189: From Health Issues to Insurance Claims: Expert Mold Advice with Corey Levy

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 Foreign.

Hey, everyone, how are we doing? Special treat today, the one and only Corey Levy is joining us on the episode today. If you're like, who's Corey Levy? It's probably my fault. I probably don't talk about him enough. But that's going to change. To change, start. So Corey, first off is my cousin, technically my cousin in law, but cousin as far as I'm concerned, and the other co founder of We Inspect. So there's, there's two heads behind We Inspect on the founder edge, and I'm one of them and Corey's the other one and he has gracefully let me be the one that talks in the abbers on for all of these years and I've started convincing to drag him out to talk to people as well because this guy is so knowledgeable and you know, I joke around or I don't, I don't joke around. But I was, I'm preempting a joke I'm going to make now. It's, now it's terrible, it's not going.

To land, but.

It'S gonna say, you.

Know, I talk about how, you know, this has been a family business and how I effectively married into the business. Right. Well, you know, if, if that's what happened to me. Corey is like the equivalent of your, of a purebred family business created expert. And I just sort of tapped on like midway through. Oh. With all of that said, I want to introduce Corey, my business partner, one of my best friends and excited to have some conversations today that might be helpful. So Corey, what's up?

Well, I'm bringing you on to do intros now on every podcast I go onto because that was a great hype up. And, and, and just because I'm second generation from my dad doing this, let's not undercut your value to this ent or operation either. So, yeah, I, yeah, I've been doing this. I kind of joke around when I talk to people that I'm a, I say I'm a second generation indoor air quality expert because I, I literally am. But my dad Steve, who's, you know, a mentor to both of us, had Me in crawl spaces at like 17 years old. So whether that be legal or not, I was there. And as you know, our family has really dedicated.

The last two decades of our careers towards a small niche of this industry, which at the time was very small, now was growing so rapidly, working with people at the Health to home connection and really understanding and building a process that is more focused not just on what insurance companies or, you know, management companies or landlords want to find to be a problem in a building, but rather like actually how we're impacted by what's going on in the building. And my day, because I have somebody so great like Brian out there talking so much outwardly and telling it in a way that people can digest it, is working on the front lines with clients, picking up the phone many times to, when they're inquiring about what we do, to the actual relationships that we have with so many practitioners and speaking with practitioners on a day to day basis as well as to what they're seeing, what they need to understand and see from us so that we can best provide them the data that they need to see to help treat their patients. Since.

A huge amount of our clients actually come from doctor referral, we need to constantly be evolving, adapting and improving our processes.

To really be a tool in the tool belt of these practitioners many times to help people heal.

Yeah, so that's Corey, that's what he does all those things and he does a lot of other things. And so we were thinking, we're like, hey, let's get you on maybe even more frequently in chat. And you know, you mentioned that, that you are on the front lines taking a lot of the initial phone calls from people who are asking about like, what does this process look like? Right. And you know, some people know who we are and some people don't. Right. Some people just like their doctor says, call us or they see about, you know, they see me yabbering on, on an Instagram post or something or whatever it is, and it's like, okay, how do we, you know, let's talk about this. And so I thought something interesting because, you know, I've been doing some of these calls lately too, which I talked about a week or two ago. I was going to start doing some of these as well just to, you know, we always, we always want to reconnect and really understand and make sure that our service is aligning with what people are looking for. Now it might not be the same now as it was two years ago or three years ago in terms of like what their challenges are and what's going on. So I thought maybe we could talk about some of that stuff, since both you and I have been doing, you know, a few more of these and being in front of them on the front end of the calls more frequently, at least for me, more recently, you, you know, more consistently and maybe talk through some of that. So, like, when you're chatting with somebody initially, you know, what. What do you. It's the way to ask this. What is the biggest concern that people have about going down this road? Right. Because I think, like, if you talk to somebody about the process, the process sounds really nice, right? It's like, oh, you find where it's coming from. You help me. Like that. All of that sounds great, but then obviously there's components of it that, you know, people might have questions about or concerns or whatever that might be. And if we hear it so much when we're speaking with people directly, I mean, people listening probably have the same questions and concerns as well. So what would you say are a couple of those? I mean, we can talk through some of those a little bit and help people kind of understand some of that stuff.

Yeah.

I can kind of distill it down to three main things if I think through it enough. The first and probably most glaring is cost. Right. I mean, that is the thing that I think at the time of this recording.

We'Re in a situation where things for a lot of people feel tight.

You're looking at a housing market where you have a lot of. If you're an owner of a property, it's very difficult to move right now because to borrow money, interest rates are really high and you're probably going to move pretty laterally. So you're kind of tied to making an investment into the home in some degree to really feel like it's going to be worth it. Right. And then you start to spin about what you read online and see. People talk about this being hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I think the initial is not necessarily the cost of our process, but what that ultimately means to them once we do the thorough service offering that we spend time explaining to them. The second, I would say, is support is a really big part of this. Having the support of somebody around you that is actually listening and hearing what you're going through. There's so many calls I get on, and I know, Brian, you talk about this a lot as well. Word. For whatever reason, whether it be protection or again, reverting back to a concern about cost, somebody's partner or spouse is not fully on board with going down this path. And it can be a very difficult thing to navigate and.

To truly get what you're looking for from a support perspective and knowing that they're going to listen to the recommendations that we come up with.

So that's the second, I'd say, the second biggest one that I hear. And then I think the final, true pillar of concern is timing. Like, when is the right time to do this? Do I do it now? Do I do it later? Like, it's almost like people know that this is the right path, but because mold can be so can have this stigma to it that, like, ooh, you have a mold problem. Or, you know, oh, how could you have mold? And, you know, maybe there's a million other things that come in and it's everywhere and it's really not a problem problem that maybe I need to do a bunch of other things before I actually get to my air quality.

It tends to get to be a big thing that we hear about on the phone as well. And if we break out those three things, Ryan, I think that we can help a lot of people, when they decide to work with us or anybody else out there, really understand what a process should look like and really how they should think about these things before they start interviewing companies to hire.

