Podcast Transcript
Bonnie Barnes 00:01
Most believe that reaching your potential requires money, status, and success. We spend our lives pushing the hustling and ultimately end up exhausted. But what have potential was all about experiencing a meaningful life. And by prioritizing a meaningful life, you then get money, health, and success. You’re listening to the power of perseverance. And I’m your host, Bonnie Barnes. In this podcast, you will hear the stories of accomplished leaders, and how they discovered innovation that not only changed their life, but also the lives of others. This is how they created the lifestyle of their dreams, and in turn, how you can as well, welcome to the show. I have got Jason Earle with me today on the podcast, and we are going to dive deep into mold.
You know, Jason is a man on a mission. And he’s an adoring father of two boys. An incredible entrepreneur. Looks like your boys are still pretty young. From what I’m seeing in reading here, he is the founder and CEO of got mold, and the creator of the got Mold Test Kit. And we’re gonna dive into our podcast about why test kits and certain ones are so important. He had a realization in his moldy childhood home was the underlying cause of his extreme allergies, and asthma. And this led him into a healthy way of discovering the business in 2002. And leaving behind a successful career on Wall Street. Wow, I bet that was that was a decision right there.
Over the last two decades, Jason has personally performed countless sick building investigations, solving many medical mysteries alone along the way, helping 1000s of families recover their health and peace of mind. He was featured and appeared on Good Morning America, Extreme Makeover, Home Edition at the Dr. Oz Show, entrepreneur, wired and many more. Jason, welcome. And thank you for being here and creating time to share with my audience what you do.
Jason Earle 02:03
Thank you, Bonnie, it’s good to be here.
Bonnie Barnes 02:05
So you had this realization that it was going to be molded from your childhood, home, and that realization came from a stressful job on Wall Street, or what was that aha moment that I think it’s mold that I had as a child. So
Jason Earle 02:23
I had, I had just decided to quit my job on Wall Street, actually, because I wasn’t having fun anymore after nine years. And I decided to go on walkabout. And while I was while I was away, I read a story about a man who had gotten sick from the hotel where he was an employee is actually the biggest mold problem in modern history. And I happen to be there at the time that this was going down in Hawaii. And and so he blamed the mold in the building and and he had developed a series of symptoms that were resonant with being he adult adult onset asthma, which I had never even heard of before, as well as allergies to all these foods that he’d never had a problem with.
And it was like a deja vu moment for me because I was brought back to when I was four years old. I suddenly lost a lot of weight in the three week period. And I was doing having difficulty breathing. And my parents took me to the pediatrician who said, You really need to take to the hospital. This looks pretty serious. And so they brought me to Children’s Hospital Philadelphia, which is renowned respiratory clinic, and the initial diagnosis was cystic fibrosis. And they they they come to that conclusion based upon family history, but also because of the symptoms I was presenting with. And so they waited for six weeks for a second opinion, which was thankfully that I didn’t didn’t have CF actually, I had asthma compounded by pneumonia.
And I was allergic to every single thing in my environment. I mean, every single thing they tested me for so. So I essentially lived on inhalers, my whole childhood. And then when my folks split up when I was 12, I moved out of that, that that musty old farmhouse and all my symptoms went away. And it was completely chalked up to adolescent remission, which basically means we have no idea what happened. And my grandfather had grown up with his asthma two so so that was just it was just one of those things. But as I began to put the pieces of the puzzle together, I started thinking, man, you know, I knew nothing about mold.
Do you think it was a mold call my dad from a payphone and asked him which probably isn’t there anymore, right and and I said, Do you think we had a whole problem? And he just laughed at me. He goes, of course we have mushrooms in the basement. Why do you ask? And I said, Well, you know, do you think it was what do you think that made me sick? And he’s like, Well, I couldn’t help.
