Episode 147: Safer Sex with STD Hero

Transcript

Speaker1: This podcast contains explicit language and content and is for mature audiences only. Hey, you teenagers out there. If you're under 18, this show is more for your parents. So now that you have that mental picture stuck in your head, put some music on and get back to doing your homework. We are a longtime married couple who's decided to chronicle our personal adventures and share our sex positive discussions as we navigate our way through the swinging lifestyle. Care to join us? Hello, everyone. I'm Mr. Jones. And I'm Mrs. Jones. We want to welcome you to episode 147 of the We Got A Thing podcast. Happy 2026. Yes. 2025 kind of like we blinked and it was over. I'm excited about it. I know sometimes you can't tell when I get excited. You do? Yeah, I'm excited for 2026 because your schedule is opening up and we're going to do a lot of traveling. Yes, I actually am really for truly semi-retired now. That's right. Yes. You cut your workload in half. Yes. That's exciting. I know. I know. I'm going to try to slide gracefully into retirement. Oh, I'm sure. Well, with what we have planned, it's fairly, I don't know if it's going to be graceful. There's a lot going on. We're getting ready to be gone. We said we didn't want to be home in January and February because it's dark here and oh my gosh, it gets cold. I don't think we're going to get any sympathy. In the 50s and 60s. more than the cold here, because we're on that side of the central time zone. We're just over the border, so it gets dark early here. But the good news is that the sun is moving back in our direction. Yes, yeah. We're headed towards springtime, and we're getting ready to go away. We're going to be gone a week in January, headed to Las Vegas. That's going to be fun. And then we're going to be home for a couple weeks, and then we're going to be gone like two and a half weeks almost three weeks in february we've never been gone that long no this will definitely be our longest trip yeah jamaica and a cruise yes yeah so no again no sympathy for us it's going to be amazing right we're just because our trip to visit the resort in jamaica ended up bumping close to our cruise that we're doing with devious dragonfly we just decided to fly to miami instead of coming home and then flying back we're just gonna go to miami and yeah day early and have a party yep february should be nice and warm yes where we're gonna be i hope so and by the time we get home march is like it's almost beach weather in march i like march here march is when like you plant your your spring stuff here like it's weird like you do at the middle of march and back in virginia we did at the middle of may Yeah, it's almost naked Sunday afternoon weather. Yeah, well, with a pool heater, it can be. Right. Maybe naked Sunday fun day. Right, right. There's light at the end of the tunnel, literally. Yes. But we really, speaking of the New Year's, we went to an amazing party. Yes, in Dallas. Yeah, the Decadence Ball. friends had invited us to come to dallas to visit them they um recently moved there and we were like sure and they're like well while you're here it's going to be new year's like we found out about this this ball that uh we could all go to and sure enough we all signed up and we met a bunch of new friends um some folks that are have been in our community and they've kind of formed a little um local group there yeah a little there and man talk about like a nice group of people yeah very sexy and smart and they got it all going on great relationships it was a lot of fun we had a we had a a large group there than i thought we did yes but anyway this party i in my opinion this is the future of lifestyle parties because it was at a marriott property it was a really nice property and There was no playroom. And I think not having a playroom allows you to scale up your party because a lot of hotels don't want to host large events with swingers that are going to be naked and have playrooms. Right. But this was really decadent, as the title says. And John and Jackie Melfi, the owners of the Collette Clubs, are now a part of the Decadence Ball. We didn't go the first night. I think there was a party on the 30s. it was like a meet and greet on the 30th yes yeah we didn't attend that but but the ball itself was um it was like you were supposed to dress however whatever made you feel elegant so there were ladies there in like ball gowns there were ladies there in cocktail dresses and there were ladies there in lingerie and it all fit together perfectly yeah it was it was amazing it was classy sexy elegance yes and someone noticed the I've never really been into cowboys, but then I watched Yellowstone, and that kind of caught my attention. When they showered. Well, yeah. But then to see these handsome gentlemen in suits and cowboy boots and hats, they looked so good. Talk about a sharp-dressed man. I mean, they really pulled it off well. Well, our friends, you had mentioned possibly getting yourself a pair of boots. Oh, I never wanted a pair of cowboy boots until I was there. And now I'm like, oh my gosh. The ladies looked incredible and the boots are so adorable because they're like legit. I know. But our friends said, you're going to go with us when you buy your boots because we can look at tourists and tell who has the tourist boots and who has the authentic boots. Yes. So they'll actually take me to a store where the locals buy their boots because I guess there's a difference. All right. So we have to go back. So we have a lot to learn there. I think we need to make it, you know, a trip back every now and again. Yeah. So they had a couple of the main ballroom and they had a smaller ballroom with different kind of music. The dance floor was well lit. The bar was huge. Yeah. So you really never had to wait. Of