an ermi. Wait. Doctor says there's a problem. She runs an urmi. ERMI comes back, says, everything looks amazing. She doesn't go and question her doctors. She says, I trust my doctors. I want to look into this a little further and feel this out. Runs it through OME code. Now, the ERMI code says, well, hold on. You got problems in your house. Like, very likely there's problems in your house. At that point, she schedules an inspection with us. And now we go through, and we do, and we go through the whole house, Right? And I'm trying to pull up the inspection while we're talking right now, because I wanted to just try to figure out how many sources we actually found in the house, because we said, on average, there was 11 that we found in that house or a house with a. With an Ermie that looked like that. I'm just gonna do a quick look through right here. 1, 2, 3, 4. Sorry, guys. I'm, like, trying to do all this on the fly. I should have been a little more prepped for this. But we've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. We have 16. So we found 16 different sources of mold in this home. Now, on average, like I said, when they ran the ERMI code through, on average, it's 11. Average means it could be a little higher or a little lower, right? So that's just kind of like a target thought process for her. Okay. So she goes in, she's like, okay, I can expect somewhere around 11 sources of mold in the house. We went through and found 16 different areas where there was. Where there was mold source problems. All right, backtrack it. Now I'm sick. I run an ermi. I interpret the urmi. I'm like, oh, crap, there's something going on. Have an inspection come out, man. We found 16 sources of mold. If we just believed the ERMI score, none of this would have been found. The mycotoxin elevations the problem with the children's hormone imbalances. And mood and all the stuff that we talked about would still happen. You'd have this false sense of security. There's nothing going on in your house. And there is. Right. So that's kind of where we set here. And that kind of gets us to this point. So what I wanted to dive into just a little bit in the inspection, in this first piece of the inspection process. Right. The next thing we're gonna go is talk what happened in the post and kind of what went on there and all of that. But just in the inspection process itself. I really want to talk about this toilet thing jokes. I feel like this is like a really good one to kind of talk through. So do you want to walk through kind of what was going on with this thing and what the sample looked like on the initial and what we were finding and what we recommended. And then basically we could. We could then move into the post and what happened there.

Exactly, exactly. So initially they had a historical leak. There was leak that originated in the second floor bathroom from the toilet and it impacted the kitchen below. We know that we're obviously going to focus that part of the inspection process as far as properly diagnosing that area and understanding exactly how that water migrated from the point of intrusion and how it impacted the area below. So in this case, we knew that there was a problem around the toilet. So we did a sample right at the base where the toilet meets floor. This is where this gets really interesting. On that sample, we detected elevated counts of Aspergillus penicillins. That tells us problem. And then. And then we then formulate a remediation plan to address this area.

Real, real quick on that. We interpreted that as elevated counts. I want to be really clear on this because a bunch of inspectors would have looked at that and said that it was fine because. Because the total spore count that was found in that sample by the toilet in that bathroom was less than the outside baseline sample. So your local, normal, local inspectors are going to come into your house. They're going to do. They wouldn't even sample it the way we did. They would have done in the middle of the room, not down by the toilet. But basically what they would have done is they would have taken their baseline sample, they would have come in the bathroom, they would have been air sample up at like breathing level, basically. Right. That sample definitely would have come back with nothing because of what we saw here. Instead, what we did. So explain how we did the sample real quick, Joe.

Yeah, so we put the air pump by the base of that toilet. So there was an issue with the seal underneath where the toilet fixes into the pipe that is then mounted into the subfloor. And Brian, I think you misspoke. The readings that we got.

Count of 13 on the Aspergillus penicillium, and the baselines on the front and the back were two and three. So it was a little, slightly elevated. But like Brian said, the way that we tested this would have been completely different than a local. They would have done an middle of the room, and it wouldn't necessarily have targeted where that point of origin occurred.

No, I'm glad you said that because you're thinking about it the way that we do it. Right. The thing that I want to point out is if we look at the total spore count, and this is what a lot of local inspectors will do.

