[00:00:00] Eric Goranson: It's around the house when it comes to, and

[00:00:23] Eric Goranson: this is around the house. Welcome to around the house with Eric G and Caroline B. This is the midweek special. Thanks for joining us. This is the podcast only middle of the week update that we give you guys about what's going on out there in the world of construction, design, home improvement, healthy homes at everything else.

[00:00:45] Eric Goranson: Hey Caroline, it's been a busy week already and we're already just creeping up on the middle of

[00:00:49] Caroline Blazovsky: it. I know. And I think this midweek let's talk about like everything else. I've got a lot of like gripes. I know you do. I saw your post about [00:01:00] social media. Yeah,

[00:01:02] Eric Goranson: I agree. I kind of went on a tear. let's

[00:01:05] Caroline Blazovsky: talk about that for a little

[00:01:05] Eric Goranson: bit.

[00:01:06] Eric Goranson: I'm fine. Yeah. Let's talk about influencers out there cuz you know, it's interesting. And, and what I feel bad about is many times homeowners and businesses go on and look for an expert. And they're like, okay, we need an expert to go represent our brand. Or I need an expert to tell me how to fix something in my house.

[00:01:29] Eric Goranson: And they go to YouTube and find, uh, what they think is a reasonable solution from somebody that might have a million followers or half a million followers. And. There are a lot of imposters out there that have no idea what they're talking about. I can go through and watch that video and go, that's wrong.

[00:01:47] Eric Goranson: That's wrong. That's gonna get somebody heard. They have no idea what they shouldn't have made this video. And, you know, looking at the stats on the views that people are out there following this advice and doing it wrong and it's dangerous.

[00:01:59] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah. And I think, [00:02:00] I think there's a difference too, between promoting something and then also doing things that you know, are not.

[00:02:10] Caroline Blazovsky: Legitimate. So there's a lot of people who have followers on Instagram, for example. That they're paid followers. And if you, and, and how you kind of can look at this and tell is, if you go through say somebody posts something, you'll see like four legitimate posts on like a celebrity post. Like let's just take, there's some famous celebrities out there and you'll see four legit posts of other people.

[00:02:31] Caroline Blazovsky: And the rest is all spam. Like you'll see posts and it'll say, it'll be in a different language. The comments won't be relevant. They won't make sense to the, and it's all fake. So. You know, my issue is like, when I see someone like, and I'm, I'm, I'm gonna call her out. I'm gonna say JLo. I see JLo basically being a brand ambassador for things that she knows absolutely nothing about.

[00:02:53] Caroline Blazovsky: And I think she's got so much money. One, I would be like, all right, why don't you just share the wealth a little bit and allow an expert to kind of [00:03:00] really come in and, and be that that go to person for whatever it. But, I mean, does she really need more money? I mean, you know, it's just, I, I don't know. No,

[00:03:08] Eric Goranson: but I threw that on the brand actually more so than even JLo, because what happens is, is that brand X looks at it and says, Hey, I wanna reach JLo's audience.

[00:03:19] Eric Goranson: I don't how many followers she's got. Yeah, yeah. Audience, which could be 10 million people. And that's one thing I'm, I'm grabbing a celebrity, right? What I don't like is when the celebrity goes out and this is where it really rubs me the celebrity, or even a YouTube star. Maybe they're a tool YouTube star for instance.

[00:03:37] Eric Goranson: And they're all about power tools. And now they're giving remodeling tips and they're not remodelers. They have no idea what they're talking about. Oh

[00:03:43] Caroline Blazovsky: yeah.

[00:03:44] Eric Goranson: That happens all the time. That's where I get worried about, because there's a lot of that out there where there are people out there and you can go on.

[00:03:54] Eric Goranson: YouTube or any of these other things that are people out there talking about stuff. They have no [00:04:00] idea what they're talking about and it's dangerous and it doesn't hurt. It doesn't help the brand either. Cuz the brand is sitting there thinking that they're gonna reach, they're paying a quote unquote influencer to reach their hundred thousand likes followers fans.

[00:04:15] Eric Goranson: And there's only probably 5,000 of them there cuz they could have spent a thousand bucks and bought all those other bots. And they're not real people. This goes

[00:04:24] Caroline Blazovsky: back to like Tom Selleck with reverse mortgages. Like he's selling all these old people that they should like do reverse mortgage. And I'm like, what is Tom Selleck have to do with that?