course, we, our group had a VIP section with bottle service, which was really nice. Yes. And the girl that attended our table. She was Beyonce. Oh, she. She was so, so beautiful. She had legs up to her shoulders. Her legs came up to my chin, I think. I swear. She was so tall and her body was incredible. She was so nice and very attentive. We were spoiled that night. It was a lot of fun. I think we'll definitely go back. While we were there, we actually got to run over. Can I tell a story? a group of us from our community. And we wanted to do a group picture. And it just wasn't going to work with a professional photographer. So we were just trying to find a spot where we could stand up against a wall and just get somebody to take a picture of us. And our friend that we were staying with is super outgoing. She's a fireball. Yeah. I don't think she's ever met a stranger. So we're all floundering around trying to figure out where to go and how we're going to do this selfie. with like 20 or 30 people in it. And all of a sudden she comes back with this guy and his wife. And she's like, the first person I asked is a professional photographer. So we found an empty conference room and he staged us all. Oh, he did a great job. Like he had, instead of us all just lining up in rows, like there was a, it was kind of like a meeting room. So the tables were set up like in a horseshoe shape. And he had all the ladies on the inside. inside of the tables like sitting with our legs crossed and then you dudes were standing around us and like he stood up on the table and like he was super bossy just like a real photographer because he was a real photographer and he did a fantastic job for us yeah and then he ended up hanging out with our group the rest of the night which which it was win-win like they he and his wife were really nice but so you just never know who you're gonna meet i want to talk about why that group is so amazing because the friends that we went to stay with we met at desire a few years ago and and they're not from the united states they moved to the u.s he got a job in the u.s and they were looking to relocate in texas so they joined the texas group our texas regional group and the moderator for that group said hey let's let's just do a zoom for all of our texas people so they can meet you guys and know you're that you're coming in so our friend said they showed up to the zoom and there was all these people and everybody was telling them, hey, you might want to check out this part of town or this community. This is what you're going to find here, recommendations for everything. And somebody moving into the country. We thought it was difficult moving from Virginia to Florida with everything that you have to do. But coming into the country, there's so much more that they have to go through. And they didn't have to move to a specific place. They just needed to be in the state of Texas and they needed to be near an airport. So they had lots of options. And then once they found a place to run and they moved in, these friends that they made, you know, were bringing them supplies, were bringing them mosquito control devices, and they would wake up and find things on their front porch that this group would just, out of the goodness of their hearts. And they get together all the time for dinner. I know, it really brought that group together. But our friends that moved here said, since they're starting from scratch, they're not going to have any vanilla friends in their lives. They're going to make sure that all their friends are lifestyle friends. Well, they're fortunate because a lot of people are really close to them. So it's not like they have to travel far to have get-togethers. Yes. Anyway, then we got to tour Fort Worth, which we've never been able to do before. And since we're watching Landman, it was very relevant to go to Fort Worth. Well, yeah, we had seen all the Yellowstone and everything. So, right. It was amazing to see the historic part. We saw the Steer Stampede and went to a few bars. The Longhorns. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Longhorns. What do I know? I'm an East Coaster. And that town is amazing. There's a lot of history there, a lot of bars, a lot of clubs. We just scratched the surface, so we really need to go back. Yes, we do. All right. So that was a lot of fun. A couple more things before we get to our a podcast topic for today. You know, a few years ago, we used to have a We Got a Thing newsletter. And we spent a lot of time and energy putting together a monthly newsletter. And we had 4,000 or 5,000 people subscribe to it. But a few years ago, when we were looking at how many people opened it and how many people actually clicked into the articles, it really wasn't as many. We didn't think it was worth the effort that we were putting into it based on how many people were reading it. So we're going to start something up again that's going to be free to anybody. And we're calling it our We Got a Thing Information Hub. And it is going to be a space in our community. Well, it's actually outside of our community. It's a standalone space. It's going to have a place where you can find, we can have topical discussions in there. There'll be surveys. and polls, articles that we've written and other people have written for us, you'll have access to. You and I, Mrs. Jones and I do Ask Us Anything broadcast inside of our community every Friday, so we're going to strip out the audio and have that available for people to listen to. We're going to have resources, upcoming events, you'll be able to book your desire trips, so all of these things are going to be inside of this one space that we're going to call our We Got a Thing Information Hub, and it is live, and it's active and ready to go. The only thing that you have to do is go to our