Mold Man Prophecies w/ Sy Elijah | Ep. 196

David and Gary sit down with Sy Elijah—the owner of Pure Air North Carolina—to talk about what it means to take the leap when the path isn’t clear. On the surface, his business is mold remediation, but underneath it’s a story about risk, faith, and trusting a plan bigger than what you can see.

From the grind of starting out to the responsibility of leading something that lasts, Sy shares what it takes to keep going when walking away might seem easier.

It’s a conversation about courage, timing, and the kind of grit that shapes both business and life.

LINKS:

Pure Air North Carolina Website

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] David: Gary, I think this will be the first time we've had a conversation in weeks that has nothing to do with AI. It's magical.

[00:00:05] Sy: You're welcome. 

[00:00:06] David: mold and AI, I don't think work together.

[00:00:12] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Biz Dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business.

I'm David Bax, your host joining you today from my house, which is weird. I am joined by Gary Voight, who is also in his house, but he's always in his house 'cause he's just sad and lonely. What's up, Gary,

[00:00:28] Gary: I, I don't have a fancy office, but I do have skateboards behind me, so 

[00:00:31] David: you do have skateboards. You do? And that's cool. I'm missing my violin. We were just talking about that up before we started. Anyway, more importantly, we are joined today by Sai Elijah, who is the founder of Pure Air North Carolina. Welcome, Mr. S.

How are you 

[00:00:47] Sy: you guys. Nice to be here. I'm good. I'm good.

[00:00:50] David: So tell me a little about Pure Air.

What do you do?

[00:00:53] Sy: Yeah, so we are a mold remediation company. We started out as a mold first company, and it's a growing industry. It's a, it's one, a real sexy industry to be in right now. Software's got nothing on mold, I'll tell you that.

But we got into it about six years ago with kind of a revolutionary technology where we use, vaporize parasitic acid to treat a home holistically 

[00:01:15] David: wait. What? Parasitic acid. That sounds

like something like a super would

[00:01:20] Sy: Yeah. No, it sounds like I'm a Batman villain. It does, and the haircut doesn't help, I'll say that much. But so no. What we use is, so parasitic acid is hydrogen peroxide and vinegar mixed together. Basically, not really. It's hydrogen peroxide and acetic acid, but don't do it at home.

'cause it, it. It becomes pretty harsh. And we put it through a pressurized chamber. And upon release from this pressurized chamber, it turns into a gas or a vapor. We use a lot of physics to get it there and we fill up an entire home with it. And so we can treat an entire home that's infested with mold and get your mold levels from an unhealthy level down to a very healthy level in about eight hours. It

does have its limitations. It won't work when the mold's wet. It won't work when the mold's behind walls and stuff like that. So it all has to be exposed. And we'll also, we, we don't totally replace the traditional mold remediation we add to it with this. But it gives us the ability to treat a home as a system when traditionally mold has been treated as like this acute problem, Hey, I've got this mold spot on my wall. and we can come in and say, Hey, let's look at this whole house as an entire system and let's find all the pain points and mold. You've got some in your crawlspace, you've got some in your hvac, and because of that we've got this, microbial load, this biotoxin load in the house that's making us sick. And so we'll fix the acute places we do the crawlspace encapsulations. I genuinely believe that we do the best crawlspace, encapsulations in Raleigh and every other crawlspace company in Raleigh would say the same thing. And we do water mitigation and stuff like that, but our crown jewel is the way we do mold in a holistic manner and how quickly and how effectively we can get a home back to healthy. 

[00:02:54] David: Gary, I think this will be the first time we've had a conversation in weeks that has nothing to do with AI. It's magical.

[00:03:00] Sy: You're welcome. 

[00:03:01] David: mold and AI, I don't think work together.

[00:03:04] Sy: Yeah. 

[00:03:05] Gary: But this is really interesting.

[00:03:06] David: So Mo Mold

gets 

[00:03:07] Sy: interesting stuff. I will be like, I'll be honest guys. I, and David, we run in some of the same circles.

