49: Avoid this MOLD SCAM

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.

All right, everybody. So today I'm gonna talk about something I've been wanting to talk about for a while, and I've been really hesitant to bring it up because I want to make sure I'm doing it in the right way. And it's something. I just need to be really careful about how the conversation goes. So I've actually been putting it off for a long time. It's something I've been wanting to talk about since before the show even started. I was wanting to do something on this, and I've just been. Like I said, I've been a little hesitant, but give it a shot. Today. We're gonna see. See if I can get the point across. Basically, I'm trying to be very careful not to talk about any individual people or anything like that. I want to keep this more of a general conversation, but there is this scam that is going on, and it's happening all the time, and I see it happening all the time, and every time I see it, to be honest with you guys, it really pisses me off, and it just. Ah, it just frustrates me so much that this is happening. Okay? So I want. I feel like I have to tell you guys this because I don't want it to happen to you. You know what I mean? So, like, even though it's a little, kind of weird for me to talk about, I got to tell you guys, right, Because I don't want you to fall into this trap. I've just seen it happen too many times. So, okay, so let's kind of set this thing up.

When.

You'Re in a position where you're really health compromised, you typically, you go down this path before you even find me or. Or, you know, us, my companies. And the path is, is. Is kind of like you're first, you're figuring out that, you know, trying to figure out what your health issue is and then finally find a doctor helps you figure out what it is. And that process could take years, right? Like, I hear these stories all the time. We went to all these doctors. Nobody could figure it out. And then we found doctor, you know, so. And so. And oh, my gosh, thank God they actually finally figured out that mold was what was causing a bunch of my issues. And it's amazing, right? And so then the doctor's like, okay, you have to get out of the mold situation. You got to find it. You got to figure it out, right? And so you say, okay. And so you go back and you get on Yelp and you search around and you find an inspector that has some good reviews, and they come out, but you call around and you kind of price match and stuff, because maybe you think that, you know. You know, all these guys are certified, right? So they probably all know what they're doing. Like, you know, you think of it almost like a plumber, right? I mean, how hard is it to find a leak in a pipe, right? And that's kind of how you think about it. And so they come out. They come out, they do a few air samples in the house. They spend maybe 20, 30 minutes, they leave. As we all know, at this point, doing air samples in the middle of rooms is like. I mean, it's almost just like setting money on fire. And so they come back and they tell you, okay, everything's cool, right? There's no problems. And so you're really pumped, right? Because you're like, okay, so it's not my house. It must be, like, where I lived when I was a kid or something else, right? It must be something else. Your body hasn't been able to detox, whatever the problem is, but at least it's not in your current house, right? And so you're really excited about that. So you go back to the doctor, you tell them, hey, I had this. You know, we had the house looked at. It's. Everything's cool. It's great. The doctor's looking at you, and then they're looking at the lab results and looking back at you, and they're like, yeah, I don't think so. I really feel like there's something going on in the house, right? And. And you're like, no. And so in your mind, you're, you know, you've kind of checked that box, right? And it's fair. You've had a professional come out, right? They came out, they did their thing, they told you everything was fine. So, sure, right? Like, why wouldn't you think that everything isn't okay at that point? And so what happens is that, like, it's hard for you to wrap your mind around the fact that you may have just spent, you know, $800, $900, depending on who came out there and that it was like a waste of money. They didn't find anything. It takes a minute for you to accept that, right? So between the time where you have that done and then your doctor tells you there's things going on that could be a year, it could be a couple years, right? It depends. But eventually, not all the time, but a lot of times eventually, the doctor continues to keep just beating the drum and you're like, okay, okay, okay, I'll have a second opinion come out, right? And so now you're like, okay, how do I find somebody? Well, I'm gonna go back on Yelp because that's how you find everything. I'm going to home advisor Angie's list, because where the hell else do you look for stuff? And going to look at all the reviews again. I'm going to find really good reviews, but this time I think I'm going to find someone that's like a little more expensive. Maybe it was just one of those things where, like, you pay for what you get, and I didn't pay enough money and so I didn't get somebody that was good enough, right? And so you, you do that and you bring somebody else out and, and you tell them the story of what's going on. So now that person's like, oh man, I better find something, right? And so what happens is you pay that person maybe twice as much as what you paid the first person. 1500, 1600 something, you know, 1800, whatever the number is for them to come out. They do a few more tests and they come back and they. And they say, I found it, right? And they find like one thing. They're like, we found it, we got it. And you're like, oh, thank God. I'm so happy we found it. This has taken me so long. I had somebody come in before you, and now you're here, and I'm so thankful that you're here. And this is amazing. And.

