We sit down and talk with All American Restoration, a unique mold remediation and envirnmental clean up company. Jeff Nowitzke is the Cheif Operations Officer for All American Restoration. They are recognized as the most innovative mold remediation company in the world. Their process is three times as thorough comapred to the national standard with a 100% guarantee to remove mold, mycotoxins, endotoxins, and bacteria. We talk about what homeowners and remodelers should know before taking on this kind of project.

For more information about them: https://www.allamericanrestoration.com/

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[00:00:04] Jeff Nowitzke: Believe it or not, Eric, his sergeants, a small things. Um, you know, when you enter someone's home, that's E even if it isn't hill, you know, or district parish and say it's their safe Haven. I mean, where do you feel? Safest? Everyone always feels safe in their fault. I've

[00:00:30] Jeff Nowitzke: Our mantra here is basically we take a page out of the medical textbooks and it's do normal. So we want to never, we never want to leave a condition worse than when we got there and that can mean anything. Um, we always, whenever we train our employees, we always throw it back to the, uh, the glove and the Bush.

[00:01:05] Eric Goranson: Welcome to around the house with Eric G and Caroline B, where we talk home improvement, healthy homes, remodeling construction, every single weekend.

[00:01:17] Caroline Blazovsky: Hey. Hey. Hey everybody. How are you today?

[00:01:26] Caroline Blazovsky: we do he's so gangster. I can't even tell you like, and I use that in like such a great term because he. He is so good at what he does. And when you get somebody who's just an awesome, awesome person, human, and they're fantastic at their job.

[00:01:44] Eric Goranson: the bomb. Jeff, no whiskey from all American restoration. Welcome to

[00:01:52] Eric Goranson: Excellent. Well, let's hear a little bit about you because you are a rock star in the mold remediation world out there.

[00:02:08] Jeff Nowitzke: That's so awesome. Thank you guys so much for this. Um, yeah, I'll give you a little bit of my background. Um, I've essentially been building my whole life. I started building with my father when I was, you know, 10 or 11 years old.

[00:02:41] Jeff Nowitzke: , going back about 15 years ago, I was involved in an accident, uh, on a construction site and it, you know, basically ended my career in, in heavy construction. Um, they kind of told me you would never do this again. And , at that time I was approached by a family member saying, Hey, I've got this motor mediation business.

[00:03:20] Jeff Nowitzke: Um, she was based out of New York city and uh, she said, look, I got a project for you and you've got to, you've got to start helping these clients. We can get clients better. back then I was taken back by that statement. I was like, no, I just didn't know any better. It's like, how could your house, , adversely affect you that much, that you're seeing a doctor because of your house and, you know, kind of being combative and, , the, uh, the bad SIM, as Caroline said, and being combative, I was kinda like, Eric's one of those two, we've got a whole bunch of bad ass in the house.

[00:04:09] Jeff Nowitzke: We did the project under her protocol and we, we passed post verification and, um, that was kind of the beginning. That's what really kind of set the stage for me. It was like, well, I could be. Helping people not just going to work, I can actually be helping people. We could be helping people collectively make people's lives, better, make an impact on her life.

[00:04:35] Caroline Blazovsky: hold on, just back up one second. So for our audience, a lot of people, we all know what mold remediation is, but a lot of people have no clue. Right? What does that mean? So if you can kind of just give people an ideas to, what mold mediation is, why you would ever need it and why you wouldn't need any kind of cleanup.

[00:05:16] Jeff Nowitzke: That's taken from an independent consultant. Someone like Caroline comes into your home and gives us a report of a home. Basically it's a health report. It's a lab report for your home saying here's what's wrong and where it's wrong and what the levels are. We then have a kind of a full quiver of really, really talented people here that didn't can take those results and translate them into a scope of work necessary to return your home to normally collegey.

[00:06:10] Jeff Nowitzke: That's a small secondary driver. We then interpret that data. Um, send the proposal, work out to our client at that time. And we go into perform remediation now to get more specific to what Caroline was asking, what is remediation? Um, it's essentially sourced removal. That's, that's where the industry really stopped.

[00:07:00] Jeff Nowitzke: Now we go for something that's just slightly different than what the industry's, uh, teaching, where we are looking for the collateral damage. So we're not only looking for the source areas. We're looking at what, how those source areas have adversely impacted the overall ecology of the home as a whole.