website, wegotathing.com, W-E-G-O-T-T-A-T-H-I-N-G.com. Click on the community dropdown, and there is a place to sign up for the free WGT Information Hub. You just have to put your email address in, and then you'll get access to the app and the information. I think it sounds fantastic I mean newsletters have kind of gone by the wayside yeah yeah I don't think it was that you were tired of doing it I just think that like things have evolved yeah it would sit in in your inbox like a lot of other things this one is going to be a living hub of information so every couple of weeks we're going to update it with new information so it'll always be evolving and changing and the more people that come in there we're going to give you the ability to to comment on some of the things that we post in there so hopefully you all will take advantage of that we're excited about it and and it's giving us another place that we can put out information for those who are interested in a lifestyle without costing you any money all right and speaking of saving money if you a lot of people ask us for promo codes for our to try out our community and for those of you listening we have a promo code just for listeners but The catch is you have to email me. So if you're interested in trying our community, send me an email, mrjones at wegotathing.com or go to our website to the contact us section and say, I'm interested in your community. Tell me a little bit about yourselves and I will reply with a promo code and you can give our community a try. Now to the topic at hand. We have been podcasting for how long? 11 years. 11 years. One of the topics that we have never really given enough attention to is sexual health. And the reason we've not done this in the past is because it's difficult to find a credible resource who is unbiased when it comes to the lifestyle, who is also unbiased about their feelings towards testing. And to get somebody who just looks at everything straightforward, looks at the data, gives a straightforward message, understands the lifestyle, and is willing to share themselves on our podcast, they were hard to come by. But that changed. We reached out to the STD Hero team, and they're based in Georgia. home testing kits. And the technology that they have is amazing. The CEO of the company is in the lifestyle. They've been doing testing, not only SDI testing, but all kinds of testing for years. So we had a quick meeting with them, and we quickly realized that they were somebody who shares our philosophy about the lifestyle and understands that testing is just one piece of a larger issue when it comes to sexual health. So you're going to hear a conversation today from Dr. Budd and Alan Brock. Alan is the CEO of STD Hero, and Dr. Budd is one of their scientist consultants in the lab that they have there. So we really enjoyed this conversation with them. We asked them a lot of questions. And we also submitted some questions to them from our community that you'll hear the responses to. But we learned a lot. Yes, we did. So I guess we'll just get out of the way and let you listen to the conversation that we had with the good folks at STD Hero. And the title of this podcast is Safer Sex with STD Hero. Get ready to take some notes. Yeah, definitely. Now you can rewind. Or we don't say rewind anymore. Oh my gosh, you just dated yourself. Welcome back to segment two as we begin our discussion about safer sex with STD Hero. As I mentioned in the intro, it's been a long time coming that we wanted to talk about this. And we found a great partner to do that with. And the title of our podcast, actually, I drew from the STD Hero Gang. And that is, instead of saying safe sex, it's safer sex. And we'll get to that in a minute. But I want to go ahead and introduce or let Dr. Budd and Alan maybe introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about what's going on. How this company came about? I can go ahead and start if you'd like. My name's Alan Brock. I've been married to my wife Angela for 32 years. We've recently become empty nesters over the last year. We have three kids and we actually kind of fell into the lifestyle space through some friends who had kind of mentioned about going to some parties and some events. And we thought, well, wow, that's a really good fit. And by the way, it's so crazy, but we do STI testing. I was asking questions about that, and they're like, well, that's something we need to talk about. So we went to our first event last year, right around this time, actually. And we went, actually, without people knowing who we are or what we do, we went there as people who were just going to go and explore. And no one knew anything about us other than we were friends with these two people that were at this park. And, you know, it's funny when you go on your first party and you're like, well, gosh, I'm going to see someone we know, like you're so worried about that. So we went two states over, you know, go somewhere else to go to a party. Sounds familiar. Yeah, we left the party and we were like reflecting going, holy cow, what a great, we had the time, like my wife and I haven't danced like that in 20 years. And we're like, man, this is fun. Like, we need to look further into this. And it just kind of, you know, it put us in the space. So if I understand, then you already had the STD Hero business running at this point in time. Correct. Yes, we did. So at that time, you know, and for the most part, we're selling our products on Amazon and on Walmart.com and on our website. And primarily our focus was college universities, young kids. You know, I've got, you know, two college age kids. And I was like, you know, I, I, I, that was our focus. Like we need to focus on college campuses and young adults. And, you know, the goal was to make it cool and commonplace and de-stigmatize it. And, you know, it just, and