Bonnie Barnes 04:44
So his he’s thinking mushrooms as a joke. Like you’re not eating them, but they’re not. They’re not fungus isn’t good. That’s
Jason Earle 04:52
1970s parent, right? They were just no seatbelts, hop in the back of the pickup. Mulch mold, wipe it off, so there wasn’t there was no way Ernest around this back then I’m 47. Right? So that was a long time ago. What were your symptoms, literally, allergic to everything. I was allergic to grass, wheat, corn, eggs, dogs, cats, even cotton. So my clothes, my clothing was itchy my whole childhood. And I had asthma. That was that was pretty significant. And that was mostly it. And then. And then actually, what’s interesting is that I ended up getting diagnosed with Lyme disease years later, and ended up with that double that Double whammy. Lyme disease and mold are heavily it’s like a Venn diagram.
And then I ended up with a lot of brain fog and all of that, but then put the mold really put my immune system on high alert is the way I describe it, you know, the chronic exposure to the musty smell and all the metabolic byproducts of mold growth indoors, essentially had my immune system primed for reactivity. So what’s interesting is that I am no longer allergic to anything. I haven’t used an inhaler since I moved out of that, that farmhouse. So it was the it was very clear to me in retrospect, that was the underlying cause.
Bonnie Barnes 06:12
Okay, so when you say you’re allergic did you have to go through a detoxification process,
Jason Earle 06:20
I didn’t have to go through a formal detoxification process. My process was what I always tell people to do, which is either get your environment straight, or find a new environment. And so most of the time, if you get your environment straight, or move to a healthy environment, and also take care of your diet, because there’s a there’s a misconception that all mold exposure is from air, most of the mycotoxin urine panels that that people are now it’s very popular to get mycotoxin screening. And most of the time, if you’ve got a high mycotoxin panel, it’s actually not coming from air, it’s actually coming from food. It’s coming from from imported grains, conventional meats and dairy, nuts, seeds, things like that, even spices.
So you’re kind of getting a double whammy. And another double whammy here. You know, there’s a there’s another Venn diagram really, which is the air and the food. And so she’s absent those exposures. And I eat a very healthy, very clean diet, mostly domestic, local, seasonal, organic. And so when you’re when you when you eliminate the primary violator, and allow your body to find equilibrium, it does this amazing thing. It heals it, lets go of things that it was holding on to. And in that process, it was a gradual process for me because I wasn’t aware of it right. So I wasn’t aware that I wouldn’t have to detox. But in retrospect, I did exactly what I would have instructed people to do, which is relocate or remediate.
Bonnie Barnes 07:53
Right? So I’m going to share my experience and through the steps, my experience, I’m going to ask questions and resolve some myths that we hear. Because I think this is so important. So I, we were in a moldy home. And what I didn’t know was the toilet was slowly leaking. And what we didn’t know going into this was everybody before us who had lived in this home had had sickness. So us as renters didn’t know because they don’t share that. Right.
So I worked in the basement, I was a seamstress. And I kept my diet very clean almost in a Keto metabolic state. Just because my body thrives that way. I think that contributed to I wasn’t as impacted compared to my spouse at the time. He he had had the moat, we had the mold in the laundry room, and we had in the bathroom and it was black mold. So we call our landlord and we say, Hey, what is going on? How do we get rid of this? And he said, Oh, it’s probably just leaky water. So they fix the leaks. But the mold was still there. And we’re we don’t know any different. They say just spray with Clorox right that like, all time, every like Windex. Clorox fixes everything. So here we go spray with Clorox and it doesn’t go away, but we feel even sicker. So because I’m maintaining a very clean diet, I noticed I don’t feel good, but I don’t feel as bad as my spouse who has similar eating habits, but not the same.
And so I’m like, Well, maybe it’s just because I have a stronger immune system. I don’t know what it was. It impacted him to the point where it mutated the mother effer gene in his blood system. And now he’s got even more issues but we didn’t find all this out till after we moved because that was the research we started to right. Get out of the environment after you mediate it. So what we did is, after research, we had a cut out we had fogged and come to find out by spraying Clorox we were agitated In these mold toxins and creating more mild mycotoxins, yeah, which was even worse for us, just off the hold, yeah, we passed off the mold and we get it removed. And even then even if you remove it, I guess you still can’t really remove mold. It’s like a permanent thing. Because it’s so small.