[00:07:58] Jeff Nowitzke: So we're looking at not [00:08:00] only removing issue, but also correcting the root causes. Let's face it Caroline, better than anyone knows this. If you don't remove that smoking gun, so to speak, you're never going to clean up the collateral that. So

[00:08:21] Eric Goranson: And I see it every time. I mean, this is a daily event that I see it. Somebody posts up the pictures of this horrible mold, mass. Maybe it's a wall in the basement. Maybe it's, they're starting the remodel in the bathroom. They took the tub out. It looks like there's, , it's somebody spray, spray painted it, black and green, just from the, the colors that are there.

[00:09:12] Eric Goranson: On the problem and the solution.

[00:09:29] Jeff Nowitzke: So let's face it. Engineering controls are paramount in remediation projects, just like asbestos or letter or anything else. Um, the engineering is what sets the stage for the entire project. And, you know, seeing people entertain projects, , done by contractors where their engineering is not done correctly, um, you know, they they're running the risk of potential cross-contamination to areas of the home that are not presently contaminated, especially with these people that are, are immune compromised or immunosuppressed, or have chemical [00:10:00] sensitivities or mold sensitivities.

[00:10:12] Eric Goranson: as a homeowner. What should homeowners be looking for? , many times they call on a professional. That doesn't mean they've got the right people on the job, but they've got somebody claiming to be a professional.

[00:10:33] Jeff Nowitzke: it. Believe it or not. Eric has starts. It's a small things. Okay. You know, when you enter someone's home, that's even if it is an ill, , or district parish and say it's their safe Haven.

[00:10:48] Eric Goranson: ex-wife

[00:11:17] Jeff Nowitzke: We call it, you can do an absolutely perfect project and homeowner comes home and there's a nitrile glove in your Bush. It just, so it shows a very haphazard approach to project. When you see something like that. So what should you be looking for? I think in overall competence, Um, when you're meeting the field technicians for the first time is probably the most important thing.

[00:11:57] Caroline Blazovsky: emergency. They they've researched it.

[00:12:03] Jeff Nowitzke: So it's training, it goes back to training, training, training. And you want your, your, anyone in your home to present. Well, you want to make sure that they're protecting surfaces, they're protecting flooring and walls and windows and your driveway and your lawn.

[00:12:39] Jeff Nowitzke: Um, you want to see air scrubbers. You want to see your contractors maintaining. I always say correct pressurization. Um, negative pressure is something that's thrown around very loosely in a molder mediation industry. And quite frankly, it only fits suit about 50% of the time if even that it's applicable.

[00:13:13] Caroline Blazovsky: Well, it's interesting you bring that up, Jeff, because like, so in Portland and so we always talk him in either vastly different. Oh my God. Like the stuff, just even what we call things here is different than what they do. And it's not like we're out of the country, , we're in the U S it's just amazing how it's different.

[00:13:30] Jeff Nowitzke: think that's, that's a hard part of us operating at, uh, uh, again, we're very boutique. They over, we're a very specialized company and operating on a national scale. That was, that was something that brought a lot of complexity to what we do. Cause we had to teach all of our technicians. Different building styles from the, you know, heavy Symetra was products that they use down in the Southeast to Florida, in Florida to California, where they're [00:14:00] using shearwalls and seismic countermeasures, and, and, you know, advanced building techniques where the walls are 16 inches thick.

[00:14:20] Eric Goranson: Yeah. You're walking into Florida and you're like, where did all these concrete block walls come from?

[00:14:45] Jeff Nowitzke: much of it.

[00:15:09] Jeff Nowitzke: And these are all things that we're constantly learning and evolving and adding to our quiver. So it's, it's just a constant learning experience for me. They said, we consider ourselves evolutionary because we're always learning and adapting and changing. And quite frankly, you have to, because I think if you let yourself go stale to, , what we say, the industry has done, the industry has got very stale where it's teaching very linear, um, thinking instead of diversifying its technicians, it's a very linear focus on, , this is how it's done, but they don't explain to you those subtle differences that can occur nationally that can really change the whole way you brought you, um, develop your entire project

[00:15:57] Caroline Blazovsky: We work on never as a project, the [00:16:00] same, like we can never be bored in our job because as much experience as we have and Jeff and I've been in the industry the same amount of time. Like I'll call him and be like, I just saw this, like I, and we're talking, Eric was involved with this member. We're talking about the steam shower that was going in the radon pipe.