Yeah, I think I hear a lot of the same stuff. So I think these are three really good, like, areas to talk through. Let's start at the first one. Let's start at cost, even just talk like, what are the costs? Right. There's an inspection testing cost, and then there's a remediation cost afterwards. The remediation is going to be more expensive than the inspection and testing generally. That's usually how it works. Right. And so a lot of times when I talk with someone and, and kind of work through that process, they're like. And that's just, you know, and. But what about remediation? What does that cost? Right. And I think the, the thing that I actually say that I'd be interested to hear how you chat with people too. But the thing that I say a lot to folks is that our job is actually to tell you what you don't need to remediate, not what you do. And because still in that one is, yeah, go ahead and take that one. But I mean, it's really true because we, we spend a lot of time. We've actually built this into our process over the last few years, creating a, an entire prioritization framework that we use internally to Help guide people on how to do things. So I tell people, I'm like, listen for context. Most people don't remediate everything we find. Most of our clients don't. Actually, very few of them remediate everything that we find. And we're really good at finding stuff. Is the sum. Is the sum piece to that. Right. So I think, like, you know, we find problems, and that's why you want someone to come in and do that. And I think the fear with knowing how good we are at finding things, because anyone who looks around, like, understands that, you know, we find more than most people do. Right. And so then it's like, well, if you find all of these things, now I have to remediate all these things. And then there's this future, like, fear that comes in and actually stops you from getting the information that would then allow you to make that decision. Because the future you. You're concerned that future you is going to have a problem with that. Right. And so it's almost like you're. You're preemptively protecting yourself from a decision that you had to make, might have to make later. And then it's like, well, out of sight, out of mind. I don't have to worry about it, and then I don't have to make that decision. And, you know, I always try to chat with people like, remember why we're talking, right. Like, people don't wake up in the morning, like, I want a mold inspection today. That has never happened ever. Right.

So there's usually something that's going on, you know, and generally it's a health issue. And so if we understand, like, why that is, then the whole process is to figure out what is causing that issue and how can we be smart about affecting that while managing costs. So I'd love to hear, like, your thoughts, and maybe you can explain how we look at that internally and, like, what that process looks like and how someone can see that and ultimately how this kind of feeds into our philosophy and how we go through it.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I think you need to start by understanding that there's really two different companies on the inspection and testing side. And there's a lot of confusion that comes in, even just on our side of the fence.

Right.

You go into Google and you type in mold inspection, and you're going to get a whole list of different companies that do mold inspections. Right. And if you really break them out a little bit further, really there's actually air quality companies and then mold inspection companies. And understanding that the Air quality companies are going to spend about 30 minutes to an hour and a half in your home. And their whole philosophy is test every possible area in the center of the room to get a gauge as to what is going on and then try and figure out based off of those air samples where the problems are located. And then it's kind of finger to the wind what remediation needs to be. Right? And then there's a company like ours, we're really an investigation company is what we are, right. We utilize tests as tools to help get data, to determine what the appropriate remediation strategy and prioritization needs to be in a home. So when we go through a house, you do not see us setting up air samples in every single room in your home. Our goal is actually to understand first off, who is the person that's living in this house and what do they need, right? Like if you went to a doctor and a doctor and you came in and you sat down, the doctor, he goes, don't tell me anything. Let me just run a battery of tests on you. Don't tell me any symptoms. I'm just going to test you. And then from there I'm going to guess what's going on. You'd be like, and I'm leaving now. Right? It's, it's like this, that. That's what happens in our industry. You have that happen without people really truly understanding what is going on with the individuals in the house. So our process starts there. Let's learn about you. Let's learn about who's impacted, what's the history of this home, what was done in the home, what symptoms this person is having, what clinical results are happening, and really getting to know what the goals of the individual are, because that's going to dictate what we then come in to do in the home. And in the home, at the end of the day, there's a process, there's checkboxes. Our field technicians are really there to make sure that we're being the guys that Brian just said we are. We're finding the problems that everybody else is in. And they're really, really thorough and really, really good at that, right? But if we walk into a room and we don't see one of the five signs of water damage that you talk about all the time, or we don't find any visible mold or active moisture, guess what? We're not testing that room. Because anybody could just run a test in there and the data doesn't make any sense. Every test that's collected needs to give us a piece of information that ultimately allows us to advise what is going on on the next step in this process. So like the, the way that I always try and help people imagine this is if you're now, we've been there, we've inspected the house, we've run all these samples and you have a report sitting in front of you that I should be able to tell you where you need to begin and put resource towards. Because not everything is a five alarm fire. It's just that simple, right? Long gone are the days where you see people like you said, Brian, that are going to jump in and do every single thing and try and get every single source out of the home because it's just not, it's not feasible and possible. And what's really interesting and what I've learned and what I'm learning talking to practitioners so much is that even the people that are going in and remediating three or four, two or three areas in their home really kind of ticking off the top tier items, they're actually seeing a shift in their clinicals and reported symptoms.

So, so let me stop there because that's the important piece, right? And it's like we can look at numbers on a paper all day long and who cares, right? Because really the reason you're doing this is because there's health symptoms, there's things that are going on. So if we know that you can get to a point where the real reason you're here is to get feeling better. And now we know from all the calls that you're doing and the people that we've both talked to for years and all this stuff that it's not a requirement to fix every single thing. Let's get back to the cost component of this, right? Because the cost, the big cost in handling a mole problem is the remediation, right? There's containments, there's demolition, there's having to put it back together afterwards, right? That's the scary part that a lot of times stops people from doing something. So with what you just said in mind, the way that the cost comes down, which is kind of what I said earlier, is what do you not have to remediate, right? So can you, can you talk through like how a priority is sort of like thought through, you know, kind of how we look at it, how an example of maybe how you would like delegate specific things maybe to be addressed in this scenario and we could even like ballpark costs on like what it might cost to fix a particular thing. I know We've talked through kind of like a matrix of like, here's priority, here's how someone lives in the house. Here's what it costs to fix that thing. Like, can you kind of talk through that? Because I think when people hear that, the future fear now gets way, way less. Because we know that just because we inspect is so good at finding stuff, the, the, the solution they provide isn't going to be rip your entire house apart. It's going to be focused, strategic, you know, very, very, you know, almost like a, you know, very specific and targeted in that way.