Jason Earle 10:18
Yeah, I mean, if it’s if it’s not cleaned properly, the problem is that oftentimes remediation contractors or people who, who, who put them put their shingle out as a remediation contractor, they make up their own processes, they, they don’t follow the industry standard. And they use things like fogs, unfortunately, which all of all does is precipitate particles is that it knocks them down. And oftentimes, they’re using chemicals that they’re supposed to clinical kilomole, but you don’t need to kill them all, you just need to remove it. And so by adding those chemicals, what you’re doing is actually adding a chemical load to the building.
And also antimicrobials have a really, you know, just like antibiotics, which I often refer to as weapons of mass destruction. You know, think about using antibiotics on your building, that’s what you’re doing when you’re when you’re using. Interesting, right. And so our buildings, just like our bodies have a microbiome. And there’s a direct an inverse relationship between microbial diversity and things like asthma, allergies, autoimmune disease, and even autism. So what that means is that buildings with a very high microbial diversity, which means lots of critters, microbial and otherwise, actually, the the numbers are very clear that much lower cases of asthma, allergies and autoimmune disease and the opposite is also true, where there’s a low microbial diversity through hyper sanitisation Usually, or overuse, believe it or not of HEPA vacuums and HEPA filters. And that failure to bring nature back in, which means people don’t open their windows, then what happens is those homes have a much higher case of asthma, allergies and autoimmune disease.
And so what happens often is these companies are using sprays and chemicals to knock the spores down or to quote-unquote, kill them. But they’re not removing them than vacuuming a ball of the resultant dust that’s accumulated on the surfaces and wiping them down. Remediation is about removing mold, removing the Milkbone first of all, fixing the odor problem, whatever, and then removing the materials that can’t be cleaned, and then cleaning all the surfaces in the air so that the environment is restored to a quote-unquote, normal condition, not sterile, not mold-free. We actually need mold in our lives, we need mold spores in our air, believe it or not, they’re hormetic stressors, they actually teach your body what’s normal, what you don’t want, is any of them growing in your house. So high microbial diversity, but no growth. And so what that means is it’s really all about moisture control. So
Bonnie Barnes 12:54
through the process, when we get to detoxification you get out of your environment, you get the mold cleaned. Now the myth is you can never get the mycotoxins out of your body and they’re going to cause you to be sick forever. And so I’m almost like, but is that true? Because you do need some molds. Once you’re out of the environment, you do start to get well. So how, how crucial is it to detoxification and do they really stay embedded in your DNA? Like what really is happening there that you learned?
Jason Earle 13:24
Well, so what happened first of all, mycotoxins are again, but the primary exposure of mycotoxins is food, non-air, mycotoxins do not become airborne very easily. And also we vilify these 100 or so molds out of the 100,000 that are known to science. So there’s about 100 species that produce mycotoxins out of 100,000. And everyone’s focused on these molds as if they’re the cause of most illness. And the reality is, is that they’re not Whereas in contrast, all molds produce the musty smell, the microbial VOCs now most people listening to this will know what, no of VOCs which are volatile organic compounds.
These compounds can be, you know, common common VOCs. Man, maybe these are like formaldehyde, which is a group one carcinogen, benzene call, you eat the components of gasoline, even alcohol, which is probably the most popular voc. And what we know about VOCs, is that they’re carcinogens, they’re also they also cause cognitive impairment. That’s why a lot of people do this intentionally with alcohol. But if you ever been in a building, like a paint store, you can get dizzy, you know. And so mice, the musty smell is made by all molds and can have the same impact. In fact, most mold-related illness presents first as cognitive impairment, and so that’s not coming from mycotoxins most likely, most likely it’s coming from the VOCs. And what’s interesting is that there’s a sensitivity that’s actually developed by people who have had these chronic exposures.