[00:16:35] Eric Goranson: I'd never seen that actually cause all our radar fan right on fans out here, always outside the correct

[00:16:57] Jeff Nowitzke: Well, where's it going? It's going to the basement. It's terminating below [00:17:00] your slab. Okay. Well what's it mixing with organic. Well, and then what happens? Well, the radon fan comes back on and pulls all that organic material, which has now mold back up the radar pipe. So it's, it's things like that, that the industry just, I right now, I don't think it's educated enough on it's looking for those, those build busts, those ball drops.

[00:17:37] Eric Goranson: well, I was looking at that, that one with the radon pipe, as an example, is that they tapped into the side of that, , to do the flush line for the steam shower.

[00:18:00] Eric Goranson: So it's not grabbing radon out of the blow slab. It's pulling it out of the shower system.

[00:18:19] Jeff Nowitzke: Now you've got a pipe with warm water dumping dammit to subterranean grade, and then being pulled back and forth up and down this pipe. So it's worth it. It doesn't really matter what part of the country we're in or what building style it is. It's it's these it's essentially these build busts or these, , for lack of a better term shoddy, you know, contracting work that's being performed.

[00:18:53] Eric Goranson: Yeah, it's amazing. And a lot of that falls down on the states. I don't even give homeowners and in a lot of contractors grief on [00:19:00] that. It is so interesting when you go state to state, how some states really watch contractor licensing and other states go, ah, we don't care.

[00:19:32] Eric Goranson: Hope you

[00:19:47] Eric Goranson: State of Oregon has their own contracting, a licensing board here.

[00:20:09] Eric Goranson: Handyman even can't really even do a water heater. You have to get a plumber to do that. If you're paying to do that. And so you've got a lot of this stuff. That's fairly well-regulated and we've got an organization here, which is that CCB. They are just brutal. I mean, they're on social media. They're looking for people advertising and I mean, they're dropping $5,000 fines on people left and right that are not doing stuff correctly.

[00:20:54] Eric Goranson: And then I see what's going on in New Jersey and , probably 15 or 20 other states out there where [00:21:00] it's just a free for all.

[00:21:18] Jeff Nowitzke: I don't have to test out of a project. There's no licensing. There's nothing. We're like, well, listen, we nationally adhere to. You know, New York city guidelines, we require you have your project tested in. We require you have your project tested out. Why quite frankly, it's it's the right way to do things.

[00:21:58] Jeff Nowitzke: It's a normal ecology now, [00:22:00] not just saying, yeah, we're done great. Have a good day. You're fine. And taking our word for it. That's not how we conduct business.

[00:22:29] Eric Goranson: So that way, if you're out there going, Hey, I'm building you, this, this healthier, more efficient home. Why are you not proven that to the homeowner? Just so you can say, Hey, here's the task, you know, maintain it. Make sure you don't put the rest of this stuff in, , Mike dropped him out. Yes. Yeah.

[00:22:50] Jeff Nowitzke: Believe it or not that, um, I still do a lot of technical advising for our sales team. So when we have super technical projects, I usually get involved just to kind [00:23:00] of guide the client through what's going on. Um, you would not believe how many times we get asked that. Well, I bought a brand new home. Why didn't anyone test to let me know that that, that this issue was going on or that I had a damp basement?

[00:23:48] Jeff Nowitzke: And it's just point blank awareness. He's bringing awareness to the masses saying, look, mold is a problem. Biotoxins are a problem. Um, homes being [00:24:00] built incorrectly are. , home's being allowed to sit for six months on climatized with no roof on them and then just build like, nothing's wrong with it.

[00:24:30] Jeff Nowitzke: It's not.

[00:24:50] Caroline Blazovsky: It's just drop cash, pay for the house and you get what you get. And that's a huge mistake. I've been telling my clients, you cannot buy a house without an inspection. I don't care what you do. Yes. You can [00:25:00] not get stuck with this responsibility because you will not be able to afford it. You'll be stuck with a house you can't live in.

[00:25:07] Eric Goranson: And that's, I also say don't buy, I'll take that one step further. If you're buying a house from a house slipper and it's got a finished basement, that's just finished

[00:25:30] Jeff Nowitzke: I was just selling homes, , like every other realtor she's like knowing what I know now, morally ethically. I know when something's wrong with the house and I know I've got to take my clients elsewhere and it's, it's crazy. And even the people in her office that you know, who, uh, obviously these people have had their eyes open, you know, both by myself and my wife on what's going on.

