Jason Earle is a former Wall Street investor turned benevolent capitalist, a nationally recognized expert in mold detection, and the founder of GOT MOLD?. In this episode, Drew chats with Jason about his unusual and amazing career on Wall Street, how he got into the mold business, and the surprising effects that unwanted mold can have on your physical, mental, and even emotional health.
The Fit2Fat2Fit Experience
Tue, Oct 18, 2022 9:23AM • 49:57
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
mold, people, inspection, wall street, day, kid, problem, mold remediation, test, gave, podcast, jason, mom, listen, fact, week, removed, wine, questions, smell
SPEAKERS
Drew Manning, Jason Earle
Drew Manning 00:27
What’s up everyone and Aloha. Welcome to the Fit to Fat to Fit Experience podcast. It’s me, Drew Manning, your host of the show, and really excited for another great episode. Today’s episode is with Jason Earle, who’s the Healthy Home Evangelist, benevolent capitalist, and founder of Got Mold?. His story is really, really interesting from… he’s… we dive into some deep stuff with him.
So we talked about his mom and how his mom committed suicide at a very young age and how that threw him down a path of, you know, of where he ended up today. But I think a lot of people would imagine that would, you know, cripple someone and break them, you know, as a young teenage boy, but actually that made him pretty resilient. And he’s super grateful, super humble person.
You’ll feel that when you when you hear his interview, but he went from nothing working at the gas station to… this is during the times of Wall Street, became one of the most successful youngest guys on Wall Street, and became the youngest licensed stockbroker in history at the age of 17, resulting in a Guinness World Record. And he went on to enjoy a nine year career. So why how did he get into mold? So it’s a really interesting story, you have to listen to the whole episode to understand but now he owns his own company called 1-800-GOT-MOLD?.
He’s been on Dr. Oz, Good Morning America, Extreme Makeover Home Edition, because he’s become very passionate about mold toxicity. And I think a lot of us don’t really realize how toxic mold can be and how detrimental to our physical, mental and emotional health it can be, you know, he definitely opened up my eyes to what I need to do to take it more seriously. And he has these test kits that he talks about, and there’s a discount code at the end. So listen for that.
And all the links will be in the show notes, you guys. And I was super pumped by his story. I think we could have talked for hours and hours, but I think you’ll really enjoy this episode before we dive into it though. This episode was brought to you by Dry Farm Wines. Dry Farm Wines is my favorite wine hand down. It’s keto friendly, Paleo friendly, vegan friendly, you name it. Sugar free, there’s low alcohol, it’s additive free. This is what I love about Dry Farm Wines. When wine is made naturally, it contains only two ingredients organic grapes and native yeast. And since these wines are fully fermented, they contains no sugar, which is less than point one five grams per glass, and their keto friendly dry farm wines is leading a revolution back to natural wine, bringing this new pure wine category to the US for a completely different Wine Experience.
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And you can also check out our other products, very popular products like MCT oil powder and BHB’s and keto meal replacement and collagen and bone broth. We have lots of great products at completewellness.com You can always use the code podcast for 20% off your order. And with that, let’s go hang out with Jason Earle. All right, Jason Earle. Welcome to the show, man. How you doing today?
Jason Earle 05:11
Excellent. How are you?
Drew Manning 05:13
Yeah, I’m doing fantastic. Thanks so much for joining me, man. Really excited dive into your story. You have a crazy story, man, I’ll let you kind of maybe decide where you want to start off maybe in your teenage years, because I know you had some troubling times back then. I think it’s really important to talk through those things to let people know like what you’ve been able to overcome.
Jason Earle 05:32
Sure. Well, first of all, thanks for…thanks for having me and Happy New Year.
Drew Manning 05:36
You too, man, my pleasure.
Jason Earle 05:39
Well, so the, the crux of it really, I guess you can go back to a ninth grade or so when I had already been. I had already been sort of a recalcitrant teenager. I wasn’t really all that enthusiastic about school. So I would say I frequented I didn’t really attend. And, you know, I had I had other interests. But mostly I was kind of exhausted. My family was a mess when I was a kid, and I’ll get into more, but you know what, my… it was tumultuous. I was back and forth between my mom’s house and my dad’s house, and there’s all sorts of drama. And my dad had actually left my mom for his intern. So it was a big, dramatic situation.
And so anyway, around the age of 14, my mom suddenly passed away, she actually committed suicide. And it was, it was actually not a surprise, we was …it was not something that anybody was really… it was shocking, of course, but she had tried several times before. And the fact that my 10th birthday was in Carrier Clinic. A birthday cake came out of one of those carousels, you know, like, in the cafeteria. And in many ways, I think, it also marks kind of a relief, because there was an overarching anxiety around that, you know, I can connect with now even still.
And then, and then shortly thereafter, about a year later, I got diagnosed with Lyme disease. And so that was back then there was really very little known about it. In fact, it wasn’t really considered a real disease back then it was kind of one of these fringe illnesses. And the doctor who I was under… whose care I was under had me on like 30 pills a day of antibiotics for three days on, three days off. It was this thing called Pulse therapy, devastated me in terms of, you know, energy, three days of sickness and three days of sleep. And so I missed a ton of school.