then we just kind of fell into the lifestyle space kind of organically. And it's, you know, it's, it's been good for us. It's, it's, number one, it's a great way for us to be able to tell our friends that we're going to a lifestyle event because we can say, well, we're going there to work, but we're actually going there to dance and party. So for us, it works out as a pretty great cover, you know? That's great. Before I go down the rabbit hole with you, Alan, Dr. Bud, do you go ahead and introduce yourself and kind of explain what your role is in the company? Yeah. So my name's Dr. William Bud. I'm the scientific advisor for STD Hero, Better Life Sciences. I started working with Alan and Daniel probably six years ago. We worked with them through some of their COVID testing and some of the other infectious disease testing. I became interested in STD testing probably 13 years ago. I was working at the Medical College of Virginia, and my university got a very large grant to study bacteria that lived in the vagina. And they needed people to help program computers to do next-generation sequencinging of to study different disease conditions associated with vaginal flora that were associated with various diseases. And so I kind of became known as the vaginal expert around the area. Did you have a t-shirt made that said that? I had lots of great t-shirt ideas, but for some reason, the university would never approve any of them. Was that VCU? It was, yep. It was Virginia Commonwealth University. And shortly after working on the project, I went through a divorce. And so I started getting out into the dating world. And being able to introduce myself as a vaginal expert kind of intrigued a lot of people. That's a great conversation starter. Exactly, exactly. Very quickly, though, you know, when I started telling people that I did STD testing, particularly women that had gone through a divorce as well, that there was a huge need in that community, particularly professional women that, you know, they didn't want to go to their doctor and say, hey, you know, like, I've just gone through a divorce out of an unhappy marriage where I didn't have sexual encounters for the last four years. And, and now I'm sowing my wild oats, like I did when I was 19. You know, like, they, they were terrified. And so, you know, we started having these conversations and I recognized there was a need for testing out there where women had a very similar need. And so we helped develop discrete testing solutions for women. And so it's been a really interesting journey from that domain into the lifestyle to help kind of close the gaps there. He was super excited. Dr. Bud was super excited when I said, hey, we're starting a line of STI test. He's like, man, this is right up my alley. Yeah. Yeah, we were trying to do it with some other labs I worked with as well in the direct-to-consumer space, but it never really took off in any other lab. So this is the first lab that it's been successful with. Yeah, that's really exciting. So let's talk about, I'm going to go back to you, Alan. Can you just talk about the philosophy of your approach to testing in general? Because like you mentioned earlier, there's a lot of stigma that comes along with it. There's a lot of people that need to be educated. But then also you move into this lifestyle where you're with people who are curious about it, interested in it, find themselves in a place in life that they never thought they would be. No, now it wasn't, that those two philosophies kind of match hand in hand. But what is the philosophy of your company? I mean, obviously you do the testing, but what is your overall vision for how your company should operate? Well, I guess the easiest way to answer that would be to back up a little bit before that. So we owned a clinical laboratory prior to Better Life Science. And it was, when you look at my background, I was a healthcare CEO for 15 years, and I worked in long-term care and hospital space all over all around the country and i actually retired in 2015 and i coached football for four years great time in my life and i ended up buying a laboratory um that dr budd was actually used to work with out of bankruptcy and they were drug testing lab and one of the first things that i did is i started talking to physician friends of mine's like what do you like about your lab what do you not like about your lab so we we developed that into a full clinical laboratory doing everything from genetics to blood testing, a lot of virology. We got really big in the COVID space. We were one of the largest COVID laboratories in the country. But I got really, really frustrated with our insurance system and how that works and the affordability to patients. And, you know, when you look at what we did three and a half years ago, you know, we feel strongly that at-home testing is going to become the standard in laboratory science. And I think if anyone goes on any social media platform right now, they're going to look and they're going to see multiple companies out there that, you know, there's Revolve and HIMSS. And all these companies are actually coming out right now with, hey, we have affordable, accessible home tests. None of them talk about STIs, really. They're about, you know, blood markers and, you know, hormone testing and things of that nature. But, you know, because we felt so strongly about that, we made the decision Daniel and I did. to close our old laboratory and start up again with an at-home testing model. And like Dr. Budd discussed earlier, 10 people out of 10 said, you're going to fail, you're not going to make this work. And we do feel really blessed that, you know, and marketing is not my area of expertise by any stretch of the imagination, but with some help of some strategic partners, we'll call it, they helped us to get what we felt like