[00:26:10] Caroline Blazovsky: starts the whole process of how you buy a house to me over the last, I'd say 10, 15 years has baffled me.

[00:26:30] Jeff Nowitzke: just absolutely

[00:26:45] Eric Goranson: It's fascinating here in Oregon, every house has to have a sewer scope done when during the time of the sale, they literally, as part of that process, you do not get away with not having a sewer scope done all the way out to the sewer. That's [00:27:00] part of the process, no matter what, you're not getting around it.

[00:27:24] Jeff Nowitzke: So looking at that, yes, you've got your home inspectors that will push the sale or crush the deal. And again, , just being around my wife and listening to her and her, her business capacity and what she's doing, , everyone knows as well, don't catch it. Give me like three or four different home inspectors.

[00:28:04] Jeff Nowitzke: I'm in his reports are 30, 40 pages of, of good, hard, comprehensive, conclusive evidence all the way to the point where if he sees something that's a little, what's called sketchy in a basement area or an attic area, he makes recommendations. Look, you should get a, , an indoor environmental professional in here and co witness.

[00:28:39] Eric Goranson: That's like when I bought my house here a couple years ago, , of course they had the inspection done on a deal that had just fallen through.

[00:29:03] Eric Goranson: But in that corner, I couldn't get back there. And he did, and he ended up putting his scope around the corner. So he could look on the foundation and saw that there was a crack over there. No big deal. I couldn't get it. I didn't want to crawl under the deck. That's also 18 inches, 18 inches high to go do that.

[00:29:43] Eric Goranson: And Caroline, this is that crack where the realtor put up the side, there was a crack I could put my hand in, in the concrete foundation. I mean, it's a three quarter inch to an inch gap, solid foundation break, 1920s home. [00:30:00] And the realtor put up a sign that said, this crack has not caused the homeowner any issues for the last 10 years.

[00:30:27] Eric Goranson: But those are the things that finding that right inspector on that new house, you got to do your due diligence. Cause it's, it's nightmarish if you don't, but the

[00:30:46] Caroline Blazovsky: I brought in Jay steak, who is the president of the indoor air quality association for anybody who doesn't know who, who Jay is or the IAQ is it's the biggest organization we have that governs indoor air quality. So I'm going to go to the best of the best. I went to bring him [00:31:00] in the real estate agent said to me, no way, are you doing a three to five hour inspection in this house?

[00:31:23] Caroline Blazovsky: She, as a real estate agent, she was like, I'm going to find someone who's naive and stupid and doesn't care about, , XYZ mold problem that clearly existed. You could see it growing on every beam and rafter. So, you know, what do you do? So here we are trying to get the best inspector, but people like us, we do.

[00:31:43] Jeff Nowitzke: Yeah. I see this so many times with, um, you know, obviously I hear the horror stories from my wife and, you know, listening to, you know, with the home inspectors. Obviously I just so many people too, just lack of education.

[00:32:15] Jeff Nowitzke: I try, I tell all, and we get this same question from our clients. I want to buy a home. I'm going to move. I want to buy a home. I want to make an investment in my future. I either want to completely gut and, and create my own wellness space or I want to build from the ground up. What should I do? Oh, that's something you, you could, you could stay tied up in that conversation.

[00:32:58] Jeff Nowitzke: If they're not already years down the [00:33:00] road, trying to drive that point home is, is often very complicated.

[00:33:29] Eric Goranson: And quite frankly, the sellers too, because they should know better. Selling your house, trying to

[00:33:39] Eric Goranson: I think we've got to do something that really kind of levels the playing field a little bit there, because to me it doesn't make sense, not to force people to not get through that part of the

[00:33:50] Jeff Nowitzke: I agree. I agree completely.

[00:34:01] Jeff Nowitzke: It's the issues have become systemic. It's it's grown into the insurance industry as well, where there are insurance companies that are, or, or will not write mold coverage under their policy whatsoever.

[00:34:18] Caroline Blazovsky: people are totally not covered. And I tell my clients all the time, after you get your homeowner's policy, make sure you call up and try to get a rider. Cause what they can do is it won't be in the generalized policy, but you can add a rider to it. And there's one thing I'm going to guarantee to you and you will all say the same thing.

[00:34:46] Jeff Nowitzke: I agree with that completely. Um, when we were buying our home, uh, we were initially writing with one insurance company and you know, the, the insurance broker was obviously, she's known my wife for many, many years.