[00:04:32] Caroline Blazovsky: Or even Joe Namath goes out on some limbs. some great, but see,

[00:04:36] Eric Goranson: those are different though. Those are celebrity endorsements, and I think that's different sitting there. Is it for celebrity to be sitting there? It is. It is because they're on. On a commercial and they're the spokesperson. So they're being paid as a spokesperson.

[00:04:50] Eric Goranson: I can understand being paid as a spokesperson, but I don't see Tom Sellek teaching people. Doing a one hour seminar [00:05:00] on reverse mortgages. He's not right. He's just doing a 32nd commercial on the TV to say, call this company. I think that I see those as two

[00:05:07] Caroline Blazovsky: different things. So smeared, I think that you get to a point where you're a celebrity and you think you can endorse every product.

[00:05:14] Caroline Blazovsky: This is my opinion. And I, and I'm gonna stick with it. I don't think, I think I lose respect when I see celebrities that are doing things like that. And, and Tomsk, I think it was Tom Selleck or one of, one of the guys. I was like, this is just too much. So I don't know, you know, everybody's got their own opinion, but.

[00:05:31] Caroline Blazovsky: I, I like to see people saying, yeah, that

[00:05:32] Eric Goranson: doesn't bother me. Right. It doesn't bother me personally, cuz I look at it and go, oh, that's a celebrity endorsements. The, the news is, you know, if you turn on the television or streaming or whatever else, it's jam packed with celebrity endorsements. And, and I'm okay with that with them putting their, you know, personally putting their name out there where it rubs me raw is that someone is out there pretending to be something that they're.

[00:05:55] Eric Goranson: And I think that's two different things in my mind. Well,

[00:05:57] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm okay if they use the product and they like it, like Jennifer [00:06:00] Aniston uses, you know, her oatmeal cream. I'm fine with that. But I just don't think that Tom Selleck ever did a reverse mortgage in his life. So that's where I guess, you know, it all depends on the, I guess the, the believability,

[00:06:13] Eric Goranson: so yeah.

[00:06:15] Eric Goranson: You know, no. Right. Ryan Reynolds out there pitching gin. I believe

[00:06:18] Caroline Blazovsky: that though. You know, I mean, I think he's, I think he's Ingo, you know, that's like a believable

[00:06:23] one.

[00:06:23] Eric Goranson: Yeah. But, you know what I mean? And I don't, I guess I don't put it as believable and not for a celebrity endorsement. I just look at it and go, all right.

[00:06:33] Eric Goranson: Is this person stating they're an expert? Cause I don't see Tom, from my point of view, I don't see Tom Selleck sitting there going, oh yes, I'm an expert on reverse mortgages and you need to call my company here cuz I trained them all. These are all my people. I know all this. I don't see him pertaining to be for instance, an expert versus.

[00:06:54] Eric Goranson: Some of these other people are pretending to be experts. No, I get it. I,

[00:06:57] Caroline Blazovsky: listen, I get your point of view. And, but that's [00:07:00] why I think advertisers and marketers have to be aware that there's all these different points of view out there and they have to consider it because I think just cuz you get a celebrity doesn't or, or any kind of expert doesn't mean that the audience is gonna find it believable or even.

[00:07:14] Caroline Blazovsky: You know, um, gravitate towards it, purchase something because of it. It's,

[00:07:18] Eric Goranson: it's a slippery spot. Yeah. So I'm, I'm kind of, yeah. Kind of going out there after the, you know, it's so easy for people. I mean, we could have done this, you know, we don't have a hundred thousand followers. There's a lot of our competitors out there that if you pull up their Instagram, their Facebook or whatever, and you go, wow, they've got 150,000 people, but then when you see 'em post up and they're like, wow, that was a really engaging post.

[00:07:42] Eric Goranson: That was. Wow. There's five people that liked and commented it

[00:07:47] Caroline Blazovsky: that, how did that happen? And then the comments don't add up, right? They're yeah. They're.

[00:07:54] Eric Goranson: Yeah, you'll see. And we, we patrol ours. We get that too, because we do have followers in other [00:08:00] countries to the show. I mean, you know, 3% of our listening audience comes from, you know, India for instance.