You'Re pumped, right? And so the inspector will then tell you, they'll give you a plan like, okay, so here's what you need to do. You need to do X to remediate this, and then you need to do a full house cleaning. And they'll probably tell you to fog your whole house. Or they'll probably just tell you, hey, if you just fog your whole house, it'll fix it. Maybe they'll tell you that. And so now you're excited. And so the cost of that might be like 10, $15,000 to do everything that they talked about. Could even be more. Who knows, right? So now you're in, like, close to 20 grand between a couple inspections and remediation, and you finally feel like you got it, right? And you're really excited. Then you go back to your doctor, doctor looks at your stuff six months later, a year later, and they're like, yeah, I don't think you got it. And you're just like. At that point, you're like, you don't know what you're talking about, right? Enough. I'm done with you. You're fired, doctor. Right? And then this happens. So then you're, like, looking around for a new doctor, and then you find. And then you find. And you know how hard it was to find the doctor that you had in the first place, right? Like, it probably took you forever to find that doctor. You know, that that path could have been years. I know people have been 10 years, 15 years where they even realized what was actually making them sick. And you finally find this doctor that helped you figure it out, right? And they're telling you that you're being exposed to mold and toxins in the house. You go through the process, you have a couple people come in, you pay for remediation. You're like, listen, I have done what I need to do in the house, right? I've done it. Like, if you keep telling me there's problems here, then that means that you aren't detoxing me well enough. It's your fault, you know? And so you go look for another doctor, right? And so now you go down this path and try to find somebody. And then, you know, all the doctors, they're all filled up for six months because they're specialists and everybody needs them, you know, and so then you're waiting to even get on somebody's list for six months, for a year, whatever, and you finally see someone and they run the test, and what do they tell you? Hey, you're being exposed to mold. You got to fix that. And it's just like you got punched in the gut, right? And so that doctor, though, maybe has someone to refer to you, like, hey, you should work with this. This person, right? This person. They get it. You should talk to this person. This is usually when people get to us, right? So we, you know, most of our.

Of our clients are referred by their practitioners to us. This is how they get to us, usually. Okay, so this is kind of the path that you've taken to get up to this point, right? So here's the deal. There's only a handful of People, the whole country that fall into that like true, like expert category, at least in how they're perceived. Okay, so like the people that you brought into your house the first couple times, that's not them, right? It's, it's the people. And I don't want to talk for anyone else, so I'm going to just kind of talk about myself for a second. This isn't like tooting my own horn or anything, right? But I, I'm being very, very careful about not naming names, not saying men or women or anything, right? Because I, I don't want this to be targeting specific people. I just want you to kind of understand the whole flow of this thing, okay? There are very few people that are in my position as, you know, environmental consultants that are presenting at medical conferences to teach other doctors how to look at this stuff, that are presenting at industry events, teaching other people how to actually do it. Right.

There's. That have actually had success stories, and I know this sounds crazy, that have actually had success stories that. Where they were able to find sources and put in plans to fix it and actually have people get better. Okay? Like long term get better. Not like things are cool for a couple months and then we start getting sick again better. Right? Because this, this is where we're getting to.

There.

Are not a whole lot of people that get it. And here's the thing that's interesting, is that if you think about this journey that we just described for somebody, you find the second doctor, right? And that person, you know, that doctor refers you to somebody or you find, maybe you even find, you know, you find the expert on your own. You know.

The thing that the quote expert is going to have is that they're going to know everything, all of the language, they're going to know all the hot words, they're going to know all that stuff, right? And when you talk to them, you're going to be sold on them because they know ermi and mycotoxin and PCR and endotoxin and bacteria and actinomycetes and all the stuff, right? They know all the stuff that you've heard. They know sirs, they know Lyme disease, they know co infections, they know pans and pandas. They know all this stuff and they've heard about it, they could talk about it. They understand that mold impacts it. You know, obviously they're not experts on that, they're not doctors. But the whole point is that they understand where you're going through. They know your language, you talk to that person and you're like, finally, finally, I found the needle in the haystack person that's gonna help me with this, right? And you're super pumped, right? And honestly, you should be super pumped. Like, your path is kind of sucked probably up to this point. And you feel like you, you know, every decision you make and every path, I feel like this. Anyway, everything that you do, like, kind of leads you to where you're going next, right? You're like, man, maybe I went down these, these roads. So then I would get upset with this other doctor because it would force me to find Dr. B. And the, and the second Dr. B is the one who put me in contact with this, you know, environmental professional. And I never would have found them otherwise. So all of this was for a reason. And yes, super excited. Okay, so. And you're pumped to figure it out. And here's the thing. When you have.