And I… like I said I didn’t want to be there anyway. But they basically pulled me in, and it the beginning of junior year, and said, hey listen, Jason, you’ve missed a ton of school and you’re violate our attendance policy. So we’d like to, you know, have you considered maybe some other alternatives. So anyway, bottom line is they forced me to drop out. And they asked me to stay around for the rest of the year, or come back again, repeat the year.
And so I ended up signing out and went home, my father from the payphone and in the lobby, and asked him to come sign me out. And he was kind of surprised, but also wasn’t really to shocked by it, and on my way out the door with him, because he came down in about 10 minutes to sign. Yeah, mostly because of what I proposed to him was that I wasn’t going to drop out, I was actually going to go to the gas station where I was working part time and get full time hours, save money, get my GED and start college a year early and leapfrog the whole thing, because I felt I had been… so the school had just not been, it was not the path for me. I just knew it intuitively.
Anyway, so I ended up walking out to the car with him after he sent me out. And he said, where you going and I say, I’m going home with you. He said, like hell you are, you’re going to work. And so I walked from there to the gas station, which was just about a half mile down the road, and told the owner that I had just dropped out. I needed some hours and she goes great, I got another loser. And I said, no, no, let me explain what’s going on here. So she supported that and she actually gave me that shift right then in there, she actually fired the guy at the pump, gave me the cash and she said you finish his shift. And within a couple of weeks I was there pumping gas, having a great time, I was actually making more money on tips, checking oil and changing and you know, washer fluid and all that stuff. Then it was my… whatever it was, $6.75 an hour back then.
And a guy came in with a flat tire on his BMW and he had a beautiful wife, this big fat obnoxious guy with bad breath. You could smell it when he rolled down the window. And and he said, hey, kid, my tires flat, can you fill it with air? And I said, sure, and you know, it’ll be flat again. And he said, well, can you fix it? I said, sure, sure if you could do it fast, there’s money in it for you. So I pointed to where he needed to go, and he pulled over to the pump and I saw a nail sticking out.
So I just plugged it in, fill it with air and told him five bucks and he slapped some cash in my hand drove away. And I looked at my hand it was a $50 bill, which at the time I was just a kid I was 16. And so that was a lot of money and I thought for sure he made a mistake. So I actually held on to that $50 bill and kept in my pocket until, you know, I had something better to do with it. And two weeks later, I ran into him again, he came back into the gas station, he was commuting. He passed by every day. And I went up to him and I said, hey, mister, I don’t know if you remember me.
He’s like, yeah, Jason right? Jason, you fixed my tire. It’s like How to Win Friends and Influence People. This guy, you know, that was like, rule number one, know people’s name. He remembered my name, the gas kid… the gas attendant. So anyway, I said, listen, I don’t know if you realize you gave me a $50 bill for a $5 job. But he goes, kid I didn’t have 100. And I was like, right, mind blown. So I said, I feel like I owe you a favor. He said, kid you don’t get it. If anything, I would have missed an appointment. It was a good investment for me. If anything, I owe you a favor.
I said, what do you do for a living? He said, I work on Wall Street. And I said, well how about get me a job. And he said, well, you only get in life what you ask for. So write down my number, call me by 9am tomorrow, or don’t ever bother calling me at all. So grab the pen start writing down on my hand because I didn’t have a piece of paper. He starts laughing, he goes, kid, you’ll fit right. And he rolls up his sleeve, and he had stock quotes written all over his forearm.
And so I wrote his number down and I went home, I told my father who was strangely supportive of the whole thing. I think most parents would be skeptical that some guy recruiting a kid at the gas station, but my dad was like, listen, you better call him. You know, if you don’t call him, I should call him for you, because I mean, I was having a hard time getting up in the morning. It was actually a challenge.
You know, I just come off with a couple of pretty challenging years there. But I was inspired by actually being free from school, and so I called at 8:59 and he answered me, he said, what are you doing today? I said, I’m going to work? He said where? And I said at the gas station, of course. He goes wrong answer. And I was like, alright, can we do that again? And he goes, yep. What are you doing today? And I said, going to work? He said, where? And I said, what’s your address? And he goes, 888 Pine Street, 10th floor, click.
And I was like, okay, I guess I’m going to New York today. I threw on my finest pair of jeans for my Wall Street interview and got on the train. I didn’t have any nice clothes, and showed up. And he goes, kid! You showed up! I said, of course I did. He goes, no kid, you don’t get it. Most people don’t. They don’t call and they don’t show. And then he’s like 90% of success in life is showing up. And that’s stuck in my head.
And I later find out that that was a Woody Allen quote, but it’s true. Anyway, it turns out he was the managing director of a firm that was in the era of the Wolf of Wall Street. And so I ended up being brought into the fold there. It was a very tumultuous time, lots of headlines from that firm called Hanover Sterling.
So I started, he recruited me. He said, listen, kid, I don’t know what you got going on, but if you sit here and listen to me, for the next six months, I’ll make you rich. And I was like, well, what I got going on, I could either pump gas, or I could do this. And I sat down and he taught me and so lo and behold, I unknowingly within a year, got my stock broker’s license, and I had become the youngest licensed stockbroker in history.