[00:08:06] Eric Goranson: And we do have people down there that are listeners to the show that think that they can post up on our Facebook and promote themselves and try to use our platform. Yeah.

[00:08:14] Caroline Blazovsky: There's spam. I mean, like everybody has some percentage of spam. I mean, I do. I mean, there's people that. You know, all of a sudden you're seeing something about, Hey, do you wanna date somebody and blah, blah, blah.

[00:08:23] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm like, no. Yeah. Did I dump 'em off there's

[00:08:26] Eric Goranson: ton of that. They sneak in there, you know, there's, there's a ton of that. And, you know, while I'm out here, uh, complaining about some of this, the other thing I don't like is, and it really bugs me on LinkedIn sometimes how many people that are trying to pitch to us podcast promoting, I get probably five.

[00:08:49] Eric Goranson: People a day messaging me that are not in my contacts list. I wanna get you a hundred thousand more followers. No, you're not. I'm sorry. You're not. Thank. [00:09:00] Hm. So it's, it's crazy that way. It's crazy that way. What else? But Carolyn, you've been having, you've been having some remodeling stuff and you've been having a few struggles on your door.

[00:09:10] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah. So, you know, these are issues that we all face. I had, um, a door that was ordered properly through documentation of an email, went to the lumberyard, lumberyard, ordered it wrong, someone ordered it wrong and we got a door going the wrong way. So. Now the door's installed and, you know, we weren't there when it was being installed.

[00:09:31] Caroline Blazovsky: So come to come back to the house. Right. And we see it and we're like, wait a minute. This door's supposed to be opening from the right side, not the left side. What do you do? I mean, this door's in now and what we were looking for from the lumber yard was some accountability that they did this wrong.

[00:09:48] Caroline Blazovsky: Just apology. And I found that there was no accountability. No, I'm sorry. And said, they tried to throw it back on us and blame us. And you know, I mean, legitimately the, it was correct. It was in the email and said exactly what we

[00:09:59] Eric Goranson: needed. [00:10:00] Yeah. And it's tough because I've had plenty of job sites where this has happened, where I was the designer and the door went the wrong way.

[00:10:07] Eric Goranson: Now you're walking over the H V a C event. That's now in the middle of the, the floor that was put in front of it. And we've had to tear those doors right out again and redo it stinks. You know, I can, I can tell. Four or five times that I can think of just off the top of my head, where we've had to go back in and reinstall the entire door, pull the trim off, pull the other stuff off, you know, cut the caulking loose, you know, reflash it.

[00:10:31] Eric Goranson: Do whatever you have to do to get it back in again. And yeah. That's, that's not fun. No, that's not fun.

[00:10:37] Caroline Blazovsky: It's lousy. So, so yeah, those are the joys of like, no matter who you are, where you are, joys are remodeling. Yeah. I mean, it's the stuff we legitimately face as, you know, professionals, or even just a person doing a project

[00:10:47] Eric Goranson: di.

[00:10:49] Eric Goranson: Yep. Absolutely. How about you? Absolutely. What do you have going on? You know, um, it's, I it's back to school day to day for us here in my local area. So it's, [00:11:00] uh, that cool time of fall where, you know, we're all hanging out. We're all doing our stuff here. It's kind of getting the late summer and the ki school buses are driving by today.

[00:11:11] Eric Goranson: You know, so it's that for, school's been in, in a lot of areas, you know, for weeks now, but, uh, for us here in my neighborhood, it's, uh, the first day at school back. And so it's, uh, kind of get that, uh, even though it's gonna be a hundred degrees, I. It still feels like we have, you know,

[00:11:29] Caroline Blazovsky: 90 in the Northeast and, and high humidity.

[00:11:32] Caroline Blazovsky: And we don't, the kids aren't in school yet. That'll be next week for us. But, you know, we talked about something briefly and I just wanna mention it. Our local high school is now playing the games season games before school starts. And I had told Eric about this, that's strange. I found this strange that the kids now are engaging.

[00:11:51] Caroline Blazovsky: And so, you know, if the season for football has started before school's even in session. So the first game was last week. That's a

[00:11:59] Eric Goranson: new thing. [00:12:00] Yeah. That's not something I've seen before, but maybe they're just trying to, you know, it's, it's interesting. The school sports and what happened over with COVID and that kind of stuff.