I have been blown away at how many people wanna talk about mold. It really is interesting, and I will say, David, if you have light hair, light skin, and light eyes, you have a genetic disposition predisposition to be mold intolerant. And so it'll make you more

sick, more quickly. Than other people. Yeah, I saw the red beard man, because it's a no brainer. I'm sorry, David, but

yeah, you're gonna feel the effects of mold more quickly than most other people will.

[00:03:40] David: Awesome. That sounds perfect. 

[00:03:42] Gary: Your kryptonite.

[00:03:43] David: My brother. It's funny, my brother who is an act, I don't have, I have brown hair when I have hair, but my brother is a full blown redhead

and he went, he's in Dallas and he went through a whole mold thing, so I'm sure that went really well. 

They had to blow out what. He, I'm not, I don't know the whole story, of course, but I think there was a time where he had two feet of all of his walls were removed. So he was basically, all of his walls were now see-through, which is very strange by the way.

[00:04:09] Sy: Yeah.

[00:04:10] David: But it was all because of mold and they

had to do all sorts of craziness for it.

[00:04:14] Sy: yeah. The stuff we do quite often, there's actually so the numbers differ depending on which doctor you're talking to. 25 to 40% of the population. Has a genetic mutation where their body cannot as easy, cannot or cannot as easily. The science is still out. Basically remove mold, toxins from your own body. And so they just get bound up in your liver and it creates this, what's called a toxic loop, and you get more and more toxic over time. Whereas some people like their liver is just kicking those mold toxins out all the time. They're just getting rid of it. And people with this genetic mutation, they can't do that. And so they'll build up this. Sensitivity to mold and all of a sudden you're allergic to all these other weird things. And so I unknowingly, I have that genetic mutation. I am mold intolerant, which is the most ironic thing ever. I didn't know it before I started this company and started working with these naturopathic doctors and these holistic doctors that we work with. But it's affected me to the point where I'm allergic to the cold. I developed a cold allergy, which is the dumbest allergy. Somebody from the Rocky Mountain West can never have. Yeah. I, if it's less than 50 degrees outside, I'll break out in hives if I'm not covered up. It's the dumbest thing ever.

[00:05:20] David: Gary's brother, son. 

[00:05:23] Gary: Yeah, he's allergic I should. That was much easier than to

[00:05:27] David: say that than 

[00:05:27] Sy: So he's got, he is got

[00:05:29] Gary: My brother's, uncle's, nephew's roommate.

[00:05:31] Sy: brother's son. But His brother's son's cousin. Anyway. Yeah, that I had never heard of that before, so I thought Jeff, that's his brother. I thought he was lying. I'm like,

thinks I'm lying. 

Everybody thinks I'm joking. I'm like, yeah, I'm allergic to the cold. And they all joke about it and they say, ah, yeah, me too. And I'm like, no, really guys? I have a medical, all my buddies cold plunge and they all make fun of me for not doing it. And I'm like, I have a doctor's note, guys, leave me alone.

[00:05:53] David: You just have to carry that around so that they don't, that they don't check your manliness. Oh, I'm

[00:05:58] Sy: yeah, exactly. I'm like, guys, I can tolerate the cold. I just can't tolerate the cold.

[00:06:03] David: I'll just die. Do

you want me to die? Is that 

[00:06:05] Sy: Is that what you Yeah. So it's the most frustrating thing ever, but it led me down this road of discovery where all of a sudden I can be really empathetic with these clients who call me. And it's gotten to the point I can't go and mold moldy houses anymore.

'cause I'll immediately, I got so sick from mold that I couldn't even operate. I ended up bedridden for about six weeks just from going in and doing inspections on moldy people's houses and, so it's been an interesting journey and here we are six years later. We learned a lot of hard lessons.

It's been very difficult, but we're very proud of where we made it. 

[00:06:34] David: So now is the time where we transition to talk about all of those very, very difficult things.

[00:06:40] Sy: we can talk about mold for however long you want. Dude, I've got tons of 

[00:06:43] David: You got tons of time to talk.