The expert label like that, you have so much responsibility. You know, it's. We're dealing with people's health. You know, it's not like you're selling someone a car. You know, whatever car breaks down, take it to the shop, big deal. They don't like the car, they could sell it, whatever. You know, this SUV wasn't for me, I'd rather have a coupe. I'm gonna go sell this. Like, it's. That. That's not what this is, right? Like, we're dealing with people's health. Honestly, you gotta be freaking good. And if you're not good, then you're, you could be doing harm. Truthfully, what it is. And listen, nobody's perfect. I make mistakes too. But you've. You got to treat the trust that people are giving you with respect and, and do your best to really continue to keep growing and learning and figuring things out. Right? And so.

The reason I'm telling you this is because there are certain people out there. Again, no names, no gender, nothing. I'm telling you, I don't want this to be like a session where I'm bashing particular people. That's not what I'm trying to do. Here's what happens, though. Like I said, there's only a handful of these, of the quote, experts that are really kind of like top regarded people in our field. Obviously, you found me, I'm one of them. There are some others.

And there are some of them that I honestly think.

I don't throw this word around. I think they're scamming people and it really, really pisses me off because they've come in as this top authority. And then the way that they're going about doing things, it's.

They're. They're setting up plans in a way without really telling you where. They're almost creating a subscription plan for you to continue to have to keep coming back to them. And it's complete bullshit, to be honest with you guys. And so I'm going to give you an example kind of how this works. And you don't even. And it's not like they're selling you a subscription. That's not what they're doing. Right? But if you think about what they're doing, it's as if they're putting you on a subscription plan without you knowing it. And. And they're basically just building in, sampling and sampling and cleaning and cleaning and sampling and sampling and cleaning and cleaning and over and over and over again and not actually finding and fixing the freaking problem. And it's just terrible and a massive disservice and a complete crock of crap, you know? And so here's how this looks. So I'm telling you this because I don't want you to go through this, right? Like I said, I've really been, like, toying with how I want to present this to you guys. I'm really being careful in my mind about that. I don't want to, you know, call anyone out specifically. But at the same time, you got to know about this, right? If you're listening to the show, you probably haven't worked with me. Maybe you have, actually. Hopefully. I hope people have worked with me, are listening to the show. But there's a lot more of you that haven't worked with me. And you're probably looking, right? And, you know, you may not be looking at that top tier. Maybe you're trying to find someone locally and guide them or whatever it is that you're doing. But I don't want this to happen to you. So here's what happens. Everyone knows ermi, right? Irmi is like hot, hot buzzword. Why? Because the doctors know ermi. That's one big reason. They don't really understand how to go through a house. That's not their area of expertise. The same way that I don't know how to treat someone for cancer, but I know that chemotherapy is something that you do for it, right? So it's the same thing. Like, the doctors understand that mold is an issue, and they know that ERMI is a way that you can figure out if it's going on in the house. So it gets a lot of push from the medical community for that. Secondarily. There's a ton of Facebook groups out there, support groups, all these things. And people are trying to figure out what's going on. They're sharing their stories and they're talking about how air samples suck, because they do. And then somebody found Ermi and they're like, oh. And they research it and the technology behind Hermes, amazing. We've talked about this before and so it gets pushed out. So now Ermi's kind of like the popular. It's the popular thing, right? So what happens? What does a scam look like? Okay, so before we talk about scam looks like, let's just recap what an actual true mold assessment looks like. Right? You, you're coming in the home, you have two goals. You're trying to figure out where are the source of the problems and how have those sources moved and cross contaminated the house and potentially your heating, air conditioning systems. Right? So we're trying to see where it's coming from, how it's impacting your living space and how it's getting moved around. That is really what a true mold assessment looks like. Okay, it's very high, a 2 second description, but that's kind of what it is. All right.