[00:12:09] Eric Goranson: Maybe they're just trying to, to split it out. So the sports don't overlap because I remember when I was in high school, if you played in one sport, the winter sport was tough, cuz you would get overlapped.

[00:12:19] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah. I don't know. Interesting. Or maybe, you know, it's getting too cold for the kids and they wanna get the football season started earlier.

[00:12:25] Caroline Blazovsky: I dunno.

[00:12:27] Eric Goranson: Uh, not for football. I mean. I think football's best played in the snow. Oh, I mean, I played soccer as a kid in the snow. They didn't call those games. I don't know. I don't see. It's probably weather. If anything it's harder when the kids out there, when it's 95 degrees and 90% humidity than it is than it is when it's totally you're right.

[00:12:45] Eric Goranson: 35. You know what I mean? I did

[00:12:47] Caroline Blazovsky: not think of

[00:12:47] Eric Goranson: that. so that's how I look at it, but you know, hard to say it, it could be, you know, there's so many things that go into this stuff now with that. And, you know, I know that like, uh, for instance, you know, the marching bands and those kind of [00:13:00] things, they start in the middle of summer.

[00:13:01] Eric Goranson: Mm-hmm for all the people that are in the, in the music programs out there, they get going Midsummer. Parents always have to deal with. I

[00:13:08] Caroline Blazovsky: love this time of year. I love fall. I like all the activities going on and things to do. I love pumpkins and I'm looking forward to all the cider and you know, it, it's just good.

[00:13:19] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And one thing too, it's it's good. We're not gonna talk so much about this in the, in the radio show at all, but now is when parents are trying to figure out storage ideas, because now they're starting to walk in from a day of work, maybe at the office, or maybe they're walking outta their home office and they see the backpacks and the shoes and a, and a sweatshirt all piled up by the front board.

[00:13:39] Eric Goranson: They're going, how about equipment? How are we gonna control

[00:13:41] Caroline Blazovsky: it? Like the lacrosse equipment, football equipment, baseball equipment. I mean, what do you do with that stuff? You really need some kind of stor, I mean, you need cubbies. I don't know. You need some kind of storage for that garage. Yeah.

[00:13:54] Eric Goranson: A lot of ways you can do that with, with cubbies, you know, and storage and furniture and things like that.

[00:13:59] Eric Goranson: When they [00:14:00] come, sometimes you don't have room by the front door. So maybe they're coming in a, a side door through the garage, you know, where you've got those kind of things. But I know a lot of people are trying to figure out how to, how to store things correctly because a lot of kids haven't been in school for a year and a half, two years.

[00:14:17] Eric Goranson: So that's pretty amazing that all of a sudden they're going back. And I think with all of our, you know, schooling from home too, I think the kids now are gonna lose their for all of us in the Northern hemisphere here of, you know, the Northern part of the United States. I think those snow days now are gonna be long gone.

[00:14:35] Eric Goranson: They're gonna be, Hey, it's snowing out there. Log in school

[00:14:40] Caroline Blazovsky: starts at eight. Yeah. It's so true.

[00:14:42] Eric Goranson: No more losing none of that go out and play in the snow. Nope. It's a snow day. Zoom starts at eight mobile people are gonna go. Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. So what do you got going on the rest of the week?

[00:14:56] Eric Goranson: Caroline? You got a bunch of clients and stuff for what's happening clients.

[00:14:59] Caroline Blazovsky: [00:15:00] Yeah. We've been talking a lot about. California. I've been doing a lot of work in Los Angeles, a lot of moisture issues. We're seeing, um, I've got water testing. This is a great time of year to test for mold. So if you are looking to get your home tested, you can do go to examine.com.

[00:15:16] Caroline Blazovsky: Xa. Am I in.com? Get yourself a home mold test, check out your allergens and mold. This is the perfect time of year to do it with the humidity high, um, and also water testing. Make sure you don't have E coli. Yeah. Coliform bacteria. Get that all

[00:15:31] Eric Goranson: checked out. See, we have no humidity problems here. We have not had rain in like 55 days in my area.