Again, very accidental, right? I mean, I failed Algebra One, I had to repeat it. I, you know, it’s just like, I was the most unlikely person to end up on Wall Street from there, right? You know, the only kids who have dropped out of my high school in years, we had a very top 10 school in New Jersey, and I was the one that went to Wall Street at 16.
So yeah, so anyway, I did that for nine years, and I had a great run, like two years. I owned my own firm. But by the way, also, I might mention that during that period, I had developed a nice little alcohol problem. And so that’s, that was a beautiful undercurrent that we can talk more about later, if you want to dig into that. But then around the around the time the dot-com bubble burst, I went looking for something meaningful with my life, which is what brought me into mold.
Drew Manning 13:26
Yeah, so let’s pause there for a second because that’s, first of all, that’s a mind blowing story. First thing I’m gonna say is my heart goes out to you, with your mom. Losing your mom at such a young age, I can only imagine how traumatic that must have been, you know, and you must be a very resilient person to be able to still show up in life and, you know, even even show up at the gas station, you know, and to do those things.
I have a question for you, though, when, when you started being… when he brought you in under his wing a little bit? Did you have self doubt about like, can I really do… Do you believe in yourself? Did you struggle with that? Or did you like, oh, I’m just gonna fake it till I make it? Like how was it your internal dialogue at that time?
Jason Earle 14:06
Well, first of all, thanks for the kind words about my mom. Yeah, I must say that, that, that during that time, this is I’ll drop this and you can read into it how you want. I had been experimenting with psychedelics. And quite frankly, the reason that I was able to rebound from my mom’s loss, and even through Lyme disease, I think was largely from the insights that I had from psychedelics, quite frankly.
Drew Manning 14:29
Interesting.
Jason Earle 14:29
We could talk about that more. That’s another podcast, quite frankly. But… …but it was profound for me. And it really did, it taught me that, you know, it was all about perspective, and hers was too short. A permanent solution to a temporary problem. So anyway, it was that kind of… that kind of thinking that came to me in a very visceral real way. That gave me the resilience and that stays with me to this day. I have a better relationship with my mom now than I ever did. Truly, I look back at that one experience, and I say this with with the utmost compassion for anyone who’s lost anyone. In fact, my friends, one of my father’s best friends just committed suicide last week.
So this is something that’s this heavy in my heart for other people suffering. But for me, I look back at that one experience as the single most transformative thing that ever happened to me. It was the most important time of my life, and transformed me, it turned me into who I am. And my mom, if she were still alive, they would really like who I am. And so why would I ever regret that? Right? Her pain was insurmountable for her.
But the gift she gave me in her death gave me a life, that is something that I cherish, I wouldn’t want to be anyone else. And I think that’s the definition of success. If you can say, unequivocally, I wouldn’t want to be anyone else, you’ve succeeded. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, how good looking you are, whatever you’ve accomplished in your life, if you can honestly say, without pause, that I wouldn’t want anybody else. And then you’ve got that… and that’s the gift that she gave me but but in a way that you couldn’t have gotten any other way. I couldn’t have gotten it by pursuing it. I only got it by going through it.
And you know, so but what I always wished for people is to have enough enough difficulty enough challenges, enough adversity enough everything so that you are either crushed by it, which by the way, that’s Darwinian, or you rise up, and the decision that’s yours, but I think the saddest thing in our culture is that we don’t have enough.
There’s not enough of those things and we end up growing like seedlings in a greenhouse that once wind blows and falls over, it’s perished forever, right? That same seed planted in the cliffside with all that develop this beautiful, knotty creature with character, you know, that resists and grows against those those forces. So anyway, about my mom…
Drew Manning 14:33
Yeah, yeah. That’s powerful. That’s powerful. Thank you.
Jason Earle 16:58
I am so grateful for everything that she gave me. And that that hurt hurt her death in fact, was again so thank you. In terms of the dead I believe in myself, holy shit. So let me tell you what happened. This is this is comes back down to you know, there’s this old adage in a burning the bridges or burning the ships, you know, yeah, when you have no alternative, you figure out what to do. Right? Yeah.
And so in this particular case, all of my other options were, I was a high school dropout, that I… that my only… I was like… I would sit there in the morning, I’d come in by the way on the train, I had no money. I take this… he bought a train pass for me. I was getting paid $200 a week commuting into New York City, so you can imagine what my budget was right? And so I had $3 a day for food, which was a bagel knish and a hotdog.
So my gut and my… I was a disaster, I was having out of body experiences from my digestion from the antibiotics, really truly like cognitive impairment. It was crazy. I was drunk from a bagel, from the fermentation. But the gig was, I sat there and I made 400 phone calls a day to business people all over the country and they all said basically, you know, fuck off.
One person a day would say yes to you and you would be successful. So he gave me exactly what to say and exactly how to say it and I just sat there and it was a foreign language. All this stuff made no sense to me. He said read this script and I did it, I did it and I cried inside…
Drew Manning 18:34
Yeah.
Jason Earle 18:35
…inside because I couldn’t have… I was surrounded by all these super high, highly charged testosterone of really successful guys. These kids around me were 21, 22, 23 years old making 100 200 300,000 a month! A month! And they were just… and I would sit there saying I can’t do this but I have, what else am I going to do? Go back to the gas station? And so I just sat there and I just did it and did it and did it and did it and next thing you know I started getting better at it.