[00:35:17] Caroline Blazovsky: put a note on your crack.

[00:35:26] Jeff Nowitzke: I can't, that's something I definitely have to show to my wife. She'll she'll be kind of blown away by that. I'm going to post it to everywhere. Yeah.

[00:35:44] Eric Goranson: Literally priming everything down there.

[00:36:05] Jeff Nowitzke: You don't. If someone's kind of finished, basically. What are they hiding? Raw walls, raw floor exposed mechanical. You don't want anything hidden in the basement? Believe me.

[00:36:32] Eric Goranson: That was pretty good. It's pretty interesting. So doing a basement, a houseboat was pretty, pretty crazy. They actually poured that out a waterproof, concrete, and did it when they built the house. And, uh, put it down, had a porthole window in it. That was just like something out of, you know, below water. And it was a finished basement.

[00:37:00] Jeff Nowitzke: I

[00:37:09] Eric Goranson: like, cause that's what we have in the,

[00:37:14] Jeff Nowitzke: I've never, I've never been out of the hospital. That's so in a hospital with the basement, I thought you were getting ready to pull a really big joke or one. No,

[00:37:28] Jeff Nowitzke: a level. Wow. Doesn't matter. I thought of that either.

[00:37:34] Eric Goranson: every that's it's all square. It's all. Everything has to be. You know, everything, it, everything has to be square. The level, you can leave it in the truck. You don't need, it

[00:37:48] Eric Goranson: So when you're hanging a wall cabinet, you're measuring from the floor.

[00:38:01] Jeff Nowitzke: Yeah. Kind of walking into what you want me to do this. I've never seen this.

[00:38:14] Eric Goranson: Right. And you've got a little more water in the, in the bottom, on this side, it's going this way, like a fuel

[00:38:27] Jeff Nowitzke: And. I dunno, just, you know, explaining to my guys like Tom, that log cabins have slipped joints above the windows and the doors. And they're like, what do you have twins? I'm like, well, the, the logs compress over time, it's gotta be, or would crush the doorways or the, , the windows, it's building a skill.

[00:39:02] Caroline Blazovsky: Just going to say, like tell some projects that are where it actually helped people. People can recognize, Hey, that might be my scenario. Cause I think everybody sits there and goes, well, you know, this isn't my scenario. I didn't get sick in my home. Why is this relevant to me? So, and it's relevant to everyone for many different reasons, but it's,

[00:39:24] Jeff Nowitzke: Actually. There's, there's a bunch of standout. I mean, I think what's so amazing about my project is, um, it's not the Google reviews. It's, it's, it's nothing like that. It's, it's a really personal connection that you make or your clients, um, I'll never forget. It was, , it was new year's Eve this year.

[00:40:04] Jeff Nowitzke: And it's just something we really pride ourselves on is, is they're not clients. They become family. It's. Our clients are with us for the long haul. She messaged me new year's Eve and, you know, extremely long-winded message of like, you know, she can't believe that you celebrate new year's Eve in her home.

[00:40:43] Jeff Nowitzke: And, uh, when I met the family, they all had, um, picks in their bodies or treatments, the whole family who. We finished the project. And to this day, this is going back, gosh, maybe [00:41:00] 10, 11 years now to this day, they still text me every Christmas. And to see them over the 10 years, like their picks come out, their line treatments.

[00:41:34] Jeff Nowitzke: Um, it essentially smothered and everything in between over the years, just these little problems kept compounding and compounding. We got her back to wellness. Um, the other one, which is very, very unique, um, the gentleman was a CEO of a very, very large global company. Um, and his daughter was, uh, severely immune compromised, [00:42:00] uh, chronic inflammatory response syndrome, Lyme disease.

[00:42:34] Jeff Nowitzke: She never knew we were there. We had build soundproof housings out of low and high density foam around all our equipment with essentially check valve venting for the air. So that we could soundproof all our equipment. So she didn't hear a story in a remediation project. We took the entire HVC system apart, three of them and all the duct work with [00:43:00] hand screwdrivers.

[00:43:32] Jeff Nowitzke: They just walked away from the project and threw their hands up. We said, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to figure out how to get your project. And collectively between, you know, myself, my partner, Mike, our entire field staff of brilliant people. We're able to come up with these really amazing ideas

[00:43:56] Caroline Blazovsky: And that's why I like when Jeff comes on right to show, we don't work [00:44:00] on the traditional stuff at all. We're seeing it from such a different perspective. And I mean, the houses that we work on are, um, unique. And we've really got to navigate around this whole system to create something that we can do to improve health, because that is the goal.