was a really good brand. and the hero brand. And when you look at our testing lines, I mean, we don't do just STI testing. And, you know, as we see that at-home testing is moving forward, we're going to come up with other testing lines like the hormone testing because of the blood collection devices and the things that are making themselves available that we're going to be able to move to. But we want, you know, really the motto of us is we want to provide exceptional customer service in the laboratory space because we feel like it really doesn't exist. And, you know, if you live in an area where there's a large population, it's easy to get serviced for labs because, you know, there's draw centers all over the place. But if you live in a rural community, which there's a, you know, a large part of America that that covers, being able to make it accessible and affordable is a big thing for us. And we want to, you know, build an environment where people can be proactive about their health, about their sexual health, and they can take it into their own hands and be private and discreet. And that's a really big thing for us as a company because not everyone wants to go into their physician and say, you know, Angela and I have been married for 32 years. Could I get an STI test? People don't want to necessarily have that conversation. So, I mean, that's it. You know, be proactive with our tests that empowers people to take their health care into their own hands, make it accessible and affordable for everyone, and help bridge the gap. for people that have accessibility issues. So, I mean, that's really at the core of what we do. So, it sounds like to me, just to make sure I understand, you went from a model, a traditional model, where you had providers collecting samples, transporting them to you. You worked with insurance companies. You provided the results back to the provider, and the provider then was the middleman and kind of passed them back to the… Yes. So in a traditional model, which Dr. Budd is still very active in that space, we would contract with a hospital. Like during COVID, we would contract with a rural hospital maybe in South Georgia. And really at one time, we worked with about 14 different hospitals around the Southeast. And they would literally fly a plane into a rural community, land it, pick up, you know, seven, 800 samples, and then take the plane and fly into another community all around the state of Georgia and some in South Carolina, some over in Alabama, and then literally fly the sample. to us every day. We would run the samples, get the result, and then send the results out, and then we would build the insurance company for it. And that was the model that I wanted to get away from. The problem for most people when they try to make that jump is you don't realize it's a lot easier for me to go to a physician and tell him how I will be better than the $2 billion companies that control that market because you can't get someone to answer the phone. and you have to respond via email when you want results. And because of all those issues, it was easy for us to sell and grow in that lab space. But when it comes time to get paid, you know, you have a staff of people that you actually have to pay to do those ICD-10 codes and to build the insurance company for them to come back and say, well, you know, it's a $400 test. We'd be willing to pay you $120 for it. And, you know, you're looking at the math going, well, this doesn't work because we literally lose money on processing those samples. So that's why we made the decision to do what we do and go to an at-home model. So not only did you turn the model upside down, but for the person receiving the care, I've gone now from, and you mentioned this, you alluded to this, am I comfortable talking to my doctor about what kind of testing I need? That's right. Number one, do I feel like I'm going to be judged or shamed because of that? But also, number two, the doctor was the source of telling me what kind of tests I needed. And so that's now shifted the onus back on to the individual, which I imagine there's an educational need there. So how did you all step into that space and say, look, if we're going to be successful, we need to educate people. We need to listen to people, understand what they're asking for, and then educate them on, well, you might need this, but you also might need this, and you might not need that. So how does that education work? I mean, you do it just like you build a house. You get a foundation and build it a block at a time, a two-by-four at a time. So it's a lot of education when you're out speaking to people. But from our perspective and the beauty of what we've been able to do get to communicate with our customers and understand what their needs are, and then we can come in and make changes to try to meet those needs. So, you know, Angela and I have been to events like Naughty, National Lifestyle Weekend, Splash, Electric Pleasures, Libertine, Collette. We've been to Trapeze, Risqué events. So, we've been to these events, and when we get to meet people and interact with them, we try to listen to what they're saying and the questions that they ask, and then we try to come back and have our little think tank and like well okay well this this came up how do we solve this problem and you know like a good example of that was microplasma genitalia which i'm sure dr buds could speak on later but we we had noticed the the positivity rate for mgen in our ultimate hero which is our 13 panel three site test we noticed how high our mgen positives were so you know we just got together and said you know what we're going to do we're going to add those to our common test and we're going to add those to our common test our advanced panel, and we're not going to charge any more money for it. We're just going to add