If you look at the total spore count of the outside baseline, that total spore count was like 240. Okay. Then you look at the total spore count of the sample that we did in the floor area by this toilet, and it was 227. All right. A local inspector would look at that total number, and they would say, oh, that's not a problem because it's less than the outside. But what Joe is saying and the way that you really should be interpreting these results is not about the total count at the bottom. It's not about all of them added together. It's about the individual mold type. And you look at the baseline across individual molds. And this is something we break down in mole Finder's method in the sample interpretation thing. So I'm not going to dive super into this, but when you looked at Aspergillus penicill in the outside compared to the one that was down right by the floor, that's where there was a difference. So we saw that there was. Why would there be higher levels of Aspergillus penicillium right down next to a toilet as compared to, like, stuff that's going on outside? Even though the overall spore count, if you combine everything together, was less than what was outside. Right. This is sort of the thing that happens with local inspectors. They don't care about what all the. They just look at the total, and there's a book that says if the inside is less than the outside, it's fine. Right. Like, that's what it does. It's so silly. Right. So we actually look at it like mold to mold to mold to mold across the board. And we know, as Joe was saying, there was A historical issue that happened here, too. Right. So if we're looking at this, not only is it that the individual mold type is elevated, but historically there was a water issue here that happened. And yes, it's dry. So. So, you know, that's kind of. That's kind of the setup for. For how this goes. So we have a very slight elevation of Aspergillus penicillium, you know, that we would see here. Right. So anyways, Joe, I didn't mean to drop you off, so let's keep moving through kind of what happened. Okay.

So like, like we said, we tested this particular area. The way we interpret the sample data, we noticed that there were slightly elevated counts of Aspergillus penis. We then formulate our plan of attack on how to remediate. Remediate this area. Brian, are you able to show them the picture of the subfloor?

No, we don't. We don't have screen shares on these lives. So we're just going to have to kind of. We're going to tell you a story like we do for a little kid at bedtime. We're going to, like, start shaping you what things look like. Okay.

So we formulate the remediation plan so they can address this issue. What is really interesting.

Real quick. Can we. Can we say what the remediation plan was just for that spot? Let's just tell them what we said. That had to be done.

Yes. So we requested that the flooring get removed and that any staining or discoloration that was observed on the subfloor. The subfloor also needs to get removed four feet beyond that contamination. As we all know, wooden surfaces are extremely porous, and we're dealing with microscopic fragments here. So we, we asked that the subfloor get removed, Brian.

If it needed to be. Yeah, if it needed to be. Right. So whenever we talk about flooring removal, we don't know what the subfloor looks like under something.

Right.

So we know there's an elevation, there's a leak from the toilet where it kind of gets under the floor. Historically, say, okay, the floor has to come out. So literally the way that this red here. Step one, remove the toilet. Cool. Step two, remove the floor out at least two feet in all directions from the toilet. And then you need to remove further, you know, if there's any issues. And then right behind that, it says, any stained or discolor subfloor should also be removed. Right. So that way we're kind of easing into it. But that was the setup, and that was the recommendation that went through. So I just wanted to read that off so people understand like how we say to do things when. When we're writing that out. Yes.

So what the remediation company did, there was. There was a big black circle, the PVC pipe was sitting in the subfloor, and there was a big black circle around the PVC pipe on the particle board. Now, the scope of work, we requested that this area get removed. If there was any staining or discoloration, the remediation company felt that it was appropriate to encapsulate this area because of the scope of work that was required to actually get this subfloor pulled out. They had to adjust, address a plumbing issue. They had to remove certain building materials they tried to encapsulate like this. And here's where this gets interesting. Like we talked about. On the initial sample that was taken, we detected elevated Vaspergillus penicillium when we came back in to do the post inspection, which is a very important part of the process. Despite the encapsulation effort, we still detected the presence.

When we went into conduct our post inspection.

Yeah. So just to reiterate, because you were a little choppy there at the end of that.

Basically remove the floor. There's super heavy, dark black ring around where the toilet was. The protocol said remove any stained or discolored subfloor. That's just part of what was supposed to be done. So as Joe said, they're like, oh, we're just going to try to clean it. This is what the remediator said. Right. Here's the thing. The remediators need to follow the recommendations. If your remediator is not following what we recommend, why are you even having us to come out and do it? Right. Like, the point is for us to come out and give the plan and have the remediator execute it. Right. And that needs to be communicated with the remediators. Right. If it's not and they think they could just come in and do whatever they want to do, it doesn't matter if we found every little single thing, a mold that exists in the house. If they're not going to follow the plan on how to fix it, it's not going to work. Right. And so they tried to clean it. And so what Joe was saying is we come back in. When you do a post inspection, the very first thing you do before you do any testing or you do anything else, you pull up the list of things that you said needed to be done initially and then you walk in the room, and you see if the remediators did it. That's step one, right? We walk in the room. I'm looking at this with Joe. We walk in the room, like, why is this still here? Right? And then you can even see, like, when they painted over it and stuff, the staining ring was still there. It was so dark and discolored that they couldn't even cover it up with white paint. Like, that's how discolored it was. So we look at it, we're like, I mean, well, this is stupid. Like, why. Why was this done? Right? So. So Joe. What Joe said was that we actually did a surface sample from the top of that. And to kind of tie this all together, the initial sample that we did when the tile floor was still on top of it and there was more barriers to get to the source did show there was an elevation of mold. It was Aspergillus penicillium. When we did the swab sample on top of that. Keep in mind, this is after they cleaned it, after they encapsulated it. Means they paint over it, trying to cover it up and seal it down. That's what encapsulating means. So they cleaned it and they tried to, like, cover it up and seal it up, and there was still catamium on the surface of the subfloor that was there. Right? And so you now have this person. Doctor says they're sick. They do an ermi. Ermi says that their house is fine. They don't trust it. They run through ermi code. Ermi code says your house is probably not fine.