And next thing you know, I got pretty you know competent and and before you know it you know my name was up on the board first thing in the morning, and next thing you know it was just you know the momentum carried but boy fake it till you make it. You know that’s what they promote, that’s what they tell you to do. It was so much more than fake it till you make it it was more like I had no alternative.
And so I forced myself through to… but I’ll tell you everybody I tried to recruit, all my friends or anyone else who came in the door and either kids I tried to recruit at a gas station, if they had a comfortable home life or they had an alternative, they didn’t stick.
Drew Manning 19:39
Interesting. Yeah, yeah that’s that’s a really powerful lesson. I think that’s really you know, interesting to think about you know, burning the… burning the boats, burning the bridges. So you don’t have any alternative and you’re kind of like okay, this is my only choice.
This is my only choice my only option. And that’s amazing. So I mean have so many questions about that. We could do that, man, I feel like we could talk to you forever, but I want to talk to you about the transition from Wall Street. Very successful Wall Street career. Why did you leave it to investigate or become the nation’s top detective on mold? Like, I’m so curious about that?
Jason Earle 20:14
Right? Where’s that? Where’s the connection? Right? Yeah. No, it’s It’s one of those funny things that you you look back at your life that you know, you can never really predict the future. But you look back, and it’ll make sense. In my case, I had been, you know, nine years on Wall Street. I was at the time, 25 years old. So I’d already had a career, really. And most of my friends were either going to grad school or just looking for… they’re looking for, you know, they were just getting started.
And I just… the dot-com bubble had just burst. I quite frankly, without getting into world class on finance, I lost faith in the asset class stocks as an asset class at that time for the reasons that were present at that moment, which was true, because the Dow actually traded down, but it was a dead decade. So I left at the right time, because I was a stockbroker, not a bond broker, or anything else, I really, truly believed that was not a good place for me to be.
And I was, and I was fortunately, for better or for worse, actually correct. But I…I also just had lost, I lost the verve. So I would wake up and I was excited to get, I used to go in the office. I wake up at two o’clock in the morning, I’d be at my desk, often by 3:30 and I call Europe. And I’d be done at four o’clock, but I was flying over… I was having a great time. I mean, I really truly loved what I was doing. It was an adventure every single day.
And then one day I woke up, and I wasn’t having fun anymore. And I think in large part, it was also due to my you know, excesses that were off, you know, fostered by any 25 year old kid making the money that I was making back then is going to, you know, probably pushed the limits in some other ways. And so, you know, that was paying a price, taking its toll. But then also, I just realized that I was actually becoming a person that I didn’t like, and I was making money for money. I was dissident, I was not living in a place of integrity. I had all these aspirations to do yoga, and meditate and take care of my own. And I was drinking a bottle of vodka a day and doing cocaine like it was, you know, whatever.
And it was just, it was absolutely completely adverse to the person that my ideal vision that I had of myself, I was not living up to it. But I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to really break. So I just one day, I literally woke up and I quit. I woke up and I decided to sell everything, put 20 pounds of stuff in a backpack, and go on a walk about. I walked in, but I just quit. I handed over my book of clients to my partner and said, I’m out.
And nobody believed that was true. Nobody believed it was possible, you know. And it was and so basically, I was right, I quit a month before September 11. I actually started on Wall Street a month after the first bombing. And I started I quit Wall Street a month, before September 11. So talking about book ends. And so I decided to go, I was going to do an around the world ticket, but the plane, you know, airfare travel was unpopular at the time. And so I hopped on a train it took it across Canada, from New Jersey, to all the way across Canada, and all the way to LA actually, and then flew to Hawaii.
And while I was in Hawaii, I was reading about… and I all I took was a journal, a camera, CDs, you know, Emerson’s collected essays, a big book of Emerson’s essays, and, you know, appropriate clothes to be in sort of all climates going to be Canada and Hawaiian seems right. And why was in why it was reading a lot as I usually do, but in the local papers there was…there are a lot of stories about a huge mold problem in the Hilton Kalia tower right on Waikiki Beach.
And they had been shut down then for a number of months when I arrived. And there were a lot of people who had gotten sick from the building, people who work there, and guests as well. And one particular story jumped out at me, it was a 40-something guy who had been otherwise healthy, working in this building for a while and developed adult onset asthma, which was something I’d never heard of, and also sensitivities, all these foods that he had enjoyed previously. And it was like a deja vu moment for me. It was like… it was like an epiphany.
Because when I was four years old, I suddenly lost a bunch of weight in a 3 week period. And my parents took me to the pediatrician who said you should take him to Children’s Hospital. This is serious. And then based upon my family history, the first diagnosis was cystic fibrosis. And that was devastating to my… back then it was a death sentence but it was… it was especially devastating because my father had lost four of his cousins to CF before the age of 14.
So, my parents spent six weeks basically greaving while they waited for the second opinion, which fortunately was that I don’t have cystic fibrosis evidenced by the fact that I sit and stand here at 45 years old, but actually had asthma compounded by pneumonia. And I was… they tested me for allergies, and I was literally allergic to everything that they tested me for. My dad said I looked… they put me in a papoose or a straitjacket for toddlers and they draw a grid on your back and then put the antigens on your back.