them because it's something that the community needs. And the more they see it, then people are going to ask questions about it. And I'm, I mean, it's going to sound terrible when I say it, but there's some physicians that I talk to. They're like, what the heck is microplasma genitalia? Yeah. Yeah. You know, so there's, you know, it's something new and people are learning. So it's just kind of one of those organic things that, that is just growing for us. Yeah. And we're going to get to Dr. Bud. to define that for us in a minute. Sure. But I want to know, okay, this all sounds really positive and really exciting. What is the process that you use when something is shipped to my house, whatever test it is, to pick it up from there? What do I typically have to do as the individual? And how does it flow all the way till I get those results back? Yeah, so it has become over the last two years, it's become a changing process. And we're trying to get better at it as we do it. But you're going to get the you're going to order the kit. And when you order the kit, it'll get sent to your house, you'll open it up, there'll be a pamphlet. And it'll have a site code on there, you enter that in, and it will walk you through step by step, what to do and how to do depending on which test you get. And it will walk you through it. And there's some videos that are out there to kind of walk you through. and show you and we have a phone number and that's one of the things that we try to make sure that we do in the exceptional customer service part of it is provide a phone number so if someone has a test they can just call you know and get someone on the phone that can say hey by the way i'm having a question with this site code thing or whatever it may be the question they would have or you know we've had some questions about the oral swab so you see videos out there and it's funny because we even put one out there which i want to get recalled and redo where someone's doing a an oral swab and they're doing it inside their cheek and not not back where their tonsils are. It's like, that's incorrect. Like, we need to pull this video back because this person did that incorrectly when they were showing it. But there's a process that you walk through it, and it's an easy process to do. The blood collection device that we use is pain-free. You put it on your arm, you press a button, it'll fill a microtainer up with blood. You cap it, and then you would send that back to us. The urine swab, we use the same kind of container, so you would pee in a cup, and then it has a a little device, and you just push the tube on top of it, and it will fill it up so that it meets good infection control procedures. But everything is spelled out in the kit to make it really, really easy for you to follow along. And again, it was funny. I was on the phone a few weeks ago with a friend out in Washington. We met at one of the Libertine events, and he was a first-time user of our kit. And I just mentioned to him at the event, I said, well, do me a favor. When you get this kit, When you open it, any question that you have or any process as you're going through it, call me. And let's talk about it because as a first-time user, you may have a question about that I can't see the forest through the trees because I've been doing this so long. Like the little things that you read on there, you may get wrong. And I ended up spending two hours on the phone with them talking through that. I grabbed Daniel. I'm like, Daniel, you got to hear this stuff because he's a first-time And he and his wife had questions about this, and this. And we literally redid all of our pamphlets because of what one customer's input was with us. Because as a first-time user, he was so spot on that, you know, well, this verbiage is not really correct when you, because, and I want to tell you what the big thing was, is he thought that he was registering the kit. So he was trying to register the kit before he actually received it. It's like, well, You know, you've got to get it in your hand first before you register. But it's one of those things like, okay, well, that's a thing. So I'm sure he's going to listen to this podcast. He's going to go, thanks, Alan. I appreciate you talking about this. But he was actually a lifesaver for us. But yeah, I mean, again, it's ever-evolving, ever-changing. And I would tell you that 12 months from now, even looking back, we're going to continue to change to meet the customer's needs because we want to be the very best that we can be. So I want to talk about the differences. Because what you just described, in the at-home test that we've taken before, you have to make sure the blood drops in a particular tray or on a particular tab or the tester. We had to do a lot of that ourselves, which in my mind, I'm not a professional, but I think that opens up a lot of opportunities for me to contaminate things and not do things. It can, yeah. Right. So you're collecting a sample. It may look like a murder scene when you're done. Right. Yeah, it does look like a crime scene, yes. Yeah, so but you're talking about a sample of whatever it is, blood, urine, or saliva, or whatever, and then you take the sample and extract what you need from that to actually do the lab work. Is that right? Correct. Yeah, that's correct. So, and that was one of the things that's important for us. So, we do some ELISA testing, and we use some blood spots, blood, I'm sorry, I'm terrible with words, blood spots, that had a blood collection device. There's actually three of them now that have the FDA approval, the 510k approval to do it. And we use two of the three devices. But again, it's just simple. You put a heating pad on your arm, and it brings the blood to the outside of the skin, and you would put an alcohol pad on it, peel it off, press a button, or flip a