Going through a house and not finding the source is not helping anything. Okay, so again, we talked like mold is like a factory. If you drive by a factory, they're making whatever they're making inside. And like smoke is coming out of the top, right? And so the smoke is the byproduct. And so same thing happens in the house. If the mold colonies are the factories, that's where they're hiding. That's where the sources are. The smoke that's coming out of the top of the factory is the equivalent of the spores and the fragments and the toxins and stuff. So you can't stop the air pollution problem. Just, you know, we're talking kind of big picture in the world. If you have a bunch of factories and emissions and stuff that are keep blowing out all the pollution, right? Like it's not going to stop. And the same thing happens in the house. You can't stop the problem. You can't fix the problem if you don't find the sources. Okay, this is, this is the key. You got to understand that. Okay, so, so here's what happens in this scam, right? So you're this person, you've gone through this whole journey that we've talked about that you've gone through. You're super pumped to find this person. They come in and they say, okay, we're going to do an ERMI sample in every room. We're going to figure it out. And you're like, okay, well, I've heard a lot about ermi. Like, yeah, it seems like it's better than air samples. And okay, that makes sense. We'll do it in every room and then we'll know, like, what room it's coming from, right? And so you do it. And so they go in and they run like a freaking thousand ermia samples in your house. And they're expensive. And it comes back and they're like, okay, you know, this room looks maybe a little worse than this room, but, you know, it's kind of moving throughout the house, you can see. Which, by the way, guys, airflow moves throughout your whole house. Just going to throw that out there. So.

Unless you're living in a freaking mansion compound or we're really trying to isolate like a crawl space or an attic because of very specific water intrusion issues, I don't do multiple Hermes and houses because the air moves through the whole house, right? So think about it. If someone is cooking downstairs in the kitchen, the close, like, and you're upstairs or you're in the other room, even, like, you smell whatever they're cooking. You know, how do you smell it? Because the airflow in the house is pushing the smell to you. That's how you smell it. The smell doesn't just stop at the end of the kitchen. It's like, ah, we're in the kitchen. We're not going anywhere else. Kitchen is where our smells stay. That's not what happens. Right. It moves through the house. That example is showing you how air currents move through the house. So to think that we're just going to take a million ERMI samples in your house and we're going to see, like, this room's worse than this room. Okay, cool. Great. Awesome. Let's just say that we do that. Super cool. You know what ERMI doesn't do? It doesn't tell you where the mold is hiding. There are strengths and weaknesses behind every test. That's why we talk about building a comprehensive testing plan to fill in the gaps of where the strengths of certain tests are and the weaknesses of other tests are. For example, ambient air samples are. It's like burning money on fire. They're a complete waste of time. But if you do an ermi test, that is kind of what you would replace an ambient air sample with. The thing is that you don't need to do them all over the Place. Right. Because airflow moves all over. What we're trying to understand with ermi and the same thing with any sort of dust testing. Mycotoxin and endotoxin, actinomycete, whatever is. You're just trying to understand what the exposure looks like in the house. Basically what the load looks like in the house. To give you an idea kind of how significant the problem is and then to understand cleaning plan more. So, like, how do we have to clean the inside of the house? Right. Remediation is also in multiple phases. So you have to remove the source, right? Just like we have to find the source and you have to remove the source. That's phase one of remediation. Then you have to clean up the rest of the house that's been contaminated by the source. That's the second phase of remediation. Okay? So keep that in mind since we're talking through this. So you have the, you have this person, whoever it is, you know, one of the, one of the experts that come in that are kind of running you down this scam path and they do a bunch of Hermes in the house and they say, okay, yeah, you know, these don't look good. Which, by the way, guys.

Odds are it's probably not going to look that good because of the path that you've been down. Like, your doctors aren't finding exposure signs in your blood work and your urine samples and your brain scans for nothing. Like, they're finding it because you're probably being exposed. And so, yes, we want to do that testing in the house to understand exactly, like what's moving through the house. But is there a need to do fricking 50 of them? No, there's not need to do that many of them. Okay? And.