And my dad said I looked like a ladybug, the red swollen back with dots all over it, you know. And I literally tested highly allergic to grass, wheat, corn, eggs, dogs, cats, cotton, soybeans, and I was growing up… and I grew up in a little nonworking farm surrounded by grass, wheat, corn, eggs, dogs, cats, cotton, soybeans, and so lived on inhalers most of my childhood until my folks split up when I was 12.
And that’s when my dad did what he did. And my… and so we split up, I moved out of that house and all my symptoms went away. And I had not thought about it again until I was there in Hawaii. And so I called my father from a payphone which probably isn’t there anymore.
Drew Manning 26:16
Yeah.
Jason Earle 26:17
And said, hey, do you think we had a mold problem at Old Trenton Road? And he was like, Jason, we had mushrooms growing in the basement. Of course, we had mold. Why do you ask? And I was like, I mean, he’s so flippant about it, you know, like, here’s an asthmatic kid. Awareness about that about mold back then was zero. In fact, when I was making that phone call, that was 2002, the awareness about mold was zero.
The average consumer is mold shmold. You know, moldy smell sounds like a basement. It’s just a dismissive thing, right? Everyone now knows basement smell, musty smell not healthy, right? That’s become something that’s much more, I think, in the collective consciousness. And so anyway, I immediately became very interested in, passionately interested in how buildings impact people’s health.
Because we spend so much of our time indoors, this about 90% in fact, and warm climate really warm climates, it could be the 99%. Dubai, they spend 99% of the time indoors, especially if you conclude transportation. So we’re being you know, we are we are re breathing the same air. And and everyone’s so worried about the outdoor environment, which you can do nothing about, and in the indoor environment, you have control.
And in the few areas that you have control in this life, you should you should exercise that control. And I saw that here indoor air quality, and also just the fact that it has the potential to have such a huge impact. I mean, like, for example, what you in your area of interest. Did you know that that poor indoor air quality and pollution actually can contribute to weight gain?
Drew Manning 26:49
I have heard of that, actually. Yes, yeah.
Jason Earle 27:49
It’s pretty fascinating. It does a lot of different things. But one of the things is that it causes inflammation, inflammation, causes weight gain, and for various reasons. But it also has the potential to alter, it can alter you hormonally, and interrupt the hunger gene. And actually, people will eat past satiation based upon poor indoor air quality. It’s linked to diabetes. Of course, asthma is directly linked to both obesity and diabetes.
And so of course, mold is directly linked to asthma. And so you can go there’s lots of different ways that you end up with mold causing diabetes, asthma, obesity, but really, it’s this entire inflammatory thing that occurs when people are being assaulted effectively by something that is that they’re surrounded by, yeah, you know, it’s an all on assault. And so, so anyway, I came back to New Jersey, came back to New Jersey after Hawaii armed with some curiosity. And then taking a job working for a mold remediation company was actually a basement waterproofing company doing mold.
And so I saw how scurrilous they were and on the side, I decided to start an inspection business, because I thought that I could maybe create a way to create value, to help people and to protect them from the contractors. And when you looked at all the other environmental hazards out there, lead, paint, asbestos, they all eventually, everyone started being an inspector and remediator.
And eventually the law said, well, that’s a conflict of interest, you should choose one or the other. And I knew that was going to happen eventually with mold. So I said, there’s a lot of guys doing cleanup because it’s because they think there’s a lot more money in it. I’d rather do the inspection side, protect the consumer, learn more, not have the overhead and so I’ve created a little inspection company on the side.
And that ultimately, I’ll give you a moment here to ask some question about this. But what we did in there was just complete experiment, which really opened this whole thing up was I began… I heard about a guy training mold sniffing dogs, and and I ended up getting one right at the very beginning with this inspection business, and decided to call the company lab results because it was a Labrador Retriever and we were doing laboratory laboratory testing And, and that really took off. I mean when we can that became 1-800-GOT-MOLD?. And so anyway, that’s how I went from Wall Street to mold.
Drew Manning 30:10
Just a quick break from one of our show sponsors. We’ll be right back to the podcast. This episode is brought to you by Paleo Valley, I’ve been recently using their new neuro effect product, which my brain absolutely loves. This product is Miracle Gro for the brain. It’s one of the ways this works is it increases BDNF, which it was brain derived neurotrophic factor.
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And so you’re gonna love the way your brain feels on neuro fact, I promise go to paleo valley.com use code drew for 15% off your order. Crazy. I have so many questions. I think, like I said, this could turn into like a three hour episode, but I just want to dive right into this. Okay, so people listening to this, you know, what are some of the most common things they should look for? Whether it’s symptoms, or and then things in their house?
How do they know if they have mold? How do they know like, you know, some of their issues, you know, mental emotional issues are caused by mold, physical issues, like you just mentioned? How do people know like, where do they get started with like, okay, maybe have a mold problem? I don’t know. Like, what are they? What should they look for in their home, like some common things and also like, Hey, you’re feeling this way, this way, this way, that could be caused by mold. So maybe just kind of start from with the basics of what people need to know and what they should look for.