light switch, and then it collects the blood. You take it off, and you put a cap on it. No mess, no muss, no And it's been a game changer. And I mean, I'll tell you that that technology is going to be ever changing. And, you know, it's only going to get better over time. So then when you get the and maybe this is a good time to switch over to you, Dr. Budd. So the samples come in. And if there's any way that you do this differently than maybe some other at home people, please point that out, too, because I understand you do your own lab work. We do. Yeah. So some of the things that we do in the lab are, it depends on the exact testing methodology that we're doing. So like the testing that, that Alan's talking about from the blood work, you know, we're looking for things like the hepatitis B virus, HIV antibodies to the virus. We're looking for those sorts of things to see if you have built an immune immune system response for the viruses to be able to tell, are you, have you been exposed to, to those sort of infectious illnesses. But the other STDs that we're looking for, we're doing the PCR test process, right? Like just exactly what everybody went through during COVID, except what we're querying for there is we're looking for the signatures of things like chlamydia, gonorrhea, trichomonas, mycoplasma genitalium. But what we have to do is we have to do what's called an extraction process from the sample. So we have to be able to take that sample and make that little bit of that sample go a long way, right? So if we're looking at urine, for example, we're going to take the urine, we're going to extract the urine, and we're going to look for, depending upon the kit that you're ordering, we're going to look for potentially four or five different organisms in there. And I think, you know, one of the things that we do here at STD Hero that's different is we not only look for like vaginal or urethral type but we're looking for site-specific infections so we look at oral we look at vaginal urethral and also rectal anal infections as well so all of those are things that we think are important for for people that are in the lifestyle community depending upon the the practices that you're you're doing in your in your lifestyle sure so then when you do the tests in the lab How is that information passed back to the individual? So we have what we call a laboratory information system that reports all the information back to you on an application. So you'll get a report back that's very easy to interpret. Because really, we don't want you to have to struggle through four or five different pages of information. We want to give you a very simple, easy-to-read report that says you're you're negative for everything, or if you're positive for something, we want it to be very clear that you're positive for an organism. We don't want you to have to leave the testing environment with ambiguity for something. I can't tell you how many times I get questions about lab reports where somebody has a negative report, but there's this huge stress factor they have when they're trying to interpret it because it's just not really clear. from a lot of labs if something's positive or negative. We're using very clear unambiguous language that you're either infected or not infected for these various organisms that we're testing for. And this comes right back to what I was talking about education because when you're in the doctor's physician's office and there's a conversation there's an opportunity to exchange information and to be educated. But then when the test comes back and And if I'm getting all green lights, sometimes I don't really pay much attention to that. But if I get a red light or a check, here's another opportunity for education because now you've got my attention. I want to know more about what this is. I read your little pamphlet there. But what do I do? I mean, do you, can people like circle back with you once they receive their results? Is there any other consultation that comes along with that? Yeah. Well, one of the things that I mentioned to him, it's important for you guys to know that the whole aftercare thing for us was actually customer driven. So we, you know, eight months ago, we didn't we didn't have that. But, you know, again, listening to our customers saying, well, OK, now I'm positive. I don't want to go to my doctor with this. Like, how do I how do I get treatment? How do I get a treatment option? So and again, we're trying to make that even better than what it is. But you can go on our website, MyRxHero, and you can go. You can order the meds. You can get a teleconference with a physician and order the meds. And depending on what it is, there are some things where you're going to have to go see a doctor. There's just no way around it. But for some of the other things, the bacterial infections that are easily resolvable, you can get those resolved with no problem. The good thing about going back to a doctor at that point in time is you're armed with information. That's right. You know, you can say, here's what I did, here's what they tested, here's the result. Now, you tell me what some recommendations, some options are for treatment if necessary. Right. Well, you know, on that note, when you look at those options that you're getting for your treatment, doctors, I don't know, some of them would get very judgy when you start talking about, well, hey, well, you know, I've got this. Well, how did you, it's like, I don't, people don't want to listen to that. Like I, I don't. And our reports, you talk about the quality of the reports. So we had to change all of our reports to make them so that a lay person could understand them. And a lot of physicians want the report so that they're, they, they don't want the patient to be able to look at that report and go, it's this, and this. They, they