Like a surgeon. Right? Like you're going to go in.

Yeah, surgical. That's the word.

Going back to like this Dr. Analogy theory that I was there is talking about, right? When a doctor comes in and you've got these symptoms and they're going to say to you, okay, we need to, based off your symptoms, take these tests. Right. And from there, very rarely are they going to come back and say, particularly with a lot of the chronic complex illness that we see, it's just this one thing, and that's the one thing you need to fix. No, no, no. They're going to give you a whole bunch of things that are going to come back that you need to work on. Right. In the home, it's the same exact thing. Right. We're getting the data extracted from the house that we need to help prioritize things. Right. And there's a variety of different tests that we collect in order to accomplish that. But some of our most important tools are just the basic stuff that you hear everybody collecting, which is air and swab samples. Right. The big difference is what you're talking about, where we collect them in a very targeted fashion inside of walls, for ceilings or small isolated spaces. We're now able to see that there is a type of mold that's there and a quantity of mold that's there that's going to dictate the remediation strategy. Yes, that needs to happen. But the prioritization of that and some of that is going to lean back towards what we learned about that person. For example, if we have somebody in the home that is dealing with.

Trichothosines, which is a mycotoxin that's produced by certain.

Mold species known as stachybotrys, and we find stachybotrys in the home, which we know is to be a bad mold. Well, top tier, right. That is something that we should be handling immediately. Now, to talk about cost. Cost is so variable in these type of scenarios. That what I think we need to imagine doing and is, is process. Right. Let's just take cost and put it over here for a minute. Because the cost to opening up a ceiling in a bathroom is one completely different cost to having a gut, an entire shower. If there's mold behind that. Right. But what we really truly want to know is the prioritization of these different areas. So if we find, let's say 10 problems inside of a house, how do we make sure that of those 10 problems that we're actually understanding, which one is going to be give us the highest return on investment in the home? Right. And so anytime we get on a call with a client, after we've inspected, we've got all this data, they've got their prioritization list, they've got the remediation plan. I'd say, Brian, you could kind of validate this or not, but at least what our consultants tell us always the next question is what do I do next? Like great, you found all these problems, but what now? Right. And the next thing in the process is not.

Go call my insurance company, it's not start ripping things out myself. Actually the next step in the process is get a remediation contractor out there and have them give you a price for everything that we found. Even if you're not going to do it, it doesn't matter. You want to know room by room, area by area that we gave you remediation protocols for what it's going to cost to remediate it. And the reason why is because it starts to develop out almost like this matrix. If you can imagine it, you've got your bid from the remediation company in your left hand and you've got your prioritization of this, of the areas that we found in your right hand. And so this is going to immediately help you understand what the output is going to be for the investment you need to make in that home. Right. So let's run some scenarios here. If you have a area in your home that is a low priority and it is a high cost to remediate that area, why are we going to put resource towards that? Doesn't make any sense. Right. And then if you have a high priority area and a low cost, well that's winner, winner. We like those. Right. But it also informs us and helps us understand and strategize. Oh, that's interesting. This is a low cost area, high impact. I don't want to engage my insurance company in something like this because if you look at your insurance policy Go ahead and dust that thing off because I know nobody looks at it, they pay for it and then they don't touch it.

You'll notice that there's deductibles similar to health insurance, but these deductibles are much, much higher. They could be 5500, they could be 7500, they could be $10,000 deductible, meaning out of pocket, you are paying that money. And if your remediation cost for a high priority area is less than your deductible, well guess what, an insurance company will take that deal all day long because guess what? You're paying everything to remediate that space. And all they have done now is shown that you're willing to make a claim on your property towards them. Which means we're jacking the rates up because you're riskier. You may come back with something in the future. We're going to raise your rates in some states. You know, they may even drop you even if you don't. Even if they don't have to pay for anything. Right. So continuing down this idea, if you have a high priority, high cost area within the home. Well, cool. Okay. This may make sense to get insurance involved. This may make sense to really understand the path of where we can start tapping funding areas. If it makes, if it, if it's a claim that you can, can approach. But then even, even then you really, it's about how you're opening that claim with the insurance company. You know, we're opening a water claim versus a mole claim and really maximizing these different things. But the idea here on the prioritization is allowing you to have an understanding of each different area and make sure that if I am tapping insurance, it's worth it. Yeah, they may raise my rate, but I don't have the funds and it's a high priority area. And I gotta do this right and really be able to then say, okay, well look, right now there's an investment of $20,000 I need to make in this house to knock three or four of these things off my list that I know are really high priority areas. I'm going to baseline check how I feel after that, I'm going to get my clinicals looked at again and I'm going to see how I'm progressing through the process. But if you don't have an action plan, the remediator that's going to walk in that door is going to sell you on every single thing they feel.

That is important to them. Right. Which is Going to be the things that are going to be the most costly to remediate. And I literally just had a woman 2 days ago tell me this exact scenario where she had a remediator walk in, he popped his head in the attic, there was black all over the place, and he spent 10 minutes in her house and said, there's your problem right there. She invested $25,000 into cleaning that up and still feels terrible. But she's tapped out, she can't do anything. She's stuck. Right. So you really need to make sure when you're going through this process, we have the playbook because in the long run, telling you right now is going to save the money to make sure you're putting the right dollars to the right areas and having the high highest return on your investment in the property.