Jason Earle 31:43
Sure. And this is actually might be a good, good chance for me to also mention that for your listeners, we’ve created a special welcome page, where we actually have an ebook called How to Find Mold. And in that ebook, we talk about the common symptoms, we talk about what to look for, it’s actually filled with inspection checklists, as well as guidance on how to do your own inspection, really. It’s got a lot of FAQs, and it’s 45 pages, it’s, there’s no strings attached to it. It’s one of those things that people just always give us a lot of positive feedback on. So we created a welcome page for your listeners that gotmold.com/fit f i t. That’s gotmold.com/fit
Drew Manning 32:27
Gotmold.com/fit, we’ll put that in the show notes, you guys, I think that’s very valuable, I’m actually going to take a look at it, just because I live here in Hawaii, and I want to be very, you know, aware of these things. And so I’m definitely going to dive into it as well.
Jason Earle 32:39
Cool. And there’s also a coupon code there, which is fit10, for anyone who wants to. And we haven’t talked about the test kit yet but yeah, but there’s also a coupon code there for you.
Drew Manning 32:50
Okay, so thank you.
Jason Earle 32:52
Um, but so anyway, we, in short, what, what I always say is, the first thing you should do is you should engage your senses, people tend to have a pretty good feel if they’ve got an air quality problem, if they are able to listen to the cues. And so when I say engage your senses, I say if you can see something, smell something or feel something, do something, see something, what is the something so you’re looking for moisture, at the end of the day, mold is a moisture problem, I cannot emphasize that enough.
Everyone’s worried about mold, everyone’s villified mold, mold is just doing its thing. Mold is nature’s digestive organism, mold, mold, is just trying to turn everything back into dirt. If you create conditions or lab conditions to occur indoors in your house, and it tries to turn your house back into dirt that’s on you. That’s not multiple mulch is doing its job. In fact, I would argue that mold is actually doing you a favor because it produces a smell, which is your first clue.
And if you if you listen to that clue, you can get to the source and you can fix it before it becomes a major issue, which is actually it’s chronic dampness and chronic mold that causes chronic illness. It’s not that little bit of mold in your house that you have from a one time event that you’re talking about. It’s like inflammation in the body. Yeah, acute inflammation, okay, you can deal with that, figure out what the source of it is deal with that or let it rest.
But in all cases, chronic inflammation is its own disease. And the same thing goes with mold. I look at the building much like an organism or a body, in the sense that you know, this is it’s got a birthday and a death day potentially how long it exists largely depends on how well you care for it. And you know, the house is one of the basic human needs so you have to care for it. So I’m suggesting here that you you develop a deeper relationship with your home it’s an intimate relationship you truly need each other your your the house requires you and you require it and yet the symbiosis that we have we truly have a symbiotic relationship with our home. That’s something that I’m encouraging people to do. So engage your senses. Do you see something? You see any signs of moisture?
Do you see any discoloration, blistering paint stains? Anything that might indicate moisture? If so, you want to take action and figure out what the source of that is. If you smell something, this is the big one. Musty odors are directly linked to asthma in children, in fact that there’s all sorts of evidence that the musty odor is one of the primary immune triggers for people with mold related illness. And chronic exposure, the musty smell can cause chemical sensitivities and otherwise healthy people. So people, you know, the people who can’t be around perfumes, those people…
I know a lot of those people, because I’ve had a lot of those as clients, people who live in moldy basements, who apartments, basement apartments, what have you. Chronic dampness, suddenly, next thing, you know, they can’t be around any of those chemicals. So if you see something, if you smell something, it’s a big one. And so the musty odor is a clear sign that mold is doing its thing. Mold digests what it’s going to digest outside its body. And that musty smell is the byproduct of his digestion, you can call it mold farts, if you will. I mean, it’s literally that’s what it is. It’s microbial gases. And so, and then if you feel something in the field, something is, is also kind of nebulous. It’s a little bit nebulous, but, you know, again, you have to trust your intuition with these things.
If you feel worse indoors, you do have doors. first clue, if you if the typical symptoms are, you know, headaches, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and there’s any additional sort of respiratory, you know, hay fever, like symptoms, those things are the most common. But everybody reacts to mold differently, you can have a mold problem at home, and five people living there, and some people won’t have any risk reactions, some people are anaphylactic on that.
And then some people are just having varied other mix of symptoms. So it’s hard to say what a mold symptom is. Because it is so individual. But but the most important thing is, with all that if you see something, smell something or feel something, do something, but you want to you want to get the facts, you want to do things like you know, get a humidity gauge, and put it in areas where you might be concerned about moisture, and you want to keep it between 40 and 60%.
You want to if you smell something, see something or feel something you might want to get testing done one or the other, you know, 1-800-GOT-MOLD? our mold inspection business. You know, the average inspection is expensive. So finding a do it yourself test kit, like the one we created at gotmold.com gives people a cost effective way to do that. But the most important thing with mold is acting quickly because mold will mold grows geometrically. And so if you don’t act quickly, number one, you’ll be exposing yourself unnecessarily. And number two, the problem gets more expensive exponentially, too.
Drew Manning 37:34
So let’s say they do have the test kit, let’s say that you get the test kit, they find out that there is mold in the house. From there, is this something that they can fix? Or is this something that they have to call 1-800-GOT-MOLD? to get professionals to come in? And and what do the professionals do? Like what do they do to get rid of the mold? I’m curious to know, like, Okay, now that let’s say there is mold found? What do you actually do to help the situation?