And so they go through, they do a bunch of these and say, okay, yeah, we got problems. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to do our fine particle cleaning protocol. Okay? So we're going to come in and we're going to fog the house and we're going to do all this stuff and everything's going to be good, right? And this is one of the top experts, the quote experts, right? You're like, man, I've. Okay, like, they, they found it. They, they. I guess they found it. I mean, you know what they didn't find? They didn't find where it was coming from, by the way, if they're only doing ERMI tests. So good luck with that. And they come in, but they sell you on this, right? And then what do they tell you? They tell you, okay, so you want to. Do you want to wait two months? This is, this is where you get into subscription plan. Okay, so you want to wait two months and then you want to redo all of the tests. All right? Yes, you do need to do post remediation testing. You know what the problem is? They didn't do any freaking remediation. They came through and they fogged and cleaned your house. That's not remediation. So here's how this goes, okay? They come in, they do a million ERMI tests, they come back, there's a problem, they say, okay, you need to clean the house. All right? So then you come in and you do whatever their fancy protocol is for cleaning the house. And it's usually fogging to some extent. And so you do that. And then they say, okay, wait, you want to wait a certain amount of time and test afterwards. Some of them will tell you anywhere from six weeks to like two months, depending on who you talk to. To test initially, your reading, your results should be better, you know, after you do that, right? Because they have done some cleaning. Think of it this way.

Think you're in a room and there's a little fire in the corner of the room. And that little fire is putting smoke in the room, right? So the smoke is what would get picked up in the ERMI test. All right? So now let's say, so they told you to come in and they want you to, you know, clean the whole house with whatever their, you know, their special product that kills everything or their certain process or whatever, you know. And listen, I get it. We have a process too.

I guess, you know, the difference is that I know that it works. But.

Anyway, so they do that. So imagine this room with the smoke filling up, right? So the cleaning process is like taking all the smoke out of the room but not putting the fire out. Okay? So if you go back in and you kind of do like, let's say a smoke reading in the room, like right afterwards. I'm just making up something now in terms of how to, like how you would determine the effectiveness of the smoke. Let's just say you walk into the room and it's not smoky anymore, right? It's because you took all the smoke out, but the fire is still in the corner. What does that mean? The smoke is going to fill the room again. It's just a matter of time. Right? And it's the same thing with what they're doing with ermi testing. Phase two, remediation cleaning, which is what, their version of phase two. They're skipping phase one. They're not worrying about source remediation. They're literally just telling you to clean your house. Right? So you're skipping, removing the factory, Right. You're not putting the fire out. You're all these analogies I can throw out there for you. But basically the, the source that's creating the problem is staying. Okay, so.

They have you test four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, whatever. Everybody has their own thought process and they're very, very steadfast about you have to do it this far after. Okay, guys, whatever you want to do it for, you want to do four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, whatever, it's probably going to be better, right? Because they did just clean the house. And you are doing dust surface testing throughout the house. Let's hope that that's at least a little better. Here's what happens. Okay.

That happens. Then you start not feeling great again. Then you call them, then they say, okay, let's redo all the ermi tests throughout the house. You say, okay, let's figure this out, because you want to figure it out. And, and for a hot second, you did feel a little better after they cleaned the house the first time. And so you're like, oh, well, at least these guys kind of, you know, they know the testing, they know, they know surge, they know Lyme disease, they know all this stuff. My doctor knows them. All right, we're going to do this again. And so you do another million Hermes samples in your house and they come up and they're not good again. And so then the guy comes back, he's like, okay, so I think we need to clean, we need to clean the house again. Maybe we'll tweak this or this. Clean the house again. Oh, by the way, you need to retest after you clean the house too. Okay, cool. So we're gonna do that like another month later, and then another couple months later you start not feeling great again. And then they tell you, okay, you gotta retest the house again. And do you see how you just gotten onto a subscription plan? That's what they did, right? And I see this happen over and over and over again. And eventually you are like, wait a second, what? We've done this three or four times, it doesn't frickin work. And so you cut ties with them and you go looking for someone else. And this is how I know that this happens. Because then people find us. Because like I said, there's only so many of the Quote, experts that are floating around out there. So they find us and like, hey, I worked with so and so this is what we did. And I'm like, in my head, I'm like, ugh, okay, we're going to go through the whole house. We're going to be here for like, five, six, seven hours. Let's figure it out. And you know what happens every time I follow one of one of these people? I find a bunch of source problems in the house. I find a bunch. It's not just like a couple, because again, you think of your story, your journey, the path that you've been down, all the tests that your doctors have run, all this stuff. They're seeing this stuff in your clinical results for a reason. It's there. Okay, if there's one thing I will tell you, your doctors, if they're mold literate and they get it and they're running the types of tests that they should be running to figure this stuff out, it doesn't just show up. Right. It doesn't just show up on those tests magically. There's a reason that it's there. It's there because you're being exposed to it now. Yes. Could there have been previous exposures that you're trying to detox out? Sure. It could be that they are typically pretty good at figuring out if that's the case or if there's current exposure. Doctors are pretty good at that, usually. And I don't know how they read their results because I'm not a doctor, but I've talked to several of them, and they have a pretty good idea of whether it's a historical thing or whether it's like a current thing or a combination of both. Right. So a very long explanation of kind of how this whole thing works. All right? I don't want you to get caught up in this. If you have somebody that's coming in your house and they're telling you that they're going to take an ermi test in every freaking bedroom of your house or every, you know, living space in your house. Honestly, guys, it's completely unnecessary. And then you have to ask them. You're like, okay, cool. So you're taking all these irony tests. So what's next? What if they all come up bad? What do you do? What if only one or two of them comes up bad? What do you do? If the answer is, well, we just cleaned the house, then that's not actually fixing anything. And there. It's just. It's. It's so, like, irresponsible of them.