And it’s, it’s actually most likely because this is still kind of poorly understood. There’s there are nerves in your face all the time. Are geminal nerves and they’re in your eyes and your sinuses and your and your mouth and your throat. And, and they have the ability to sense environmental factors like, like pressure and things like that, but also chemicals in very, very small amounts. As much as 10 logs below the odor thresholds are super, super sensitive. I mean, like the ultimate sensory forget about dogs, I mean, here we have this amazing sense sensory array in our face. And when when when we detect these pollutants, it goes right to the brain, and it kicks off an inflammatory cascade.
And so a lot of times when people say that they’re not getting better, is that they’ve been hyper sensitized. And so anytime they’re exposed to any of these chemicals, it can be manmade to a lot of people with mold exposure and chemically sensitive, so they can’t be around fragrances and they can’t be around, you know, they can’t go into the hardware store or the, or the dry cleaner. And so there’s a lot of cross sensitivity that’s developed through mold exposure.
So people conflate these ideas based on you know, mycotoxins and, you know, everyone makes up these stories, and a lot of the practitioners are passing these stories along. But the reality is, is that, that it’s complex, you’ve got spores, mycotoxins in the microbial VOCs, all of them have an impact on our health, at differing levels.
But the reality is, is that you can get better I see people get better every day. But I would argue that aside from the environment itself, and the food, the the third component to getting better is actually attitude. So I say it’s air, food and attitude. It people who are afraid of mold, it’s kind of like being afraid of gravity, you know, it’s a fundamental part of our world. So being afraid of mold is probably aside from the environment itself, the number one impediment to people are getting better.
Bonnie Barnes 16:50
Oh, interesting. So when you left your job, and you are on this, you know, time of thinking and reading the book, and you have these symptoms, and you are assessing your health is what I’m hearing, you decided, I think I’m going to make a mold kit.
Jason Earle 17:06
I’m not quite I mean,
Bonnie Barnes 17:09
we were shifting gears a little bit, but I just have to dive into the question like, so how did you have all of this incredible information and knowledge and it started from this mold kit, and that this is what you brought to innovate to the world? Well,
Jason Earle 17:24
So it started with a different innovation, which was really fun. So this has been a true a true, you know, the show is called the power of perseverance, right? I’ve been in this space for 21 years now. And when I first got started, well, first of all, I believe firmly that no adversity should be wasted. And so my childhood illness led me to discover a series of discoveries. And the first discovery was, Wow, this is probably happening to a lot of people. I can’t be the only one that had a damp basement that had allergies and asthma.
You know, asthma is an epidemic, right? 21 million people actually last last house 42 million people that just the last 10 years, it’s doubled from 21 million to 42 million. And, and according to EPA, and Berkeley Labs, by the way, about 25% of those cases are mold and dampness related. But there was no awareness around this back then. So when I first started doing this, I actually I came home from from from Hawaii, curious about mold took a job from with a mold remediation company, and quickly saw that they were using chemicals instead of cleaning.
And I just intuitively didn’t feel right. And this is before there were any industry standards or any public guidance documents. And so I began seeing that there was probably an opportunity for me to help people more by doing inspections and also a way for me to learn about how this stuff works. So I was doing a lot of reading at night and taking classes about building science and construction and just really self teaching because there was no courses about this back then this is a long time ago in the mold space. I’m one of the original mold guys, quite frankly. And so I heard about a guy who trained dogs to sniff out mold and buildings. He had trained bomb dogs and drug dogs and people missing people, dogs and all these talks. And I went down to Florida to meet him and see what he was working on. And I lo and behold I come home with one of North America’s first mold sniffing dogs. What I didn’t tell you earlier was that I when I when I worked on Wall Street was I was the I started when I was 16 I actually got my series seven my stockbrokers license when I was 17 and I have a Guinness world record for being the youngest licensed stock broker in history.