[00:15:40] Eric Goranson: So our humidity has been low for two and a half months. Ugh. So we're hoping for some humidity, I need some humidity here cuz we have this layer of dust. Now that's been coming. It just gets tracked in from everywhere. Cuz it's outside, you're driving around and you could see the little bit of dust on the road and [00:16:00] it's, it's kicking up from the cars going by and it's very not what we have here.

[00:16:05] Eric Goranson: It reminds me of living in, in Texas or in Eastern Oregon, Eastern Washington, Arizona, Southern California out away from the cities because there's just a layer of dust anywhere I can go out and blow my driveway off and get some leaves and stuff. Fur needles that have come down and I have to wear a mask because it looks like I'm pig pinned from peanuts out there.

[00:16:27] Eric Goranson: I have a 20 foot high dust cloud cloud of dust. Just from blowing the driveway

[00:16:33] Caroline Blazovsky: off, you get a lot of those. Erica has a lot of those needles. Like the fur needles. Those are like, oh, the worst is the car. Like when they get all trapped in your windshield and down, and then you gotta open up the, the hood and then you gotta blow all that out.

[00:16:46] Caroline Blazovsky: Cuz those little needles are like everywhere.

[00:16:49] Eric Goranson: Ah, you need to get a pitch fork here. I mean, it's literally just take your hand and scoop it out. You could literally, if you don't do it once a month, When you're cleaning the car and stuff, you know, go in and cuz [00:17:00] it doesn't get car washed. Doesn't get that.

[00:17:01] Eric Goranson: You have to literally pop the hood, get in there. That's in all those. Cresses scoop it

[00:17:04] Caroline Blazovsky: out in those like little, oh it's ever whatever channels, like get in your, under your hood and between the door jams and stuff. That's a mess.

[00:17:11] Eric Goranson: And the trunk and the worst part for us is the SAP. Oh. A SAP coming from those trees.

[00:17:16] Eric Goranson: It's right. You get all these little

[00:17:17] Caroline Blazovsky: drops to get those off, to get that SAP off without being toxic. Is that something you can use? That's not like,

[00:17:22] Eric Goranson: yeah. You just, I, I buy the spray can of the, of the SAP remover. Yeah. That is, you know, alcohol can get it, but then you're taking the wax off. So, you know, you're just trying to get that stuff off of there.

[00:17:34] Eric Goranson: So it's so sticky, nasty, there is SAP remover for cars that you can get that's specifically made for that, but that's tough. It's tough to get that off. You have a garage, you have

[00:17:44] Caroline Blazovsky: garage or a car. You have an area where you keep your car parked there. So it doesn't get all that it's

[00:17:49] Eric Goranson: covered. Uh, just for the, just for the convertible, everything else, my truck and Julie's SUV is sitting out in the driveway.

[00:17:56] Eric Goranson: So, oh, that's stink. couple times a year, [00:18:00] couple times a year. About this time I'm out there right before I get it washed, I go out there and spend an hour and get all the SAP off of it. Then go get it washed and make sure they put the ceramic coat on the outside. So it stays off of there. But you know, there is no solution there.

[00:18:14] Eric Goranson: And then on my truck, you know, it's an old truck I've been working on it. And, uh, one of the issues it had was sometime in its life, when it was a farm on a farm, it was, you know, I think it was a ranchers truck. It's a really good shape. But I think that they had hard water getting sprayed from sprinklers on it really from, from all over the top of it, because all the glass has water spots on it.

[00:18:38] Eric Goranson: Hm. Interesting. So I've been going through and polishing all that glass and removing those water spots because I wanna get the windows tinted, but if you put tinted windows with those water spots, it looks even worse. So I've been going through and polishing it up, getting that all detailed in and make sure that looks all good because, uh, that's one of the new upgrades I wanna do in the truck.

[00:18:57] Eric Goranson: One of these days, it's the 1995. It's [00:19:00] got its, it's got it. Gotta have a

[00:19:01] Caroline Blazovsky: truck though. Every, and we're cut out for it. Every household, I feel like you have to have a truck old, young, new. Something you need, especially if you're doing

[00:19:09] Eric Goranson: DIY project. Yeah. I have to be able to haul stuff. Yeah. I, and, and even when having a truck and I'll do this before we go here, because I'll give some advice based on some of my bad decisions that I've made over the years, there are times even when you have a truck that you should have it delivered, I've made some mistakes picking up siding for my garage that I built 20 years ago.