[00:06:44] Sy: yeah,

[00:06:45] Gary: seems like mold tech has advanced quite a bit though.

[00:06:48] David: So when you

started this I'm directing this train. Y'all getting back on the 

[00:06:55] Sy: driving the chariot. 

[00:06:56] David: Stop it, Gary. Anyway,

[00:06:57] Gary: Sorry, trying to weave AI back 

[00:07:00] David: six years ago, what made you, because that's not your background, right?

I've seen your background. So how did you go, mold. That's the ticket.

That's what I

[00:07:08] Sy: Oh gosh. So you want to hear my origin story? 

[00:07:11] David: How did you become mold man?

[00:07:13] Sy: It all started when I was fighting crime. No, I'm just kidding. I wasn't fighting crime. I was I was 

working in the oil. Yeah. My, my first, the first half of my career I spent in the oil and gas industry out on the rigs, out in the middle of nowhere, everywhere from West Virginia to Colorado to West Texas. Always USA land. Never went offshore, never went to Alaska. Tried to go to Africa one time and they wouldn't hire me. The stinkers. But I have a million kids, not a million. There's a lot of people that have more kids than me, but I've got five daughters, right? 

[00:07:42] David: Oh. 

[00:07:43] Sy: and at the time, my, my last year in the oil field, I had four, and my wife was like, Hey, you gotta be done right? And this story, it's always hard for me to tell. So I'm gonna be careful how I'm gonna probably zoom through it so that I don't get too awkward here. But my, my second daughter, Evangeline she's gorgeous. They're all gorgeous. I'm telling you guys, they got the most beautiful girls. But I'm driving along the road and I've got this big jacked up, fricking Chevy Duramax truck and it's all loaded out and it's got a thousand horsepower.

'cause I got it chipped out 'cause I'm this oil, greasy oil guy, and we're driving down the road in my big cool truck doing fun stuff and she was like, are you gonna quit your job? And I was like, yeah, me and mom are talking about it, but if I quit my job, it means, we can't go on all these fun trips and. We might have to sell our house and we might have to move and we don't know what we're gonna do 'cause I don't really have any transferable skills. And I talked to her about, Hey, we won't be able to go like this trip that we're gonna go on. We won't be able to just, we might not just be able to buy you stuff, when you want stuff or need stuff.

And she sat there quiet for a second and she was like, but would you be home on my birthday? And man, if that wasn't just the biggest gut check. Of my entire life. That was it. That was a watershed moment. I was like, all right, that's it. No, I'm done. Man. This kid could not care less about these trips and all of her fun toys and her dirt bikes and stuff like that.

She wants her dad home on her birthday. Like I said, we're gonna zoom past that now. So we 

[00:09:06] David: I was hoping for a tear jerker moment. That was close. We

haven't 

never had one of those. That's Yeah, you almost got me. But it was really powerful for me, man. It really was. And I was working on a rig, now I was on the rigs, but I was also like in the command center on the rig, right?

[00:09:19] Sy: And so people were like, oh man, that was so hard. And I was like, man, I spent 14 hours a day looking at six computer screens, monitoring down hole electronics, right? And steering that well, cool job. Loved the industry. But I was sitting there with this other guy and he was telling me about this new technology that somebody's using for mold to get rid of it throughout the whole house, I bring it up to my brother-in-law who's been doing mold remediation for 25 years and we're trying to figure out our way outta the oil field and my brother-in-law's at my house for Thanksgiving and I'm like, Hey man, I just found out about this new technology, about mold I'm thinking about investing in. And I tell him what it is, give him the whole spiel. And he is it's not real. I was like, oh, dang it. And he was like, listen, Cy, every three to five years there's a new magic bullet for mold that never ends up being real. And I was like, oh. Okay, that sucks. And I was like, they got this Army Corps of Engineers study.