Bonnie Barnes 19:25
Oh my gosh that’s really cool, total accidental thing it was like literally out
Jason Earle 19:29
of dropping out of high school after my mom died and I Lyme disease and then I got recruited out of the gas station by Wall Street stockbroker who Okay, that’s a whole nother story right there. That’s for another show. But, but he recruited me and I did that for nine years. And it was, it was a fascinating career. But ultimately it didn’t scratch the itch which which was that I always felt this calling to do something meaningful to help improve the quality of other people’s lives. And so so so so I come home with this mold sniffing dog and everyone thought I got lost my mind here at the youngest licensed operator in history has a mole sniffing dog like how Jason has lost his mind. And but actually, within a few months, we were just we, the local press had heard about us, they tried to debunk us by having mold in the house.
And we found in like three minutes, instead of debunking us, they endorsed us. And so this began this whole like organic thing where we start having doctors referring patients to us. And then those stories of healing were so dramatic that we ended up on Good Morning America and all this all the features and appearances that you mentioned earlier in my introduction. And the I actually got trained on how to find mold and buildings by a dog. So my dog Oreo literally showed me where mold is in buildings. So I got this amazing education, because of all this national press, we had, my phone rang off the hook, I never had to advertise. And we were busier than I could ever be, I was doing four or five inspections a day at one point.
But I was doing fine by being led around by by my my sweet pup. And, and so I began, you know, just developing a really strong knowledge base, seeing how buildings fail. And when you see how buildings are built a certain way, there’s a lot of patterns that you see. And then also by remediating and also looking over test data, collecting air samples and surface samples, you do that enough, and you start to see that, oh, wow, if this happens, then people get better. And if this happens, people don’t get better. And, and so this this sort of like this sort of education by immersion, is really the way I would describe it was something completely accidental, like an avalanche really. And, and so so over the years, that company, which way I called lab results, because it was Labrador Retrievers, and laboratory testing,
Bonnie Barnes 21:53
we’re gonna ask you, what did the dog do specifically that made you think I’ve got to watch my dog. So
Jason Earle 21:59
she was she was trained just like a bomb dog or a drug dog. So there’s associative conditioning, so they basically exposed her to a, a tiny bit of moldy building material, and then and then train her to signal which is to sit down and, and then give her a food reward. And doesn’t matter is
Bonnie Barnes 22:20
her to getting that training. And then you watching her, I was kind of, she sniffed out, got it, yeah. And then
Jason Earle 22:27
we would do the search pattern and house, you started the front door, and you do a circular or clockwise pattern throughout the entire house. And when she would detect it, she’d sit, and then she’d point to it with her nose, and she would literally point to exactly the spot on the wall, sometimes she would even leave a wet nose spot on the wall. And I would put a sticker on the wall, and then I’d come back, I’d put an event. And I’d come back through and I would drill holes in the walls where she alerted, and then stick a tube in the wall, it’s called a wall check and pull an air sample out, and then send that to a lab for analysis.
And she was able to verify 90% of her alerts. And we became very good at understanding each other. She was my partner for 12 years. And so we did 1000s and 1000s of inspections together. And I mean, I lost count, like five years in you know. And so we, we healed a lot of homes. I mean, we did some beautiful work together. And so, so her prot her process illuminated these patterns for me, right? Otherwise, I would have been fumbling around, quite frankly, like most of the mold inspectors out there. Yeah,
Bonnie Barnes 23:36
I’ve noticed that some are very well-educated and some who are just getting started. And it’s really important that you do know that they know their stuff. And we tried a few different kids. So what makes your kids so different?
Jason Earle 23:51
Well, so what happened was when the lab results became the company lab results became one 800 Got mold, Mold Inspection Company. And so I ran that for, you know, for another 10 years. And then, over time, I became frustrated with the fact that people most people who needed Mold Testing needed a Mold Inspection couldn’t afford it, you know, an average inspection is going to be $1,500. Or they’re expensive.