[00:19:37] Eric Goranson: I picked up a unit of sighting. Well, problem was, is, it was 16 feet long and I put it in the eight foot bed and then did some straps and stuff and, and put some stuff to strap it down. And, uh, it was so back loaded that the front wheels, I had a hard time steering on the road because the wheels were barely touching in the front when I'd get going too [00:20:00] fast.

[00:20:00] Eric Goranson: The lift was so much, I couldn't steer the truck. So I had to just. Few 20 miles an hour and I should have turned around and went back and had it delivered, but stupid stuff you do in your twenties that I'll never do again. What do you

[00:20:11] Caroline Blazovsky: think about these like SUV vehicles that are super big, where you can?

[00:20:16] Caroline Blazovsky: I saw Infiniti has a, I think it's called the QX ad. I was just looking up when you were talking about trucks, but they have these big SUVs that sort of fold down. And, you know, you could put things back there. You could put an eight foot of, you know, if you wanted to pick up lumber or something, but I just feel like there, you know, if you get a mess in there, it just creates like more things where you have to clean up.

[00:20:36] Caroline Blazovsky: That's why I still like a truck with a bed, you know, you can just power wash

[00:20:39] Eric Goranson: it out. Yeah. I mean, I even had a Chevy avalanche at one point where the backseat folds down and you could have it with an eight foot bed and it literally was designed to do that. The problem is, is even getting lumber. You're scratching up the inside of the truck.

[00:20:53] Eric Goranson: That's or the SUV you're scratching up the, you know, your, oh, I bumped the headliner, oh man, I gotta mark on the headliner. You [00:21:00] know? So it's one of those things that always just gets kind of ugly where you're like, oh man, So I don't like to get the inside chewed up. And then if you've got like concrete bags or something crazy, it's even worse because that's now blowing around, up into the car,

[00:21:15] Caroline Blazovsky: but that's it, that's a, I, I tried to wrap myself around this.

[00:21:18] Caroline Blazovsky: Like I was looking at these things, like, could this be a potential car for someone who does, you know, some DIY and, and is heavy, but I, I just don't see it working so well, but interesting.

[00:21:30] Eric Goranson: Right? Yeah. Not a fan, not a fan. And I've tried it. I've tried it. Oh, I can do both. No, no. I say you're better off getting that old truck out there.

[00:21:39] Eric Goranson: I know

[00:21:40] Caroline Blazovsky: like having some kind of truck, like, even if it's really old and it's got a lot of mileage on it, like pick it up now you can't pick up a car for anything, but I.

[00:21:48] Eric Goranson: Well, that's the funny part is I bought my truck and I bought it at the lowest part of the market for that year. That's great. I think I paid four or 5,000 bucks for it.

[00:21:57] Eric Goranson: That's great. And I get offers for [00:22:00] 12,000 all day long for it with people wanting to buy it. Oh, insane. And I'm like, Nope, cuz I'm not gonna replace it for that. So not gonna. But that's how that goes. Oh everyone. All right, Caroline, we got a great show ahead. This weekend. This is gonna be a lot of fun. We got, uh, an hour or two.

[00:22:17] Eric Goranson: We got Walt Tamala coming back on. We're gonna be talking about. Exterior waterproofing and, uh, weather resistant barriers and kind of trying to break down all the different brands.

[00:22:27] Caroline Blazovsky: Walt is our building building side guy. He's like bill I, the science guy, but he's a building side guy.

[00:22:33] Eric Goranson: He's great. Yeah. He's an educator that I've worked with for which for years, which is awesome.

[00:22:39] Eric Goranson: And then our number one, we're gonna dive into a hot subject that we really haven't done before the top 10 things you should consider before becoming a landlord.

[00:22:47] Caroline Blazovsky: This was actually a really, really, really good show. I mean, I didn't realize how much you need to know. So take a listen before you think about renting your space

[00:22:58] Eric Goranson: out.

[00:22:59] Eric Goranson: [00:23:00] Yeah, it'll be something educational for you. Well, we're running outta time. I'm Eric chief and I'm Caroline B and you've been listening to around the house