Jason Earle 37:58
So what is mold remediation? It’s a really good question.
Drew Manning 38:01
I been meaning to ask.
Jason Earle 38:02
Ya know, it’s funny, all these I’ve done so many podcasts, and I don’t think anybody’s directly asked me, you know, what is remediation? And, and so remediation, the root word is remedy. So many people talk about mold treatments, they talk about, you know, you know, fix the mold, kill it… kill it. People want to kill mold. But there’s no point in killing mold, that you really truly all you need to do is first of all, remedy being the root word is remedy the moisture problem the cost.
Okay, so that’s the first part of mold remediation is actually nothing, it has nothing to do with the mold per se, it’s the first thing you do is turn off the spigot. Right, to prevent it from growing further, because mold again is a moisture problem. Mold is up there with death and taxes, it’s a guarantee, if something gets wet and stays wet for more than 48 hours, according to the EPA, it’s a potential mold issue. According to the industry standard. If something gets wet for 48 hours, actually, if it’s 72 hours, it’s automatically considered mold.
So you can it’s not something that happens once in a while, it’s actually something you can almost set your watch to. So if something gets wet, you’ve got to react quickly to get it dry. So now if you don’t react quickly, and you’ve got mold, whether it’s you know, you learned from our test kit or a test kit or from from your own observation. Unfortunately, mold is is something that you should usually engage professional for. The EPA has a guideline that say if it’s more than 10 square feet, you can or less than 10 square feet, you can do it yourself.
But that’s kind of a joke because it doesn’t include if you see 10 square feet of mold, which is a lot that’s a three foot by three foot section. Behind that is oftentimes much more this is a tip of the iceberg type of thing. Oftentimes the the massive mold is actually not visible. So I recommend people not do their own mold remediation in any circumstances. So if you hire a professional though, it looks a lot like eat Tea landed, you know, it looks a lot it’s like…. it’s no different than asbestos remediation or lead paint in the sense that they put, you know, a tent around the work area, and then create ventilation to try to keep the particles and dust that are created during the work in in that work area.
And then and then they you go about removing through gross removal, you remove the sheetrock, and the insulation or the carpet, carpet pad and whatever, whatever materials, including if things are upholstered, and they’ve been mold effected or water damage, those get removed, all that stuff that is damaged and cannot be cleaned. And that’s not structural is removed. So it’s just brute force labor. And then once all of the surfaces have been have been, have been exposed, and all of the effective materials removed, then there’s a comprehensive microscopic cleaning that occurs. And that’s being done with HEPA filter vacuum cleaners, and damp wipes everybody at this point, when I say everybody, I mean other motor mediators, as well as many of the consumers want to spray stuff. This is when they just want to spray stuff.
And there’s actually a lot of evidence that spraying stuff is worse for you than the mold itself. The stuff that the residue of these compounds is are terrible, you cannot remove them once they’re in the house, that a lot of them are hormone modulating. So boys with moobs, and girls that are menstruating too early, to all this good stuff. And these are legacy chemicals that have lodged in our fat and don’t go away.
And so I always say we’re not trying to trade one toxin for another mold remediation, should not involve chemicals ever underscore ever unless there’s sewage or some other bacterial concern. In fact, there’s evidence check this out for COVID that I just read a paper a well done paper that showed that there was no increase in effectiveness of removing COVID from surfaces using antimicrobials a wet wipe was just as effective as a Clorox wipe. How does how’s that I shouldn’t say Clorox, but But then an antiseptic.
Yeah. And so, so anyway, the bottom line is it’s really just cleaning, you’re cleaning up all the dust in that in that space, which includes the mold spores, and for anyone who’s listening that that is scared of mycotoxins, they’re in the dust. So when you clean your taking those up, you don’t need to do anything special for the mycotoxins no matter what they say.
And so basically, at that point, provided that the moisture problem has been corrected, and that the place passes a white glove test. And then air samples are collected to show that the the indoor air quality in that area is better than what’s outside, there’s should be written clearance criteria, then that property can be restored. In other words, it can be rebuilt. So it’s really a controlled interior demolition with extreme cleaning.
Drew Manning 42:42
Yeah, and a couple questions, on average, how long does that take to do and what would that cost someone on average to do depending on how extensive it is? But…
Jason Earle 42:53
On average, you know, the average mold project is probably $10,000 or so. On average, the average inspections…
Drew Manning 43:05
Does it take a couple of day?.
Jason Earle 43:06
That’s a really good question. And this is this is this is a kick in the pants ready for this one? A properly done mold remediation project from the beginning to the end. I mean, this is from the point where someone’s called for an inspection.
Drew Manning 43:18
Yeah.
Jason Earle 43:19
It’s about a month.
Drew Manning 43:21
Wow. It’s wild, right?
Jason Earle 43:22
Because it because…
Drew Manning 43:23
You can’t live there ? Is it inhabitable? Or like you said the cover the whole house and…
Jason Earle 43:28
Every situation is different, right? So like, it depends on the sensitivity of the individuals, if there’s anybody who’s got like a compromised immune system, you know, infants, elderly people like that, that are in the high risk populations, those people should find an alternative arrangement for that time. Some people barricade themselves into bedrooms with air purifiers and sign waivers. There’s all sorts of ways to make that work. But a lot of times people move out and they go into a hotel and they find that they can’t be in the hotel because the chemicals are so bad in the hotel and the mold in the hotel that they end up moving back into their house and signing the waiver.