Can you read this for me and tell me what you think about it? Because the Army Corps of Engineers and a non-interested third party did a study on this technology and apparently they're, they verified it. He is I'll read it, but don't get your hopes up. And he woke up the next morning was Thanksgiving and I'll never forget it 'cause he woke up and he came upstairs and his hair is stuck up on his head 'cause he fell asleep on his arm reading his phone. And he was like, dude. This is real. And I was like, oh, sweet dude. So let's do this. And so we bought into this mold remediation technology and great family owned business that sells these licenses to access the patented technology. Just really good people, salt of the earth, people connected with them right away. And we bought our first license to operate in Oregon. And we didn't really have any market data yet, right? Like I went to business school. I got a business degree got an MBA and stuff like that. And so knew what we were trying to do at the time. But we didn't have any market data.

So we opened up in Oregon and we realized one mold is a commodity, right? And it's, people have to be able to advocate for themselves to get rid of mold even at a reduced price point, which we're able to provide a much. Much more attractive price point than most mold remediation companies just 'cause of our technology. But even in that price point Salem, Oregon was not somewhere that had an appetite for that. And so we scan the country and find out that North Carolina, there's no licenses owned in North Carolina. And so we bought our first license in Charlotte, North Carolina June of 2020 at that point.

So we'd been in it about a year. Moved. My brother-in-law over here just transferred our assets over and said, Hey, we're gonna do this outta North Carolina. And he came out and ran it for us. And then about a year later I was like, Hey, we wanna actually expand into Raleigh and. I felt bad, but I was sitting there with my wife and my four daughters and I was like, girls we're gonna move to Raleigh, North Carolina.

And my girls were so sad, they were devastated that we were gonna move away from, Rocky Mountain, Idaho to North Carolina where they didn't know anybody. But they did it and they're grateful now. 'cause Raleigh is freaking awesome. We love it here. We, I genuinely believe this is one of the best cities in the country to live in. Got very lucky. A lot of exposure to things that they wouldn't have had exposure to. But I showed up out here with, I had taught middle school science for two years. Between that, when I left the oil field and we were starting this company, I knew I didn't have enough to live off of. So I lived off of savings and I taught middle school science, which teaching school was the hardest job I've ever had in my life. I don't say that patronizingly, like I would take 18 hours in the, a day in the oil field any day over 10 hours a day in that school with those middle schoolers. Man, that was the hardest job I've ever had. But I came over here. I was a, basically a guy with two years of teaching and 10 years in the oil field and started doing mold inspections and learning as much as I could, as quickly as I could.

And and, man we've been really fortunate. We've been really blessed. I started out crawling under crawl spaces doing my own encapsulations, installing vapor barriers and dehumidifiers and doing my own fog jobs. So five years ago, or I guess four and a half years ago when I showed up out here, there was three of us total. There was my business partner in Utah. My brother-in-law, who's also a business partner in Charlotte, and there was me here. And our goal was to make, $40,000 a month, we can make $40,000 a month. We were, everybody was making enough to pay their bills, and we could move on with life.

And now four and a half years later, we've got almost 50 employees now and looking at entering, eight figures this year. And yeah, really explosive growth, really proud of what we've done. The growth has been really it's been wonderful to see guys like it has been. I'm very proud of it. We pay, we only pay a living wage. We don't pay, we don't underpay anybody. Nobody makes close to minimum wage. Nobody makes less than, we've got some office people that make $18 an hour, but they work from home and they have a really flexible schedule and they're fine with that. But we're really proud of what we built. And on top of that, it sounds weird, but I've seen people, I've seen people that were on long-term disability that didn't think they'd ever go back to work that had been diagnosed with ms. All they had was mold. And as soon as we get them over their mold, all of a sudden they're getting better. Like it's, it sounds crazy, but like we've seen people get outta wheelchairs because we got rid of their mold.

We've seen people get their lives back and people heal their marriages because they were just living in this brain fog. And it's been a very rewarding experience. And I don't want to sound like. Cliche, but I do I genuinely believe, I've found, part of my life's calling here with this right, is meeting people in crisis and helping them find a way out.

It's been incredible.

[00:14:55] David: So 

[00:14:55] Gary: noble.