You know, with the local guys, the local inspectors that are just not even on the level, I don't think that they're scamming you. I just think they don't know any better, Right? I think inherently most people are pretty cool. I don't think most people are trying to take you for a ride. Maybe that's just my thought on people in general. But when you start getting up into the upper echelon of perception, right? Like, I have a.

I have a perceived value when someone talks to me, right? I've done inspections for people who know me. They know me without ever meeting me because they've, you know, they listen to the podcast or they've seen, you know, me do interviews with doctors or whatever, right? And you become this expert that is like above, you know, almost like a celebrity personality almost, Right? And because of that, there's this inherent trust that someone will give to that person. And it's just natural. It just happens, you know? And so if you're being handed that trust, you have such a responsibility to, like, not screw that person over. Like.

And.

Even if you're not doing it on purpose, if you know that that's how people are getting to you, and for whatever reason you've kind of fallen into that place, then it's your responsibility to keep educating yourself and continuing to learn too. Right?

You can't just go in and keep doing this and having it fail.

Ermie Everywhere clean four months, you know, two, two, three months later, problems are back, sick again. Ermie Everywhere.

Clean three, four months later, everybody's sick again. It's gotta ring a bell in your head, like, what the hell am I doing? That's not working, right? But that's not what's happening. What's happening is that they just keep doing it and they just keep taking. Taking that subscription check over and over and over again. Probably. I mean, I don't know. I'm throwing this out there now. They're probably freaking excited when you call them again because it's like, oh, cool, we're gonna run another 10 Hermes and I'm gonna tell them to just clean everything again. And this is gonna be X amount of dollars jackpot. Like, I almost see it like that when I'm imagining, because it's just so freaking nuts to me that you can have something fail over and over and over and over again and still think that you're doing the right thing. You know, if something I've talked through, how we built our remediation process and how it Took a couple years and it took a lot of our clients remediation budgets. But we were tweaking every step of the way. We were changing this, we were doing that. We're like, what if we do this? Okay, let's try a different product, let's try in a different order. Let's try maybe looking at different types of cleaning plans and combining them. And so we did all of these things until it started to work. And then it started to work. Right. And it was our responsibility to do that. And to think that you could just go through, put in the same plan over and over and over again, have it not work, continue to collect money from that person. I mean, if you're one of these experts that this is happening to, that person stops calling you at some point and they probably call you and they're really freaking pissed off at some point. And I don't know how many of those phone calls you need to get before you look at yourself in the mirror and you're like, what the hell am I doing? Right? And the problem is that these people aren't doing that. I guarantee you they're not doing that. And this is the big thing, this is the scam, all right? So I don't want you guys to fall into this. I'm not going to tell you who they are. I'm not going to tell you any of that stuff. I can't. It's just not right to do that. Right. So I'm not going to tell you that stuff. Tell you what to look for though, Right? And you tell you kind of what kind of questions to ask, how to avoid it. Right. So first thing is, you know, ermi tests, right? How are you going to use them? Dust testing, how are you going to use them?

From our. I'll tell you what we do. We test air conditioning systems separately. There's a reason that you do that.

We do basically a screening test throughout the house. If you live in a giant floor freaking mansion compound, we might do a couple, but typically we're just doing one set in the living spaces of a house. We may want to split out a crawl space or a basement separately, depending on how impacted it looks. And if we think that the cost to remediate or retrofit a crawl space or basement is going to be extensive, then I want to have a little more information for you to prove to you that that truly is more where the source of the overall.

