Hi Brandon, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I got involved in the indoor air quality business because of my father Jim Roby. He has started his company in the mid ’90s and I started helping out by the time I was 16 and kept working with him through high school and then into adulthood. I worked with my dad for 15 years and had a very unique journey. My father was very much into holistic medicine before it was cool and was still considered “fringe” or even “hocus pocus” and we also had been studying how mold inside of our homes affected the occupants. Turns out mold is BAD! Who knew? So, my journey as a full-time mold remediator began at the age of 18. Unfortunately, my father passed away in April of 2017 and that’s when I opened up Buckeye Advanced Remediation. Through my time with my father, I have developed long-lasting relationships with some of the top professionals in my field which helped me get my company up and running, and with the help of my entire staff, we have elevated ourselves to be the preferred mold remediation contractors for a number of physicians and patients that are involved in functional medicine.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It was most certainly not a smooth road! I had started my company with around $5,000.00, some equipment, and the skills I needed to succeed, but boy was it tough. I was also the fiduciary for my dad’s estate which was equally insane which gave me very little time to actually grieve the loss. Many weeks I would not take a paycheck to make sure my crew and office expenses could be paid, and I was constantly stressing over when the next job would come and if we could make it. I had my first ever anxiety attack around this time and it took a while to identify how to cope with the huge loss of my father while also taking care of my budding business. Slowly but surely, our reputation grew, and we had started to become more and more known around town. With that, we slowly started working towards building up our resources. The anxiety is still there, but I am now much more seasoned and have a much better understanding of how running a small business has its ups and downs.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Buckeye Advanced Remediation LLC?
We offer mold inspections, testing, and remediatiation services for residential and commercial buildings. I’ve been in this field for just over 21 years and got started by working with my dad at his company. We have an emphasis on residential properties as they are where we as a population spend most of our time. It is also where indoor air quality tends to suffer the most with approximately 50% of the illness in the country being caused by nosocomial issues. Mold awareness has grown exponentially over the past 10 years and people are now recognizing that it is very important to handle mold and water damage issues correctly instead of just ripping and tearing into it.
We set ourselves apart because of our attention to detail, willingness to go above and beyond for our clients, and overall customer service. I am always just a phone call away and have had many clients jokingly say I should charge for therapy because I’ve helped calm their fears around their project. Mold remediation does not have to be scary, but it needs to be taken seriously to avoid unwanted results.
I am so proud of my team because we have become one of the few companies that is referred by doctors and industrial hygienists to help their clients and patients get their houses clean so they can continue their wellness journey. We have been referred by Doctors from the Functional Medicine department at the Cleveland Clinic since the beginning of that program and as doctors leave that department to start their own practices, they continue to refer us to their patients.
We want to spread the message out there that when it comes to mold remediation and cleaning, that there are no shortcuts in the process and beware the “snake oil salesman.” All too often there’s a “miracle cleaner” or some other magic device that will “kill all the mold without rigorous cleaning!”. The problem with all of these pie-in-the-sky products is that the physical action of cleaning, removal, and prevention does not take place, so you’re still dealing with the underlying issues that caused your problem in the 1st place and you’ve just kicked the can down the road and spent money unnecessarily.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
I think in the next 5-10 years the discussion about mycotoxins (the byproduct of specific molds that grow) is going to continue to become more and more prevailing when talking about remediation. We are already researching and preparing to ensure our protocols will be ahead of the curve. Furthermore, I believe that the public awareness for general mold remediation will continue to grow even more as society continues to become more aware of air quality issues, especially in the real estate sector.
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Keenan DeAngelis