So but the but yeah, it takes about a week to get the inspection done, get a report, do the lab tests, it takes you know time to get the develop a scope of work. And then to get the contractors you know to schedule. If provided, you can get someone to say that you get qualified people and you can get them to schedule, then have another week for the work, let’s say. And then maybe even if it’s a few days, then you gotta get another inspection. And that’s going to take another few days to get the last back. And so if you add it all up, and if you do everything perfectly, you’re talking to three and a half weeks, four weeks. So yeah, four or five days of cleanup and demo, right. So it’s really it’s prep, and it’s completion. But there’s a lot of moving parts in there. And if it’s not coordinated, well, this thing can go on for a long time.
Drew Manning 44:41
Yeah.
Jason Earle 44:42
Yeah.
Drew Manning 44:43
Dang, Jason man. I feel like we like I said go on forever here. But I just want to say first of all, it’s really cool that you’ve been able to find something that I can definitely tell you’re passionate about. It’s definitely affected you personally. And it’s really cool to see someone like you who has had you know, quote quote, success in like the world of Wall Street and all of that, you know, leave all that behind to go on a walk about, like you said, and really discover what it is you want to do in this this world and how you can how you can serve people.
So I commend you for that. And I think that’s, you know, something you said earlier in the podcast that really stuck with me, you know, I wouldn’t want to be anyone else. And that’s a good question to ask yourself. Like, that’s real. That’s real success. And so I commend you for that. I wish wish we had more time to talk about this. But in essence, we’re coming up on time, I just want to give you some time to let people know, once again, those or you know, where people can go to find you and find out more about you. I’m sure people will think your story is fascinating. But then also, when 1-800-GOT-MOLD? I mean, that’s an easy number to remember, but your website and all that stuff, and, you know, social media.
Jason Earle 45:44
Yeah, thank you very much. I really appreciate the kind words, it’s been a pleasure to be on your show. And yeah, you know, I think, you know, if there’s one thing that I encourage people to do, especially when they’re asking, you know, I want to sort of business I want to create, you know, I want to how do I how do I find my niche or whatever, you know, I always encourage people to mine their history for their future goals, right?
You there’s something about your past that was engaging, or that something you overcame that you you have, you can share with other people. And almost everybody’s got something like that. So I just encourage you to look for that. But in terms of where to contact me, gotmold.com. There’s a…if you have questions about moldy scroll right down the bottom of the homepage, and you can post questions, or you can also if you want go to Facebook, on our Facebook page, you can ask questions there, and we’ll answer them for the benefit of everybody else.
And also, as I mentioned earlier, so we have a do it yourself test kit that we created partially to, to make it affordable for anyone, but really, for anyone to be able to test their air. But also, because I created a Mold Inspection Company, my parents wouldn’t have been able to hire when they wouldn’t been able to afford and so that always bothered me.
And so we created a super high quality, low cost way for you to test your air for mold without any the cost or hassle of trying to find the hire professional. And so they start at $149, up to $249, you can test it for three rooms, lab fees, shipping is included. That’s all IN gotmold.com. And so we have a welcome page there, as I said earlier, gotmold.com/fit f i t. There’s a coupon code, if you want to purchase one of the kits that will give you 10% off, that’s fit10 f i t 10. And on that welcome page, you’ll see the the ebook that I mentioned earlier to which is how to find mold, which is filled with inspection checklists and some useful stuff. Anyone who’s concerned about a mold problem, not quite sure what to do next. That’s a really good first step.
Drew Manning 47:42
Yeah. Jason Earle. Thank you, man. You’re amazing. I really appreciate you coming on picture you do. And we’ll have all those links in the show notes. You guys. Thank you guys for tuning in to the Fit 2 Fat 2 Fit Experience podcast. And I might have to have you back on again. Because I think there’s a lot of the story that we didn’t, we weren’t able to dive into. So I appreciate you being patient with me and, and sharing your knowledge with all of us.
Jason Earle 48:03
It would be my pleasure, truly. Yep.
Drew Manning 48:06
Take care. Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. On the Fit 2 Fat 2 Fit Experience podcast. I really, really appreciate all your support you’ve shown me throughout all the years, if you love the podcast, and please go subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. And also, if you love the podcast, please leave us a review. It definitely helps out with rankings, which means more people listening to this podcast when they see it.
And feel free to reach out to me on social media @fit2fat2fit or at fit2fat2fit.com with suggestions or comments or concerns, anything that you guys think I could do to make this podcast better for you. I definitely want to bring the highest quality content to you the most value because I know you’re investing you know 30 to 50 minutes per day when you listen to the podcast. So I really appreciate all the support. And like I said, go follow me at Fit 2 Fat 2 Fit on social media. If you want to reach out to me with any comments, questions or concerns. Thank you guys so much. And we’ll see you guys back here next week on the Fit 2 Fat 2 Fit Experience podcast.
Jason Earle 48:07
Thank you.