[00:14:56] David: you mentioned that the first few years were tough, but you were, that was a lot in that story. So you were in Idaho, you decided Oregon, that didn't work. You decided North Carolina, why not Idaho?

[00:15:10] Sy: So Idaho one, it's really dry, right?

We don't have a ton of mold now. There's still mold affected people there. I could go to Idaho today and make a great company like owner operator, Chuck, and a truck company, and I can make a great living. I think just off of the knowledge that I've gained over the last six years in mold, right?

But it just. At the time we were looking for what everybody else is looking for, right? We wanted a pig a, what is it? A passive income generator, had like every young entrepreneur had this idea that I was gonna be able to create this business far away and it was gonna make me money and I was gonna just, live out a life of snowboarding and dirt biking, that was my dream.

Yeah, not great guys. I'll be honest, I'm still, my kids all have dirt bikes at this point, but I still don't. So what the hell? But, so yeah, we were we created a, after we had some market data on Oregon, now we thought Oregon's got a lot of rain and my brother-in-law lived there at the time.

That's where my wife's from. And so we figured, hey, Oregon's got a lot of rain. They probably got a lot of mold. They did. But, people, we didn't know how to sell it. I will say that we didn't know how to address the market needs at the time. And we still didn't, when we came to Charlotte, North Carolina, there was just enough people that were Googling. Mold that we're interested, more so than in Oregon. But what we did was we created this kind of stratified matrix where we said, Hey, we want an area that meets these conditions. One, there can't be any market competition, so nobody else owns these licenses to use this technology. Two, we wanted a short winter or no winter. Three, we wanted less restrictive mold litigation laws like, not mold litigation laws. That's a bad way to put it, but less restrictive. Geez, the term's right at the end of my tongue here, guys, but when regulatory laws around mold. We put all that into the matrix and North Carolina was right at the top of the list.

And so we were like, Hey, that's perfect. And little did we know we were moving into the fastest maturing market in the United States, right? In every way, shape and form. Which made it really difficult to buy a house out here, but we're really grateful that we did end up here,

[00:17:16] David: okay, so you chose, how long were you in Oregon? About a year,

[00:17:19] Sy: a little less than a year. Yeah.

[00:17:20] David: year. So you guys went in there now, did, was that remote or did you guys go out? He was already there.

[00:17:26] Sy: So my brother-in-law lived there and he was gonna be our inspector slash operator with this fog technology. And so we basically, we bought a small Ram Pro Master van. We still have it, we call it the Go-Kart. And we put him in that and he would go out on these inspections. We signed up through home Advisor, which is just a lead servicer, and the leads are ridiculously expensive and absolute garbage. And somebody goes on home advisor and basically signs their life away. I still don't know how they get people to do it, but people go on home Advisor and they create a whole profile and it gives 'em all their, how old is your house and all this other stuff. A lot of times. And they'll say, Hey, I've got mold issues, or Angie's List was another one we'd get from send them over and yeah, we just, we couldn't make, we realized really quickly that the market was never gonna be what we wanted it to be, and Portland, Oregon was already owned by somebody else using this technology. And so we knew we couldn't move into Portland, which was a much bigger market. And so we saw Charlotte was open and Charlotte, close to 3 million person population. And so we thought, Hey, this is a great healthy market. Let's move in there. And the rest is history, man.

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[00:19:05] David: So when you're in Raleigh, so I'll start that as like the beginning of your current phase, at least. We call that the slog. It's the time period where you set up business to the time anybody cares. How long is that period of time for you?

[00:19:19] Sy: So the first three months I was planning on. What I was gonna do when we what other jobs I was gonna get, because nothing was happening. I didn't know what I was doing. I mean that's true and it's not right. I had an engineering background, I had a science background. I knew about mold, I knew building science, all that stuff.

And so I had a leg up for sure. And I don't think we were doing anything poorly, but I didn't know I was good at networking. I didn't know how to sell. I took a sales training class for three months just to learn how to sell. It took nothing from it 'cause I still didn't know what to do. And then I, all of a sudden I started getting into networking groups and we got a couple really fortunate leads.