Yeah, by by qualified professional, you’re going to pay. It’s just like anything else, you wouldn’t go to a discount heart surgeon. And there’s very few things that are more important than the health and the environment within your home in terms of, you know, in terms of longevity, and health and vitality. So, so but we did turn away tons of renters and send people on a budget and single moms and anyone outside of our coverage area. And so that’s what led me to the creation of the Gamel test kit.
Bonnie Barnes 24:45
And this test kit compared to your competitors, what is it you do differently? Oh,
Jason Earle 24:52
gosh, I mean, what we did when we when I decided to create this thing, what I did was I looked at all the test kits that were out there and I said well what’s good about them What’s bad about them, I just did like a, like a, like a, it was almost like a like an MBA project, right? I did the competitive analysis, I looked at what was out there, and I couldn’t find anything that I could recommend. That’s why we created it. And, and, and I just systematically designed our kit around all the weaknesses that I found in all the other ones. So we use the same air sampling technology that’s used by professionals nationwide.
They’re called spore traps. And so they’re these cassettes that are act like almost like filters. And that usually you have to have a professional come over and collect those samples on an air sampling pump on a tripod. That’s right. That’s one of the things that makes it so expensive. But I figured out how to make an air sampling pump that doesn’t require all that stuff. So this is our air sampling pump, this duplicate $1,000 device, exactly, we make it for a whole lot less than that. And it interfaces with these cassettes, which are the spore traps. So this is a vacuum pump, it pulls air through these cassettes, it runs for five minutes, you do an outside air sample, and then you sample the indoor air. And then you submit them through a prepaid mail or in our comes with our kit, which you see behind me over here.
That goes right to our lab partner, and then they do the analysis. And then they send us the data and then we disperse it to the customer with a really nicely formatted report that has a color coded cover page green, yellow, orange, red indicator for each sample, the actual lab data organized in a really easy to understand fashion. And then and then some action steps for on how to find an inspector or mediator in your in your area. And so so what we did was we a made it affordable. So our kits start at 199 for one room kit 249 for a two room kit 299 For three room kit, all lab fees and shipping are included. So we also made it easy. And, and then we also partnered with the number one lab in the country. So our results are the best you could possibly ask for we for our with the highest quality low cost kit that’s out there.
And then also the pump, you get to keep it which is nice because when you buy, you get to keep this and then you can buy refills. So if you want to test again, you can buy refills for 149 for a one room kit. So $50, last 199 for two room and 249 for three room. And so, so the idea here is to is to encourage people to be proactive about this, too. And also the lenses to a friend, you know, so you know, people can test for less. And so you can test four times in a calendar year for less than the cost of a professional inspection.
Bonnie Barnes 27:33
Well, so just looking on your website, there’s so many incredible learning resources under your learning center tool, blogs, you really take the time to put some blogs on here to really put some light on this. So I guess what I’m hearing you say is, if your symptoms you feel like it might be your environment, get a Mold Test and start there.
Jason Earle 27:56
I would say that you have to look at air as a foundational element of health. You know, there are five basic human needs. Yeah, water, food, shelter, and sunlight. And you could argue that mold effects two of those right shelter and air.
And what’s interesting about air, unlike water, food and sunlight, which you know, you are tactile and you kind of have to do it, you have to go outside you have to eat food, you have to drink water, air, you just breathe. And and so it’s the thing that you can actually live without for the shortest period of time of those five things, right? You can live without sunlight for a long time. You can live without shelter for a few for a long time. You can live in that food for weeks water for days, but air three minutes. And so yeah, it’s the thing we think about last, it’s an afterthought, probably because we’re so close to it kind of like how you can’t smell your own breath. Unless it’s really bad. You will you don’t really know.