[00:44:38] Jeff Nowitzke: That's probably one of the best questions I've heard, Eric, really? Um, this is, again, it's not to, you know, come across a two-star or anything, but it's, it, it goes back to the contractor, just not having an understanding all time of, of correct building protocols or process or materials. So [00:45:00] many times we'll go into an attic space.

[00:45:24] Jeff Nowitzke: They didn't climatize it addict systems that are supposed to be open invented, , venting, soft events, , roof venting, Ridge venting, um, Gable, venting power venting. We go into some of these roofs that are supposed to be vented roofing systems, and they're completely smothered. Um, you'll see, conventional insulation along, uh, the force system of the attic.

[00:46:04] Eric Goranson: got a moldy

[00:46:09] Jeff Nowitzke: And it's just such a. You know, I, I hate to say it, but throw, , what at the wall and hope it sticks. That's why we're seeing so much of is people selling people, hopes and dreams. Oh, we'll fix your attic. It's got conventional installation. We're just going to put us for the spray foam up there. Okay.

[00:47:06] Eric Goranson: Oh yeah. It's it's crazy. It's crazy.

[00:47:28] Jeff Nowitzke: Or is it

[00:47:43] Eric Goranson: care on the house?

[00:48:03] Eric Goranson: W what am I doing wrong? Yeah. Yeah. , and I think those guys want to learn much more than I, I know I bash on us flippers, but there are good ones out there just like everybody else, but there's a lot of ones on there that are just, , Hey, let's replace that rotted out, drywall on the bottom and let's make it look pretty.

[00:48:28] Jeff Nowitzke: Well, it's, it's really weird, you know, working hand in hand with a lot of contractors, um, there are some that pushback and now I think more than ever, there's quite a few that are super receptive to learning the right techniques and, and putting your ego to the side and saying, look, I never knew that.

[00:49:15] Jeff Nowitzke: We're not a feel good company. We're going to give you the brass tacks. We're going to tell you what to do to get better. And he's the type of contractor I've seen him do this. He has turned down projects just because it wasn't the right fit for him where he said, look, I want to bring my friend Jeff in here, you have a systemic mold problem in your basement.

[00:50:01] Jeff Nowitzke: Let's correct. The issue before we put the lipstick on.

[00:50:28] Eric Goranson: You check box a or check box B. And no matter what your problem is, it's going to be $35,000. We're going to take your money. And we're going to do it wrong. We're going to cause structural issues in your basement. And, uh, here you go. It's welcome to my soap box.

[00:50:58] Jeff Nowitzke: We started in our infancy [00:51:00] as a waterproofing company, and we, we always got kind of mocked because we were the most expensive waterproofing company. And quite frankly, it's because again, we were doing the right thing. We were putting the correct French drains in. We were editing dehumidification systems.

[00:51:46] Jeff Nowitzke: We told the client, we could not install a waterproofing system in their basement. They had a spread footing. Well, what happens when you cut through spread foot? Exactly. You've now shut down. We explained that to [00:52:00] her. We withdrew her contract, refunded her money, explain what was going on during a core sample of the footing.

[00:52:13] Eric Goranson: So Jeff, I saw one that was a, one of the franchise gutter, you know, drain systems. And I'll just leave it at that out there. I went in and the guy had been, he was on his fourth zone. Some pump in five years, which to me tells me there's a problem.

[00:53:10] Eric Goranson: And so what's happened is, is the pressure on the outside walls? That tension is what's holding up the entire house and he had, they had a 12 inch. Square void underneath the entire foundation where I could go in and look up and it was hollow from the water coming through there and they were trying to control it with that system.

[00:53:45] Jeff Nowitzke: So many times we're hit with that. And what you said was, was spot on call an engineer. I tell my staff all the time.

[00:54:13] Jeff Nowitzke: Your, your Ridge has three inches of deflection in it. There's something going on. Stepping back and saying, we don't want to be involved, but we're going to point you in the right direction to get you the help you need before we get involved. I mean, that's

[00:54:42] Caroline Blazovsky: And the client's saying, what do you mean? I spent $50,000 on the system. Why is it not working appropriately? And what do you, what right. Do I have to say as an indoor air quality professional that the HVAC is wrong. So I have to bring up mechanical engineering to back up my point, just because it, for [00:55:00] legal reasons,

[00:55:03] Jeff Nowitzke: I say, keep people in your quiver that are smarter than you are. That's amen to that. Yes. You, you have to. Again, it's why we bring in IEP. It's why we bring in environmental engineers and, and, and structural engineers and mechanical engineers. And, you know, I, I tell my clients all time, AHV, AC installer is much different than a mechanical engineer.