Yeah, that, that's a really good explanation. I'd love to add like one more piece to the insurance side of it. So one other thing to like keep in mind when it comes to insurance is that when you submit a claim, they write you a check for whatever the claim ends up being. If they approve it, they give you the check. And, and that's what they do, Right. They're not sitting there babysitting where the check is spent. And did you do it on this exact thing or whatever it might be? Right. So you know, as we're talking about costs and how you address these things. Right. This is a, this is a different strategy you could go in with into an insurance company. The first is to just look like you said, what area is the worst? If it doesn't cost a lot, I handle it. So I don't engage insurance and, and basically make a dumb claim that's just going to cause me problems down the road if I, if it's a high cost and yeah, sure, we want to do that. But here's like where you start getting tricky and you can start doing some interesting things. Like on another level, let's say you have an area that we tested that was a low priority area. Right. Let's say, you know, technically there was a problem, but on the scale is low priority. So if you're just looking at that, you're like, I'm not really going to spend time considering this because it's low priority. Let's do an example. Let's say it's something like in a downstairs and you have, you know, wood floors and you're downstairs and part of the remediation would require you to remove a little bit of flooring as part of that and then, oh, I can't find matching flooring. So now I have to refloor my entire downstairs and it's all tied to that claim. So if that claim got approved, what's going to happen is you're going to get a check not only to handle the amount of work but you have to reflow your whole house. Right? So you're going to get a much larger number off of that claim because you can't match flooring or whatever it might be. Right. So now let's say that refloring. What's, what's 20 grand reflow a house, 10 grand to reflow a house, whatever.

It is, depending on size could be more.

Yeah, let's say now you get a check for 10, 15, 20 grand, let's say for whatever it is. And you now have this check and then you look at the area on our priority list, you're like, this isn't a priority area but, but priority A, B and C, you know, these other ones that are up here, I can now apply this money to those and it's a way to kind of cross fund through using insurance to your benefit as opposed to feeling like you're always at their, you know, beck and whim and they, you know, they're in charge and like you can never submit and they're always against you. Right. Like obviously different claim, you know, different policies are different and you know there's, you know, different states are different. So like you'd have to check in your policy and just gonna like kind of disclaimer this out there, right? Like this isn't a guaranteed thing that works. Right? But the thought process and the strategy of this is let's say you get a public adjuster to help you navigate this situation. So what a public adjuster is, is an insurance adjuster that works for you instead of the insurance company. Okay, so imagine you're going to court and you're going into court and the defense attorney is Johnny Cochran and then you roll in by yourself and you're representing yourself. Good luck, you're going to get crushed, right? So you get your own attorney and you stick them on the other side and they all understand legal talk and they go back and forth and they do whatever they do and hopefully you win, right? When you go talk to the insurance company yourself is you go into battle against Johnny Cochrane by yourself, like good luck, you're going to get destroyed, right? So what's interesting about like this strategy on how to mitigate cost on the most expensive thing that happens in the house. We're now layering strategies on top of each other. Right. This piece is how do you get as much cash inbound that isn't your own cash out of your own bank? Right. So the way you, you could look at this is let me get a public adjuster, let me have them go through my claim. Let me see if there's anything on the list of everything that we found that could be a claim that has a high probability of being approved and maybe file that claim, who cares what it's for? Get the money and then apply it to the thing that's the higher priority issue for your health in the house. Right. So by using our priority documents as a way to pinpoint the areas that you do need to work on and then you can layer in this supplemental like, like, you know, income strategy, if you will, on how do I extract money from the insurance company based on the information I have that I could then reapply to the things I need. It allows you to address these issues without necessarily having to come significantly out of pocket. Right. And, and you put those two things together with the guidance of which area to focus on and layer in. Oh, who's the person who's most impacted in the house? What rooms do they live in? Just because we prioritize a tier A based on the mold type or the amount of mold that's there, you know, if your daughter is the reason you're doing this thing and one of the heaviest mold load places happens to be in, you know, her dad's office across the road, you know, across the house.

But dad isn't the primary concern, maybe even though it's an A that goes down and maybe like a B area that happens to be in your daughter's bedroom goes up. Right. And so you can cross reference like the cost to fix the item, how the most impacted person lives in the house and if the area is impacting them and then what is there and the significance of it based off of our priority, figure out that roadmap of your ideal way to proceed. Engage a public adjuster, have them evaluate everything and say, hey, is there a way that I could submit anything that's in here to get money? And if they say yeah, then you're like, awesome, if that makes sense, then maybe we do that. You bring in cash that way, apply it to the things on top and it helps to offset a huge chunk of, of the remediation expense. If you can manage the process in those ways and you know, it's just want to share these things on the cost piece, because the cost piece, I think, is the thing that stops people so much, especially with the economy the way it is now. And forget the last week or so here with, you know, all the tariff stuff and all that that's going on, like, there's a lot happening. And so if we can figure out a way to help guide somebody to kind of like play the system in their favor instead of feeling like they're getting screwed by the system every single time, then maybe that's helpful. Right. So this is like a lot of the conversations that happen.

Yeah, yeah. I'm really glad you brought up the idea of the public adjuster. And you don't, you know, that strategy that you laid out there is an option if you really want to get super technical. But even some of this stuff, you don't even need a public adjuster. Some of it is like so obvious that you can do it on your own too. Right. And the. What we've really try to build for people here when facing this concern, which is kind of almost every call that I get on, even with the practitioners are asking the same thing. Because you think about our ideal, our client, who we work with, they're already financially trained at the top. They're in this loop.

It's this like, I need treatment and help from a practitioner and I can't really get away from that. But also the money that I'm investing in the practitioner would be funds that I need to fix my home, which is ultimately causing the need for me to invest in my practitioner. Right. And it's really, it's a really difficult one to, to, to tap into. One thing I also want to do. Add on the financing side of things is a partnership that we created with a financing company to help people there as well. So if you really, really needing a access to financing, you know, there's options that we can try and help you through and with to finance some of your sampling costs if you really, really need it. Right. And so there, there are ways to get creative is what I'm kind of laying out here. Right. And don't let the idea of this for what you read to be true online, which is light your house on fire, throw all your contents away, maybe move to the desert. Right. And like, there are extreme cases, guys, I'm not going to take that away from anybody. There are 100% extreme cases where extreme measures are taken into consideration. And we've seen those. Right. But there are ways to navigate and set up the right plan so that we can manage things appropriately and have the right path forward.

Yeah, I think all of that is well said.