Bonnie Barnes 28:58
They’re, they’re
Jason Earle 29:01
like hiding your nose, right? Yeah, so and you breathe 13 to 15 times a minute, which comes out to 20,000 times a day. So so this and by the way, that’s 2000 gallons, which is enough to fill a swimming pool, and then check this out. It’s also 3030 pounds of air. So if you can get your mind around that so so you only drink four pounds of water every day. If you drink eight glasses. So you’re literally you know, the air you breathe is your single largest environmental exposure. So my suggestion is if people are experiencing any sort of health concern, they should look to the thing that they’re exposed to the most.
Bonnie Barnes 29:42
What was what was it that kept you going? Was there any moments that when you when you doubted the work you were doing and if you did what kept you going? Because it’s mold like nobody, nobody cares about mold?
Jason Earle 29:55
Yeah, when I was when I first started doing this, man, it was not sexy. It’s really good. Mold is in vogue now. It’s really gratifying. And I thought I was hoping it was going to be a lot sooner. It’s really expensive. And I would argue dangerous to be early to an industry. But I was able to weather some pretty serious storms. You know, it’s been an uphill battle to a large degree, but, but it’s, it’s really beautiful now. And I would say that the thing that always kept me going was that I had, so I’ve had so many stories of people whose lives have been transformed.
You know, we’ve saved so many lives and improved so many, so many more. And so, you know, even in my darkest days, I never once in this industry, I never once said, Man, I should do something different. You know, like, in fact, if I, if somebody said, Jason, you can’t do this anymore, you know, you’re banned from you know, you have to go do something different, I wouldn’t know what to do. Because for me, this is so it’s, it’s such a pleasure to be useful, in this way right to to help people navigate something that’s so confusing, and so, so crucial. It’s really, so it’s really, I think, more than anything else, the purpose or the why, if you will, you know, my Why is bigger than any obstacle I would ever have to overcome.
Bonnie Barnes 31:21
Wow, you know, not knowing a whole lot about you, but just a brief things you’ve shared of your childhood, your mom passing away having childhood struggles with health and symptoms, you know, a parent who, you know, the best of their ability is doing the best they can with their awareness, I would say it took you into a very deep place where you found connection to yourself through this work. And when the work with the stock market brokerage wasn’t meaningful, that’s when you found the most meaningful work and you didn’t really know that’s where it was going.
So you trusted this little intuition in your heart that said, Go explore this, and it is exploded into something that’s pretty powerful. And I’ll tell you, if I had met you, seven years ago, when I was going through it, that information would have been impactful in my life to understanding and knowing how to navigate it, not as not as being afraid of it, but just knowing the resources and being more educated. So I’m super thankful that I get to have this conversation, because that could save somebody for years, and money and dollars, and misconception and myths about I mean, once you’re sick, you do have a mental illness that has to be overcome with that.
And that’s what is so interesting to me about people is you have been able to shift your mindset along the way and not hang on to anything that has kept you from growing your business. And I say that in a way where I mean, you got sick, but you didn’t allow it to keep you sick, you had mold in your house, but it did allow you to be afraid to live in a house or just you know what I mean? Like you didn’t allow those fearing factors, you allowed them to make you better. And you said something also really impactful that I liked. You know, you not persevering, but the challenges that come to you came to you and presented opportunities. You said it differently. But
Jason Earle 33:22
no, I know adversity should be wasted. Yeah. And that’s, that’s, that’s been if I look back at the things that have been most meaningful for me, it’s always been without, without, without exception, what most people would consider to be disasters, yeah. And they have yielded the greatest dividends, in part because in overcoming them, I can then share my experience with people who are going through this. And a, you make them feel like they’re not alone, but also maybe give them you know, a stepping stone, something they can work from.
So that’s across the board. And also, you know, you brought something else up about mental mental illness and about, you know, mold, mold create mold is a lot of people experience a tremendous emotional dysregulation, and, you know, depression and things like that. And my mother committed suicide in the moldy house I grew up and, and so and I never really understood that she was an alcoholic, so who knows really what was going on there. But what was in 2008, Brown University found a strong correlation between mold and dampness indoors and depression.