[00:55:49] Jeff Nowitzke: They want to get in and they want to get in and get on and get out with no regard for the client. Or if it's going to have any positive impact on a client's environment or their wellbeing. We always [00:56:00] say, look, let's slow the process down. We know you've been dealing with this for some time. It's our policy to slow the process down, allow you time to have an understanding of what's going on in your home.

[00:56:34] Jeff Nowitzke: That's the most important part of our business.

[00:56:53] Eric Goranson: And if there's a 20% off or 30% off or 40% off sale, because you sign the [00:57:00] day, that should be. Yep. To tap the brakes a little bit because, uh, I tell you what I, we have that problem in our area here, where we've got one big company out there that, uh, the, it is the full on high pressure sales tactic.

[00:57:24] Jeff Nowitzke: check audio that I agree with. Um, it's, it's

[00:57:39] Caroline Blazovsky: I was telling Eric about it a little bit. Remember when we were talking about how you guys are doing estimates and an automated process, like, just so if you could tell him a little bit about it. I explained it

[00:58:01] Jeff Nowitzke: We were printing it out in long form and walking through the project and taking notes, writing notes, and it was taking us the, the biggest problem was just clients not getting their proposal fast enough. They're saying, well, look, it's, it's been a week. And you're like, man, I'm still interpreting Caroline's data or whoever the IEP is.

[00:58:46] Jeff Nowitzke: We rolled it out hard a year ago and it's still evolving. Um, it always will be, it always will be. Yeah. So essentially what this allows us to do is it, it takes our clients, it enters. Uh, [00:59:00] into the software, it's all their data, everything we need, their mold report, their contact information, every piece of pertinent information we can need about that client.

[00:59:32] Jeff Nowitzke: So when we get out to the job site, we now have the ability to help, um, web based. We now have the ability to just touch key points. So, um, is it a complete cosmetic removal of the office? Yes or no? Yes. Um, how many square feet is your office? 150. Okay. Uh, how many guys have any days? Uh, two for three. Okay.

[01:00:16] Jeff Nowitzke: We can now present the client with an estimate based off that software. And in real time on their follow-up call, it allows us to modify their project parameters. So we could say, look, according to the consultant, these five spots are your needs. These three spots are your Watts. If, you know, as per our professional recommendation, based on your financial constraints, we would recommend at this time focusing on the primary drivers where the needs, and in real time, we can take the secondary drivers completely off their proposal, represent them a proposal within seconds instead of even minutes or days.

[01:01:00] Eric Goranson: And that's a game changer and what's coolest too, is when you get into software like that, you can sit there as somebody in the field and go, , this project was a lot like Mrs. Smith's project six months ago. And let me go back and look at Mrs. Smith's project and see what her absolute end of the project numbers

[01:01:20] Jeff Nowitzke: That's a really good point. Um, the cool point about field interaction with the software is once a proposal is generated and the client accepted, uh, remotely or virtually, they accept the contract. It turns the contract into a work order. The whole work order is digital before the work order even takes place.

[01:02:08] Jeff Nowitzke: It slides a scale automatically on a percentage of completion for the project so we can follow it remotely from anywhere.

[01:02:30] Eric Goranson: Uh, I love what's the best way to people to find you find the company, all that different stuff. What's the best way for people to

[01:03:04] Jeff Nowitzke: And it also incorporates our entire staff. So you get a full view of who we are and what we

[01:03:28] Caroline Blazovsky: If you have a water intrusion problem, it's not true. So you really need to do your due diligence, correct. And realize not all these companies. Yeah. If you really are interested in doing it right. Reach out to someone like all American restoration and there's other good companies out there as well, but you really need to make sure you're with a legitimate company.

[01:03:52] Jeff Nowitzke: it, right?

[01:03:59] Jeff Nowitzke: deep dive. [01:04:00] Awesome. Thank you for having.

[01:04:04] Eric Goranson: Well, I'm Eric G and

[01:04:07] Eric Goranson: and you've been listening to around