The other thing that you mentioned was timing. When's the right time? Now or later? Maybe I might consider moving. Maybe if the tests look like there's an issue, maybe I won't. Right. And the, the thing that I always kind of think through and kind of chat about there is a lot of times that's a fear based mindset in something. And you know, something I've learned somewhat recently in the last year or so I guess is just sometimes, sometimes even I look at stuff like that. And when you look at something through the lens of fear as opposed to something through the lens of hope, it actually doesn't serve you. And it, fear begets more fear and begets more fear and begets more fear. And then you're just now, you're just in the space where now there's hopelessness, right? Like the more that you let fear take over, the more it expands and engulfs you. And then fear is the antithesis of hope, right. And so as that comes, the hope goes away, depression comes, the, you know, the strained relationships come, like all of those things. And a lot of these questions that get asked around, well, you know, you know, I might move if it's, if it's a problem, you know, I might move. But like, so I don't know. And maybe, maybe not. Maybe so. Well, the, the action answer is, well, let's find out if the house is a problem. So you're not spiraling, right? But the fear of, oh well, if the house is a problem, I'm going to have to move. I don't know if now's the time. What's going to happen in that cycle is you, you went down this road and set up a conversation with us or, or not even us started investigating in whatever way. You're investigating for a reason, which means it's in your mind. And so now that is going to fester and you're going to constantly be concerned that it's there. Yet the decision that was made to kind of put it off on the side is not in service of that concern. And so internally your, your, your emotions are going to be at war at that point. And it creates a lot of unhealthy, even just flight or flight types of internal like stress issues and all those things like your body can't heal of cortisol spiking, right? If you're in this mindset, cortisol's gonna be spiking non stop because you're Fighting yourself in your own mind. Right. And so, on the timing front, those are just some things that I, you know, that I think about in my conversations. And just, like, examples that I try to share with people. What are. What are a couple, like, timing scenarios, let's say that, like, come up to you and that you've heard lately that maybe you've had conversations around.

Yeah. You know, some of it is, like, more immediate issues. Like, okay, so I have an active moisture problem. Do I need to address that now before I get you in? Right. And, like, is that a problem that I need to do before I start this process? Okay, well, now I gotta go research and find a plumber and do all these things. Yes. Look, at the end of the day, you gotta stop the water. Like, you have to stop the water. If there is a pipe shooting water out of your toilet right now, stop listening and go stop it. Right. Like, yes, we need to stop that.

But it shouldn't inhibit it because the secondary damage can be much worse. And I was on the phone right before I got on this with a woman who was like, we have a leak. The plumber's still trying to find it. But he opened up the ceiling where the pipe was and saw there was mold. So he took some stuff out of his truck and sprayed the mold, and he said it was mold killer. And I just, you know, face paunched myself. Right. And so you have these things that are happening, and then you, You. You realize, like, yeah, he still has probably another day to figure out where this problem is coming from. Like, get us going. Like, we need to start going. Because the longer that moisture sits, if he's seeing and he's spraying it, first off, he made the situation worse. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's only going to get worse as the process goes and is interesting. As I walked her through this process, her question to me was, like, wow, is this going to take a year? I was like, whoa, what a year? Where did we get a year timeline from? And she was like, well, it just seems like I got to get a person to stop the leak, and then I had to get this person in. Missed it. And, like, so these things do take time to go through. You know, hopefully it doesn't take a year, but, like, the longer we sit on it and we don't do something about it, the problem isn't just going away. And in many cases, it's going to get more significant. And so when we look at that issue of, okay, I understand that I have to handle and may engage in additional professionals. Us showing up to the home is not a reason to say, okay, I have to get a roofing contractor, because I know that there's probably something going on with my roof. Oh, and I've seen water damage over here before, so should probably get this professional out before you get here and starting to solve problems. Hard job is to find the problems and then kind of advise you through. Okay, look, I'm seeing this damage in the attic over here. Probably a good idea to get a roofing contractor out, right? And really start helping push towards certain areas of next steps in that process. Um, so I think it's really important to understand that not everything needs to be solved all at once before you move through it. Um, the big other.

Can we do the one. Sorry, can we do the question about should I test my body first and wait to do my house after?

You took the words right out of my mouth. Wow. That is why I'm not a singer right there, guys. I hope you enjoyed that. It wasn't good. I'm not gonna lie. Forget it. When my wife hears me singing with my son, it becomes this whole thing where she's like. But she, you know, wants me to have a great time with my son. So, like, it's. We can't be blessed watching.

Side note, everyone watching Corey perform for his son is amazing.

Well, I don't know if everybody knows this, but Brian has an amazing singing voice. So, like, you know, one of these days we'll get him out here to sing for everybody. But yeah, I hear this second phase of this a lot of times, right? You know, you may have. You may have somebody who comes in who's either like, working with a practitioner or is lost, and they're being told by their practitioner there's nothing wrong with them, and they find us, right? And immediately we start talking about this health to home connection and the fact that we can directly correlate. It's amazing what we can do. The advancements as I started this so long ago to now, and how we can literally take lab results and see what's in the body and what's in the home is amazing.

But, yeah, when Corey was 17, he would actually have to lick the floor in the crawl space. And then they would test that. He would just kind of like, feel it that way. That's how he did it.

Public service announcement. That is not true. And don't lick mold on anything, please. Never lick mold.

It's true. Not even just the floor. Anyone don't like it.

Never lick Mold.

But that is the title of this episode.

And never, like, malt.

There is a video out there of a guy who does that, by the way. It blows my mind.

Oh, my God.

I sent it to you.

Yeah, I think. And you remember, I was like. I was like, oh, this guy is like, oh, here's. Here's how. You know, doesn't taste like it.

I'm like, what it is.

Has the world come.

Terrifying. So the.

The idea of testing the body, it's good data. And. And I'm not saying you shouldn't, because you should, but it's not a warrant to wait. And I was just talking to a couple practitioner cults I had yesterday about, okay, I'm in this. I'm talking to doctors all the time, I'm talking to health coaches all the time, and I'm talking to clients, right? What's the best cast? Where should I go, Guys? Practitioners are asking me this, right? And the reason why that's significant is because sometimes it may take a test or two to get an answer. And what they're actually starting to do in many cases is they're starting with our product, the dust test that we helped start to help screen the home and then know which test to collect from the body, or taking the information that we find in the home and then start to look and detox the body. Right. And because mold impacts us in a variety of different ways, you may take a. Let's say a mycotoxin urine test, and that could come back as fine. It may not come up as a problem. And I know I've dealt with clients before, and, Brian, I'm sure you have, too, where we then go in and we find all these problems, and then they start working with a practitioner who begins to bind things and they test them. And that's like the. The test is lit up like a Christmas tree now, right? It's. It's off the chart.