We had a, we about a year into it, and I do think this is. This is interesting to note. 'cause things come when you're ready for it. And it, it was faith affirming for me or universe affirming or whatever it is our belief system looks like now. But I, it just felt like there was other forces at work because, about a year into it I really did have a good understanding of, Hey, this is how mold works in the home.

These are the limitations of our system. This is how we're able to help. And this physical therapist had mold. She found us online, called us over, and she was like, oh my gosh, you need to meet this person. And I met that person and they're like, oh my gosh, you need to meet my functional doctor. And this functional doctor was outta work.

She had gone from seeing clients, she had gone to having three appointments every day to having no appointments ever because she was so sick all the time. Functional doctor amazing person, Dr. Bayless in the area. She had a thriving practice and she had met some other limitations too, had gone from having, I think, three open branches to having none just practicing out of her living room. And seeing a few patients a week. And what had happened was she had gotten a TBI and she thought it was all because of her TBI that all this bad stuff had happened. And she called us over 'cause she thought she had mold in her house. And so we come over and she'd had some other people over as far as I, if I'm remembering this story right. She had some other people over and nobody could find anything. So I go over and we inspect her house and we are very good at our inspections. Very unique that we do inspections for free and we'll spend three hours inspecting the home. And so I showed up and we go top to bottom. I'm like, you've got a little bit of mold in your HVAC and a little bit of mold here, but let's check out the crawlspace.

And I'm looking through her crawlspace and I'm like, it's not an encapsulated crawlspace, but it doesn't look all that bad. So I'm looking through her crawlspace and we're pulling some insulation back here and there, and all of a sudden we find this slow drip behind her washing machine. And this drip had been going on, it could have been going on for months. We found it that day. It could have been going on for weeks, but it was attached to her crawlspace. And what was happening was moisture from the crawlspace was moving up, mold. The air from the crawlspace was moving up her drywall and hitting that drip. And it was creating this, she had this huge colony of stacky boxers right there. And Stacky box is one of the most toxigenic molds. And so all of a sudden she got this TBI, which ruptured the brain blood barrier, and she's being affected by mold in ways that she had never been affected before.

She had been living with this probably for quite some time with a poor crawlspace and stuff like that, but all of a sudden she got this TBI and it made its way into her brain and just started shutting her down. And she's a functional doctor, right? She knows how to get herself better. And she's like, why aren't my treatments working?

And it's 'cause she's. Working in her home where she's constantly being exposed to mold. And so we created a protocol with her. We removed the wet drywall, the affected drywall and stuff like that. We took some steps in her crawl space to get that figured out. And then we come in and we treat her home with this vapor, and all of a sudden she's, her clients are calling me left and right. And I'm like, what in the world is going on here? And I finally get back to him like, Hey, Dr. Baylis, you don't really know me from Adam. I'm like, what's going on? I'm getting all your clients, which I'm grateful for, but I did not expect this. And she was like, S you don't understand.

You gave me my life back. And she was like, I've never seen anybody be able to do what you've done. And she was like, one of my biggest problems when I'm treating mold sick patients is I can get the mold out of them, but then I need to get them out of the mold, I can't do that with anybody else.

And she's I've never found anybody that will treat the home so holistically the way I'm treating the body. And so I was like, oh, great. Apparently this makes sense to these doctors, which I thought it would. And she starts introducing me to her circle of friends, and now we've got four or five functional doctors that refer strictly to us. And it's been really powerful. It's been a powerful journey. 

[00:23:48] David: That's pretty awesome. So you mentioned networking groups, and I'll let you go after this. I know we've been keeping you almost a little long here. You mentioned some networking groups. So for those listening, what networking groups have you found that were particularly useful for you?

[00:24:03] Sy: so I started with BNI, which I thought was interesting, my, my dad was like, Hey, when I moved out here, he was like, you should try BNI. And I'm like, dad, that's such a boomer thing. Come on. Get outta here. I'm not gonna do your BNI.