You.

They book an inspection. We come out, find 16 sources of mold in the house. They do remediation. This client went all in on remediation. They did everything right. We talked through, like, what the historical stuff was. And for those of you that jumped in, they've been in this house, been sick for 15 years, positive mycotoxins, blood positive for mold. Mast cell activation syndrome, has been trying to detox and can't detox. One of their daughters has behavioral issues and is also positive for mycotoxins. Both daughters that they have have immune imbalances. This is like a massive set of health problems that are going on, right? This person was all in on getting everything done. Okay. The reason that post remediation inspections are so important is because we can write the protocol all day and find all the problems all day if we want to, but if the remediation company is coming in and they're either not doing what we said to do, which is exactly what happened here. They literally just didn't remove the floor when we told them to. Right. We come back in, test it. There's still catamium there. If we didn't come back in and retest that, they would have rebuilt the whole bathroom, covered up the floor with more flooring, and there'd be catamium under the floor, and it probably would start working its way back up. Right. And this is start to finish. Right. So they do remediation. They have then a post inspection, we come back through, retest things. The majority of things look fine, right, Joe? Like, the majority of stuff was fine on the remediation, but if you're spending all this money on remediation, you don't want, like, most things to be fine. Like, the remediator is tasked with getting rid of the mold that's growing on the surfaces. That is their task. That is their job, that they need to come back out and actually do that, especially if they're not following direction initially. Right.

So that's kind of start to finish. We go back in, retest it, find what the problem is, remediator comes back, and now they're gonna handle it properly. Right. And that's how this process flows from start to finish. Right. So, like, Joe, I feel like when you talk to people, you kind of hear the same stuff. Like, people have been on so many different roads before they ultimately find us, right? And they've been doing it for so many years, and a lot of times it's like, well, we tried this, and then we did this and then we tried this, and there's some there. There's a point. It's even happening with me personally, in my own health journey. Like, there's a point where you stop, like, scrolling around and looking for little tips and tricks that you find in different places and actually commit to work with someone who can fill in all the little gaps of stuff that you can't find in an Instagram post. When you search a hashtag for blackmolk, you know, it's just. Social media is great for awareness. It's great for little things. And I try to do as much as I can, but at the end of the day, there's little things that happen throughout the process that you just can't pick up when you're doing it that way. That's why. That's why having a consultant or an inspection or a doc practitioner, that's guiding you through your detox. But whatever it is, whether it's health, whether it's house Whatever. That's why all that stuff is so important. I wanted to talk through the story because I was just so proud of this person for what they did, right? They've been going through this forever. They've got kids. They're sick. Kids are sick. They're not. They're not. This person did not have that attitude, that woe is me attitude. There's nothing I can do about this. They didn't have that right. They had this attitude of, I'm gonna figure this out and I'll do what I can do. Right? But I'm not going to feel. And of course, like, you feel overwhelmed at different points, but it's like, I. Like, I'm not going to let that overtake me and make me quit, right? Because the end goal was too important.

It's too important when you're talking about your kids and yourself and toxin buildups and all of this stuff. And a lot of. A lot of people, at some point, it's like, oh, I fought enough, and I just can't anymore. I can't figure it out anymore. Right? And I mean, Joe and I, I can't tell you when we get off of talking to calls and end up calling each other. Like, man, that was a really tough conversation that we just had. And not because, like, somebody didn't want to do a recommendation or this or that, but because the story of the person is just like. I mean, we hear these all the time, but sometimes they just really, really hit you. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, Joe, you don't have to give the specifics, but I mean, we just talked like, the other day about one of these, like. Like, what was kind of the. Just the general theme of whatever it was that was going on in that one that you had?