Can you explain why it doesn't show up initially and then why it happens?

Yeah.

When they start under extract it.

Yeah. So it. It. There's our. Our bodies go through a process called methylation. Okay. It's a detoxification that occurs not just from mold, guys. It's from everything, right? From the. The chemicals in our water to the. The heavy metals in the food that we eat. Right. It's natural. It's how we do that. But sometimes, whether it's genetics, whether it's underlying health conditions, or it is previous exposures that clog up our pathways and they don't work effectively. And so what happens is your body begins to then maybe store these toxins, and we're not ejecting them through our natural methylation pathways, which is not just urine, by the way. It's how, you know, the other side of it. And it's sweating. Right. There's other ways that we detoxify, but it can clog us up, and we're not getting it out of the body. And then what a practitioner does is they'll come in and they'll put you on a treatment protocol where they detox. So what does that mean? That could be done through chelation. That could be done through, you know, different binders that they give to you, clays that they give to you to help absorb it and push it out of our pathways. And then we start to see this big. This big uptick inside the body. The other reason why, and I don't think this is talked about enough, is that it doesn't necessarily need to be mycotoxins all the time. Right. And mold produces three byproducts. They produce spores, so microscopic seeds that float in the air. They're meant to grow more mold. And this is like the initial way that we've learned mold impacts us, okay? Allergy issues, respiratory problems, inflammatory responses, or inflammation within the body. But they can also colonize us, Right? They can go on our nasal passage, on our skin and our gut. But a mycotoxin test isn't necessarily looking for that spore. Right. It's a different byproduct. Then molds can produce a gas and odor. It's an mdoc, microbial Volatile organic compound. It's part of the mold's digestion process. So it's musty, it's mildewy, it's earthy, and only there under certain environmental conditions. But many times we hear irritants from it. It's like, oh, I'm getting, like, a scratchy throat or a headache or a burning eyes when I smell this, particularly for those that are. That are chemically sensitive. And then you have mycotoxins, which are chemical byproducts that are produced by molds as defense mechanisms. So some of these are benign. They don't even do anything to us. Others are actually used for antibiotics. So, like penicillin is a manufactured mold, mycotoxin, to kill bad bacteria, infections in our body. And then you've got the stuff that allows you to test food. Right. And those may come up in those tests. But if you're somebody who is detoxing, well, for all things considered, you're pushing things out of the body. But, man, if you're around a certain type or species or mold, you may react to the spores a little bit differently. Right. And that may be the application of the wrong test type while your practitioner is trying to figure things out. So we don't necessarily need that information to make the inspection process a good idea. Right. And you may have people that it's.

Also not needed to warrant the fact that an inspection would be needed in the first place. I think a lot of times people are like, well, I'm going to wait for my mycotoxin result before I decide if I think that I need to look at my house. Right. And that, you know, for what you're explaining here is a lot of times an issue that then causes future health issues down the road. Because now you're like, oh, I don't have mold toxins in me. But, like, mold toxins are just like a piece of it. And like, on the toxin piece. What's crazy? So your body, there's so much variability in your body that affects the way a specific test will show a result. Right. So it's not like this clear thought, like a mycotoxin test in my body is going to show me if I have mycotoxins. It's not true. Right? You could be so toxic, meaning that your methylation is so bad that when you do a mycotoxin test, it shows nothing because you literally hold every single drop of chemical in your body because you can't get it out. On the flip side. So this actually happened to me. I'm a good methylator. I've been in, you know, this is when I was in houses every day. So I was exposed to stuff all the time. So I. I did a mycotoxin test with a doctor I was working with, and I had ochratoxin A and I had gliotoxin in my body. The levels were elevated, but not crazy. She knew all the homes I was going into, they were her patients, right? So, like, she knew how bad it all was because we had all the reporting and everything. And she's like, you know, I actually expected this to be, like, a lot worse than it was. She's like, actually, what I see is that you detox really well. You're just around it a lot, and so it's showing up because you detox it really well. She's like, I think that if you were not around it as much and you continue this detoxing, you would probably naturally get most of this stuff out. So on the flip side, if you're showing levels of mycotoxins in your body, it might just be because you detox incredibly well. And so it's showing up, right? So the body becomes this variable that you can't plan for when you're trying to understand how to interpret a test, right? And the same thing goes for, you know, the, the other pieces of it, right, like almost at their minimum are allergens, right? So if you breathe in mold, you're immunity, you're going to get an allergic reaction at some point. Know for different people, it varies. Now you're talking mass cell reactivity, you're talking histamine releases that can create a variety of health issues, right? So the variability in the body makes it really complicated to even know if the test is accurate, which is why the doctors are asking you what tests they should be running right now. Here's the flip side of it. All of that variability goes away when you test in the house. There is no body with multiple defense mechanisms built into it. And all of these things that change the way a clop of dust gets analyzed in a DNA analysis machine. So the, the difference and why I think it's so important to not rely on these things to then make your decision on whether or not I look at the house is. The house is act like the testing that we do is actually telling you what's there without any other variable layers on top of it that can hide the information. Your body can hide the information. And that's why the diagnosis and everything becomes so much more difficult for the doctors. Just because you have all these different systems in your body, you have defense mechanisms, you have what you were exposed to as a kid, which might change how your body reacts to something. You have all of these things that go on, whereas if I swab mold on a swab, there it is. There's no other external factors that are telling me it's not there. If I do a dust collection for mycotoxins, if the mycotoxins are there, they're going to show up because there's no other variable that's blocking it or hiding it, right? And so, you know, a lot of times the doctors, what they do is they're looking not necessarily at a single test, but they're looking at like a variety of things, like a cluster to try to say, okay, if I'm checking, you know, let's just say there's 10 items in this cluster. If I'm checking five of these items, then we need to be digging into this even if the other five aren't being checked. Right. And then you look into it and it starts working that way. So it's not to say that like, you shouldn't do urine mycotoxin test. I'm not a doctor. Corey's not a doctor. I don't know. Right. What I do know is that there's a lot of doctors who stop doing them completely. I know that because they actually don't think that they provide any real value. I know that doctors have switched to like organic acid tested only. I know doctors who have switched to just going to like blood serum, mycotoxin testing instead of urine testing because they think it's more accurate. I know some people that are only looking at like, antibody IgG types of tests to see if there's a more recent. Like there's so many ways to test for it there to try to figure out if the body's being exposed to it when the easiest way is just see if it's in the house. Because if it's in the house, the body's being exposed to it. So, like, if you have health symptoms that you're not able to put the pieces together on and it's, you know, across multiple systems of your body, meaning a system could be like neurological, it could be nervous system, it could be endocrine system, digestive, reproductive system, like all, you know, you know, hormones, like all these different things, those are different systems. And then if you have different symptoms, I've got, you know, skin rash, I've got gut issues, I've got, I don't know, my hair is starting to thin. I've got chronic fatigue. I got, you know, fibromyalgia, whatever. You know, all these things and you see those that together, that is like the formula for. There is something triggering a. A mass thing happening in a body that isn't just like, I have an infection in one place, right. Like, that's the clue. And so if you see that, if you see other people in the house with completely different symptoms, that's even another layer of a big clue that something is going on. If you have no one in the house with other symptoms, that doesn't mean that there isn't a problem because their bodies are different. Right? So there's all these things I say, like if you're seeing that, starting with the house, and if you're a little hesitant to get into full inspection because you need a little more proof of that, that's where what you mentioned, Corey, the dust test, that tells You. You go to the dust test, you collect it, and it will show you how much mold is there, what the load is, how. How significant it is. That is the proof of the exposure. Now, if you know that you have an exposure and you have symptoms that are aligning with. With kind of what I just described, now, you know, you got to dig into it, into the house to figure it out, right? So that's. Sorry I started ranting.