And I was like, I wonder if that was if that was the issue. In 2015, a good friend of mine who’s a mold researcher at Rutgers University, published a paper where she had done she had a big mold exposure and experience a lot of sickness from, from what she believes to be the musty smell. So she began studying the musty smell on fruit flies. And what she found was that they stopped producing dopamine, they stopped reproducing, they stop flying to the light this or flying down except for the light, they develop Parkinsonian like symptoms, and later studies found that they also experienced mitochondrial damage. So in essence, they became depressed. And so suddenly the pieces of the puzzle started really coming together for me in terms of how my mother’s untimely demise may have been accelerated. And so, you know, all of this comes together. In the end, it all makes sense, you know, I think, yeah, so many of these things.
So I encourage people that are experiencing this to be kind to themselves, and know that this is, you know, that they’re experiencing a combination of, of annulments, that, you know, it’s not so easy to pin the tail on the donkey, this causes this, right. And so if I fix this, but it’s more of a, it’s more of a, sort of a snowball at the bottom of the hill, you know, it’s hard to unpack it, and say, Where, so the again, it goes back to this idea that, you know, the insights that you get from overcoming adversity, if you keep them to yourselves, you’re doing it to service to others. That’s, at least that’s my take.
Bonnie Barnes 36:07
I would agree with that. When I went through that experience, it was I was already trying to biohack my body and to feel optimal, and trying to figure out these things. So by hearing you just even if nobody else listens to this, this conversation alone was very healing for me just to hear the processes and steps and, boy, thank you for sharing that about your mother. Like, just to hear the reiteration of, you know, where it where it brought healing for you. That’s pretty powerful. It’s pretty powerful.
Jason Earle 36:41
You know, it’s, it’s, it’s, I don’t I don’t shy away from these things at all. Because again, it would be it would be a disservice to others really keep that to myself.
Bonnie Barnes 36:49
So, to sum up this incredible conversation, do you have a mantra or one thing that you is your as your as your go to in saying in your head?
Jason Earle 37:03
Yeah, I have a bunch of them. But there’s one in fact, I’m probably gonna end up having it over my desk. And it’s it comes from the Von Trapp family, the
Bonnie Barnes 37:15
pay Yeah, The Sound of Music. So they had
Jason Earle 37:19
a lodge in Vermont, actually. And when they came over after World War Two, that family lodge, and it burned to the ground shortly after they finished it. And then they were able to find some or another scrap the other the money to rebuild it. And one of their friends sent them over a rug that they kept in their foyer and inland. It’s at NEC Aspera Tarrant and it means fear, not adversity. And so, you know, for me, that’s, that’s, that’s my you can say it’s a mantra, you know, as even if I say that right now, I get a little bit misty eyed. But you know, we fear adversity, but yet I don’t know. That’s where the growth comes from, you know, you go to the gym.
And you put extra weight on to it, the more weight the more the growth, right, this is a very simple Yeah. And we do cold exposure, and we do all these things to create synthetic diversity, but yet when nature gives it to us, and the universe gives it to us, we go on a victim, you know, oh, that’s what you’re that’s what that’s we’re here to grow and we grow against things. You know, trees grow against gravity, you know, we the tree that grows on that cliff edge, you know, like the CDs, Banzai like trees and Japanese paintings, and they’re growing on this craggy, you know, that the wind is the adversity that’s come from that exposure to the elements that gives that, that that tree, which if it were grown in a, in a greenhouse would be this spindly thin little thing that would fall over with one swift wind. But yet that same DNA growing on a cliffside grows into this beautiful tree of character, right? This enduring isn’t this, this Hardy Hardy creature. So, neck Aspera Tarrant fear not adversity.
Bonnie Barnes 39:11
I love that. Thank you so much.
Jason Earle 39:14
Thank you.
Bonnie Barnes 39:18
Thank you for listening to today’s episode. If you like what you heard, please share it and help us keep the conversation going. We can’t grow without you. So thank you in advance for your support of power of perseverance.