And then I had somebody out here. Yeah, I had somebody out here be like, oh, you should do BNI. And I was like, all right, if God outta the universe is gonna tell me twice, I guess I should go and check it out. And I go and hop into this BNI and not only did I like really start to develop my networking skills. I found some of the best friends I've ever made, in this area.

I was really impressed with the caliber of people that were in there and the accountability model behind BNI say what you will about it like right now. Yeah, that three hours a week for me is really taxing. And it's hard for me to justify it, but at this point, I, it's my support group, and so I love going, I still go to BNI, but, so BNI was huge.

Dr. Bayless introduced me to people like Patty Vergilio who's just a master networker, and she's Hey. You're gonna do this and you should do this and you should do this, and this is how you're gonna have this conversation with this person. And she's really coaching me in a lot of ways and making me a better person, a better business owner, and I'm super grateful for that.

[00:25:10] David: Very cool. On that note, Mr. Gary, do our question.

[00:25:14] Gary: All right, coming from your background into this, and like you said, taking a chance at moving out here to Raleigh and starting, what would you say are your top three pieces of advice for someone starting a new business, maybe in a new area, or just taking that plunge, jumping straight at

[00:25:30] Sy: God. Oh top three pieces of advice. One is

[00:25:37] Gary: I.

[00:25:38] Sy: understand your market. Come prepared with deeper pockets than you're anticipating, and be willing to do whatever it takes, I crawled around in crawl spaces for the first two and a half years. I had this business open, and I have crawled around in every kind of water you could imagine is in a crawlspace.

I've put my hand on copperhead snakes. I've had run-ins with bees. I have walked into hoarder houses all with the intention of. Trying to help and trying to help these people that are so distraught and so exhausted, find a way out. And so that's, I would say tho those are the things.

Be ready to get your hands dirty. Save more, have more in savings than you think it's gonna take and really spend some time to get to know your market.

[00:26:27] Gary: Great.

[00:26:28] David: Very good.

[00:26:29] Gary: Now, if anybody wants to learn more about you or about Pure Air, what's the best place to find you?

[00:26:34] Sy: Pure Air pros.com is our website. It's got a picture of me somewhere on

there. I'm sure I'm on LinkedIn, but I'm not very active on there. I check it every now and then. People can direct message me if they want, but right now the only people direct messaging me are the recruiters, and so I. I seem to skim through those more than I actually see 'em, but if you wanna find us, go to pure air pros.com. That's where you're gonna find information about us and reach out and we can have whatever conversation you want to have, whether it's about mold or anything else. 

[00:27:02] Gary: Awesome. We'll put the links in the show notes too.

[00:27:04] David: thank you so much, Cy, for joining us. This has been a lot of fun.

[00:27:07] Sy: yeah, absolutely. It's very nice to meet you guys.

[00:27:10] Gary: Very interesting story. Definitely different than all the AI talk we've had lately. So 

[00:27:15] David: Yeah, it's very refreshing. 

[00:27:16] Gary: In a weird way, mold is refreshing.

[00:27:19] Sy: yeah. Yeah. Mold, refreshing 

[00:27:21] David: now I'm thinking of mold. that now can use ai and I'm very scared. That's what I'm afraid.

[00:27:26] Sy: yeah. Yeah. That'll be a bad day.

[00:27:30] David: All right. Thank you everybody for joining us. We'll be back next week. Have a good one.

[00:27:34] OUTRO: That wraps up this episode of the Biz Dev Podcast, and this time you get me, Scott Bailey. I'm the lead dev over here at Big Pixel, and I know what you're thinking. I thought David did all the work. Well, not exactly. We have an awesome team of people to back in both. Biz Dev is a production of Big Pixel, the US based provider of UX design strategy, and custom software.

This podcast is edited by Audio Wiz Matt McCracken and Christie Pronto marketing guru for Big Pixel. Want to connect? Shoot us an email at hello@thebigpixel.net. Or you can find out some Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.