Now.

That's my two cents.

I like the rants. This is. Guys, this is why we had to give him his own talk show, because, like, it's just, you know, boom, boom, boom. He needs to have it.

Could you guys imagine, like, being in a meeting with me and listening to me do this? It's not great.

No, it is good. It's. It. I mean, it's. Look, at the end of the day, right, you have to. You have to also realize when it comes to testing and working with a. With a practitioner, because of how complex the body is, it can take time for them, even the best practitioners, to figure things out. I mean, there are some practitioners who we talked to. I know you had Dr. Catarai Pejman on here, who, you know, Brian and I both have just the most respect for and is very well respected in the industry. And he's very outspoken about how difficult testing for mold is in the body. It's very, very hard. And sometimes he's running multiple different mold panels. One is saying one thing, one is saying another, and he needs to kind of reboot between the lines. And he's literally built in home testing and analysis into his process because he. He has to do that. Right? And so if we're. If we're delaying that.

At the cost of going through and actually getting the data that you need, it can ultimately spin us into a much more difficult situation. And I think the last one I brought up kind of ties into both of them. Both of the reasons why people are, you know, kind of need a minute and need a bit a beat, as I said, is a lot to do with. With this, with their partner or their spouse.

Not feeling well, not being bought in, not.

Not wanting to go down this path. And I can say that a lot of that, at least what I see and talk to.

Can be some of what you already mentioned, which is it's normal for people to not be impacted in the home. One person is impacted and everybody else feels fine because of our genetics, because of how we methylate all these things.

I do think that some of it, not every spouse I get on the phone with is.

A mean person. They're like, me, me, me, me, me. I don't think you could do this. But actually them trying to protect their spouse because unfortunately they've gone and they found a person to come into their home and tell them that I spent an hour here, I ran a bunch of tests, every air test, and everything looks fine. Or they run a merry go round of doctors and every single practitioner that they talk to is like, I'm looking at your results and everything looks fine here. And really.

Not wanting the pain for that person to continue. And this just being another rabbit hole to go down.

And when I am faced with that, a lot of times, and I'd love to hear what you have to say to this afterwards, but.

A lot of times it's us just having. Allowing them to be in a place on the phone to talk to us about it and really, first off, feel comfortable knowing that, look, sometimes it's a therapy session on a call, and then it's a, okay, how do I help present this? And when they hear the process, it becomes a lot more doable because, hey, I'm out of work, I can't work, and my partner is providing and, and money is tight and okay, well, we've solved that already on this podcast on how we help there. Right? And, or, hey, you know, I need to think about this a little bit more. You know, I, I need to test my body. I need to do all these things. I need to get the proof to, to show them that there really is a problem here. And a lot of times I say sometimes that the person will show up alone to these phone calls because they're, they're not. They don't feel comfortable enough to bring their spouse in because of what that conversation can turn into. And we actually ask you to bring your spouse to the call. Right. I think we're one of the only companies out there that really prefer that, that both decision makers, the individuals that are involved in making decisions about the property, come to these calls so that we can together, as a unit, work through this. Because it is overwhelming, it is scary. It is all the things that we're talking about and answering those questions and facing that head on is so much better than as an individual having to figure out the way and muster the courage up to going back to your spouse with either another, oh, maybe this is the problem. Or, you know, I'm so tired, I'm so sick, and I don't know how to explain what I just heard on this phone call to My spouse, who is already apprehensive because they're trying to protect me or because, you know, we're worried about finances or they're not feeling well and, you know, everything you read about or hear about online says no, mold is not a problem. And, you know, really understanding that. Part of the reason why the person who answers the phone here is called an empowerment coach is to empower you with the information that you need to move things forward and move things in the right direction for you. And getting people together on that and making sure that we're explaining things and that we're all on the same page is not just going to help this process of what we do. But as Brian, as Brian, as you have alluded to many times on this call, this is just the beginning. Right. And so really educating and, and, and making sure that we're, we're in this together, that we're going to make hard decisions together as a group, it makes it a little bit more obtainable to go through the process.