Yeah, no, one of our clients last week. You know, like Brian said, there are so many people that go down this road and they have a local inspector come, or they have people giving them false information, or they have air sampling done where the results are not interpreted in the right fashion. And this client in particular, she finally found us on her mold journey. And we came in and we started telling her all the stuff that she.

Got very emotional with, just overwhelmed with gratitude, basically, because she's been dealing with this for so long. And she got to the point where she's like, I'm starting to feel like I'm crazy. I know there's something wrong. Why do I keep having people tell me I'm okay in my house is okay? We came in there and guys we found so many problems. And yes, you know, we are professionals. You guys are seeking to, you know, utilize our knowledge base to help yourself out. But at the same time, we are human beings, we're empathetic individuals. If something really kind of strikes forward with us and we see how huge this is and how it can impact somebody's life, you know, this is why we get out of bed and do this every day, because we see the results after you have somebody go, you know, the full scope of the process and it really is life changing stuff, guys.

Yeah, I gotta tell you guys, part of this is just an introduction to Joe for you guys to meet Joe. One, one of the reasons Joe's been with us for a long time. One of the reasons that I'm so happy that he stayed with us, other than the fact that he's good at what he does, is that he gets it, right? And that empathy thing, like, you know, you can talk about, oh, we're empathetic, we get it, or whatever, it's different to actually mean it, if that makes sense. And I feel like, you know, you guys know my story. A lot of, you know, my story. I'm dealing with this stuff on my own. So I get it, right? Like, I understand what's going on and it sucks. And while my problems are not nearly as bad as many, many other people and their health stuff that's going on, it's still stuff that's not right, you know, and, and, and it's been years of me trying to figure it out because I've been going to so many houses for so many years that my body, I tricked my body into thinking I lived in a heavy mold of mycotoxin house because I was in them every single day for 8, 10 years, however long it's been. And so now I'm dealing with that, right?

So, you know, my connection is almost maybe seemed like more. I don't know, I don't know if organic is the right word, but it just made sense because I had my own thing. And then you kind of see it, right? And you know, I mean, to my knowledge, Joe hasn't had any major health things that I'm aware of. And we don't have to talk about it here, but the thing is, is that he has just really like seen it once you see it. Once you see one person sit down and start crying.

But not, not because they're upset, but because you've essentially validated to them by finding things in their house that they've been dealing with this Client was in this house for 13 years that they've been dealing with for 13 years. And you see that you're one of two people. You're either someone that's like, oh, whatever, this is annoying. Let me out of here, or you're somebody that's like, holy shit. Like this. This just completely changed my perspective on life, right? And Joe is the second, right? And as soon as I saw that piece and Joe, listen, I could teach anybody to inspect a house. Like, literally can do that. That's not a problem.

You can't teach this piece of it, because with the empathy comes the.

It comes the need to make sure you're going through a house as thoroughly as you can and doing your absolute best not to miss anything. Because if you miss something, someone is still going to be sick, and that rips at you. And that's what that means. And Joe has that. And as soon as I saw, I was like, dude, this guy. This guy's going to be with us. You know, it was very. It was very easy to see that early on. And. And anyways, as I wasn't really planning on going down that road. But I love Joe, man. Joe's great. He gets it. He really cares about people. He's great at what he does. And the more of you that start coming in to work with us, the more of you are going to start interfacing with Joe, right? Because as we grow, I can only do so many inspections, right? So if our goal is to help people and kind of grow the impact that we're having, we got to have more people that can be out there and help you. And Joe is the top of the top that we have. And so I just wanted everyone to meet him and to kind of hear how he and I navigated a project together. So you can see how kind of the thought processes work together. And, yeah, that's kind of what I wanted to hit today. So, I don't know. Joe, do you have anything that you'd want to kind of wrap it up with here at the end?

No, no. I just. I just want to tell you guys, you know, how excited I am to be working with you in the future. Just so you guys know. I mean, Brian has been my mentor since day one. We always joke that, like, I basically watched his daughter Kensington, grow up.

Because, you know, she was born shortly after I got on with these guys, and. And yesterday she was telling me that I need to shave for this because I had a big beard.

I can't tell you how happy I am to be where I'm at and I look forward to seeing more of you guys. And the next time you guys see me, we're going to talk about how I got here and ultimately how I ended up with these guys. Because to kind of touch on what I was talking about, it comes from a place of conviction for me and I'm doing what I'm doing because of something that happened to somebody I was very close with in the past. So we'll go into that the next time I see you guys. And until then, be well and try to stay healthy.

Awesome. Thanks everybody for hanging out. This is going to turn into a podcast episode too. So this will be out there as well to re listen to if you guys need to. Hope you guys all have a great day. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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