Cross contamination in the house is coming from. That's really the only time that I would split something out like that. But it's because now we know that we have to do very specific things in the basement or the crawl space. We have drainage to fix, we have things to remove, whatever. There's a lot. That's not the point of this podcast. But if they're coming through.

And they're just taking a bunch of dust samples everywhere, and that's their plan, and you say, okay, well, what if they all come up bad? And if. Then the answer is, well, we're just going to clean the house, just hang up the freaking phone, right? Like, just don't, please don't go down that road. Here's the other thing. If they say, well, if that's the problem, then we're just going to gut the whole room.

Some will say that we're going to do one in every room. And then if one of them comes up as a problem, we're just going to tell you to gut the entire room, remediate the whole thing.

That's not it either. Because you don't really know where it's coming from. Like, yes, you may find it that way. But first off, did you need to gut your whole room? Probably not. And so there's extra that you're doing there. Why are they telling you that? Because they don't know how to find it. And so instead of finding it, they're just telling you to rip your whole frickin house apart. And they're using the ermes as some sort of directional compass to tell you to rip this entire room of your house apart. Rip this entire room of your house apart. That person does not know what they're doing. They don't know how to find it. And if they don't know how to find it, they sure as hell don't know how to get rid of it. And that is the big problem. All right, so I think I'm going to cut off my rant there. Been going on about a half hour.

So listen, guys, I hope this is helpful for you. I really do. I can't tell you how many times I follow these people in inspections. And they're like, yeah, we had local guys and then we found, you know, this person who's, you know, one of the top people when you're really looking around, like the name is floating around out there. And they came in and this is what they said. And then I go in and I'm. And I find like a bunch of source problems. I'm like, what the hell did this person. What was this person doing? What a joke, right? Like, internally I talk like, we talk about like, okay, this is, you know, this person went there, you know, to this place and, and this is what they told them. And then I went in and look at everything I found and we'll like pull up the report and look at it internally. And we're like, this is unreal. Person's a joke. What's going on here? This is terrible, right? So you don't want that to happen. All right? It's gotta be an assessment. They gotta find where they think the source of the problem is, right? If they're not finding where they think the source is, then what's the point of doing the whole thing? You know, just think of it that way. Remember, you gotta find source. If you don't find source, the rest of it doesn't matter. It really doesn't. The rest does not matter. If you don't know where it's coming from, the rest is important to then clean it all up and kind of get you back to clean slate. But truthfully, if you don't know where it's coming from, it's just going to come back again. You're going to end up on the ERMI subscription plan.

And the ERMI and cleaning subscription plan and just keep recycling it every three to four months until eventually you get fed up and you cancel your subscription and then you're really pissed. Except it wasn't like a $10 a month subscription. You're paying thousands and thousands of dollars every, every few months, right? So I don't want you guys to do that. I want you guys to think through everything that we talked about here. Think about when you're talking, whoever you're talking to, however you find, whatever consultant you're going to work with, ask them the questions, right? Like I want to give you the information that you need to be able to screen people the right way, ask them the right questions. What are they going to do with the information when they get it? How are they going to find this, all that stuff? And if it's aligns with you and it makes sense and jives with you, then that's cool. But if you're listening to them and you're thinking about it logically and you're like, something like this doesn't really add up. Try not to get so wrapped up because again, emotionally you're in this place where you've been through so much and you feel like you found somebody that is going to help you. Try not to let your emotions get a hold of you. Try to stay logical on this stuff and think through the process and if it actually makes sense. Right. I don't want you to get so wrapped up in, like, yes, I finally found the person. I went through five people and two doctors and three doctors, and finally they put me with somebody. And I talked to this person. He knows everything I'm going through. He knows everything. All about my health issues. He knows all the different testing methods. This is great. I'm going to go with this guy. Yeah, that's part of it. They have to know that stuff. But then, hey, let's maybe, like, talk a little more. Like, how is this going to work? You know, you're interviewing them, right? It's always an interview. Like, don't call them hoping that they're going to work for you. Right. Call them, interviewing them to see if they're good enough to work for you. Think of it that way. And if you do that, I think that you guys will avoid.

The scam that's going on, and I really want that for you guys. All right, so hope you guys enjoy this. We'll talk to you guys soon.

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.