Yeah, I, I will add a little bit to that, but I, I think generally you're right. I think generally if you have a spouse or partner, for the most part, not every relationship, but for the most part, they love you, they want the best for you. Right. This situation is a hard one for a couple reasons. One.

There'S a reason that we, as we inspect or as specialized as we are and kind of viewed in a different light than other companies. It's because the way we approach it is different. And so when you're someone who's researching something and you see that the majority of the information out there is air test in a room. You know, that's what you do this, that or the other. And then you talk to, you know, someone like us, and we really dig into how it works and, and listen, we're not sugarcoated. We're more expensive than local company. Who's going to do three air samples in your house? Like we just are, right. And, you know, it's necessary to get what we need. So if you are a spouse or a partner and you're trying to do all this research and you get on a phone with someone and you talk about this process and you hear it, and it's very different from what you've heard, and then you hear that there's a different price point for that thing, you're immediately going to have your defenses up. It's natural, human nature. This is what's normal over here, and this is not normal. So this must be wrong or Weird, Right? And that's not always how life works, Right. Sometimes things that are, quote, normal are actually terrible and shouldn't be that way, but they are.

Yeah.

Right. And so I think that's one thing. So one thing that I've kind of coached people on when we're talking through this is like, how you can have a conversation with a partner to help shift their mind and how they view it a little bit to change it. Right? So, like, subconsciously, every human does not want to be wrong. You always want to be right. And so a lot of times, your subconscious will protect you and create.

A belief system to protect itself. Right. And so now you're kind of fighting against whatever this belief system is that somebody has created in their. In their mind. Well, those belief systems can change if your subconscious starts seeing enough information that makes it think that it's wrong. It does not want to be wrong. So it will now change how it looks at something. Now all of a sudden, you think of something differently than you used to. Right? And so one way that I've kind of talked through people to kind of have a conversation like that, one area where it is super acceptable for one person to be feeling not good, and the other one not is, I have a cold. I have the flu, right? It's actually really similar. There's some invisible thing floating around that you can't see with your eyes, that you breathed in. And I guarantee you, your partner breathed in, too, because you're sleeping in the same bed and you kiss and you do all these things, things you're both exposed to the same thing. One of you is curled up on the couch with a. With a bucket in front of you just in case, and the other one is just fine. And we have that situation. And no one thinks that the person who's sick isn't really sick. No partner thinks that. What. What are they doing? They're like, hey, take it easy. I'll take care of the kids while you get. While you heal up. Right? It is a very normal thing for them to see that and not think there's anything wrong with that. What happens when you are dealing with mold exposure is no different than an invisible thing that's floating around that you both breathed in that one of you is reacting to and the other one isn't. It's no different. It is reality. For one person to not be sick when the person standing next to them is. That is a real thing that has been proven over hundreds of years. So why now when the. When it's the thing that's making them sick all of a sudden. It's not real. Right. And some of these little frames and conversations that you can create for people to then make them feel like, oh, well, am I being dumb? Am I being wrong? Am I, am I not looking at this? And if, if you could come up with a few of these scenarios for somebody to talk through all of a sudden, yeah, I guess it does kind of make sense. Like, I don't understand it, but I also don't understand how the flu impacts me. But you know what? I've had to throw up too. So I get it, you know.

So, you know, for those of you who might have that situation, maybe that little example might be able to help you guys. But we've. I've taken Corey's time for too long. He's a busy man. He's got lots of, lots of people to talk.

I mean, I could, I could, I could be on here forever with you and talking about this stuff. You know, it's. I really, I want to do more of these because there's so much to talk through. And one thing that I've always noticed, whenever I get on the phone with somebody who has listened to these episodes before, or, you know, a few of them, the answer is always the same. It's like this was so, like, I've listened to Brian and I get what you guys do, and I've gotten, you know, so much out of these conversations. Even what you just talked me through just then. I never heard you say that before. And I took something away very significant from that. It was a really well stated point that at the end of the day, we're all different and this is how things work. And I think the point of doing this particular episode with you was to really help people understand. It's normal to come and be a little bit apprehensive of this in a variety of different ways or for a variety of different reasons. And the one thing that I want to leave with here is that when you set that call with us and we get on the phone with somebody, when we come to their house.

There'S always issues.

Right? And.

I think that's really important. You sought. The reason why you set that call is because sometimes there's an inkling there. There's something telling you that this is the right process, but financial, but need more time, but spouse and all these different things, right? But realistically, to your point about never being wrong at the end of this.

You'Re right in that process. There is something going on there. And Making space to work through these challenging conversations.

And allow this to happen results in an outcome that gets you down the path to healing and getting better and finally seeing the other side of this. And so it can be hard, it can be difficult, it can be challenging, it could be all the things. But really, at the end of the day.

Allowing it to happen ultimately results in a better aspect than just leaving it.

All right, let's wrap it there. Rapid fire. What did we do? We talked about how to make this thing not cost a lot of money. We talked about how to.

Of course I flew out of all my notes. We talked about how to avoid bad insurance claims so you don't then have to pay for more insurance later on down the road.

Or get dropped.

We talked about how to. Yeah. Or get dropped. We talked about how to look at fear based decision making and what that leads to and to try to intentionally be able to not go there. We talked about how testing your body first doesn't necessarily tell you what's actually going on and don't be misled by that. And we talked about talk track on how one person could be sick and another person might not be sick and it's totally okay. And I feel like there was more. But yeah. We talked about how you can get better without a mass remediation going on.

We talked about.

How to bridge conversations with your spouse and. And know that it's. It's okay to. To have differing opinions and sometimes getting in the room with somebody who understands this is helpful to help push teams through.

Cool. We will do more of these.

And that's what I got to say. And I have to wrap it up. Why? Because in two minutes I'm about to jump on the phone and shot maybe with one of you who's listening. So we'll see what's going on. All right, thanks, everyone.

Bye Bye.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment and subscribe and give a rating wherever you get your podcasts. It'll help spread the word to those who really need it the most.