don't want the explanation because they want to get paid to do that. And even like with our food allergy and food sensitivity test, we've actually got those made so that anybody can read and understand those and make dietary changes based on the recommendations that we're giving in the reports. We make it so you don't have to go to a doctor. And, you know, even then, we still get phone calls. Hey, can you clarify this? We have an MMA fighter that is one of them. of our affiliates that lives down in Florida. And, you know, we did a food allergy, food sensitivity for her. And she read through this stuff. And she's like, well, can you walk me through? It's like, I have a very intense diet that I follow. So can we walk through this when I'm trying to lose weight? Some of the reasons why I can't. And actually her food sensitivity report kind of triggered some things. And once she changed her diet, made like three or four small changes to her diet, world of difference. She's like, this is a game changer. It's like, I can't believe this. Like, that's the whole point of it, you know, to be able to empower people to do that. And who knows how much a physician is going to charge. I have a lot of crazy stuff when it comes up. Like, I have all these crazy dreams. Somebody would, you know, two years ago said, why do you want to do this? Like, why do you want to change? Like, why do you want to get out of that model? And it's like, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to go direct to the consumer. That's what I want to do. I want to do that. Well, our healthcare and system is broken. And I think people like you are going to be the ones that slowly help it, like steer away from what we have now that is not working for anybody. Right. Yeah. Well, there's some things that need to change. I will tell you my absolute closest friend on this planet is a physician. And it's actually we're having dinner tonight. And when I have something happen to me, like if I'm sick or there's anything, I just call them. I was like, hey, this is what I got going on. And that concierge medicine is actually growing in this country. Yeah. And it's very affordable. And you actually get that concierge. And we're trying to be a concierge laboratory, but be a high throughput concierge laboratory, meaning we can process thousands and thousands of samples. But we want people to have that concierge feel so that they can actually talk to someone. You know, if you get a positive result, we have the ability to, to connect you directly to a physician. Not only do we have the ability to connect you to a physician, but we can also help you get your medications. And I think that's important because a lot of the patients that we're dealing with live in a rural area, or they also don't want to have a relationship with a personal physician to discuss their private business. You know, a lot of people that we talk to in the lifestyle community aren't fully transparent with their personal physician about their involvement in the lifestyle. So that creates some challenges for them. And so by having everything remote, they can get their testing, their treatment from somebody who's not in their small town. And so it gives them a benefit. You know, you talked earlier about the education. And one of the challenges we're seeing in healthcare as a whole, is physicians are spending less time with their patients just across the board you know because of of the amount of time that they're having to deal with insurance regulations you know doctors make less money you know they they have to see more patients per day to be able to to run their their medical practice and so that comes at the expense of of the time they spend with each individual So we don't get the same experience that we did 10 years ago from a physician. Unless you're lucky enough to be able to afford a concierge medicine doctor, then you pretty much get unlimited time with that doctor. But the average person's getting maybe three to six minutes with the clinician. And so they're not getting that education from their personal physician. And this is one of the reasons we're seeing more more patients taking their healthcare into their own hands. Yeah, and I think you're going to see the more educated we are as patients, the healthier we're going to become as a society because even a regular physician, even if it's not an STI test, people are reluctant to be honest with their doctors because they're either afraid to know what they might learn or they're a little bit embarrassed to say how much they smoke or how much they drink. So there's always that reluctance. And this is where I kind of want to shift back to the lifestyle, is that from our experience, most people in our lifestyle world want to know. We want to educate ourselves. We want to understand everything so that when we're responsible about who we choose to be with, you know, that we can be fully informed and we can fully inform them. So it just seems like to me, and I know that doesn't apply to everyone. in the lifestyle community. But from our perspective, it just seems like you have an audience that is out here just, you know, salivating, so to speak, you know, over the type of testing that you do and the type of information that you can give me so that I can learn myself. Because, and I want to kind of get into the, maybe what, maybe if you all could like, what are some of the myths? You know, there's a lot of misinformation out there and there's this, a lot of myths that have been shared around the community. So maybe you could kind of just address some of the things that you see as the most interesting. I think you hit the nail on the head right in the very beginning of the podcast when you mentioned the word safer sex, right? I think we were brought up with the notion of the concept of safe sex. And I think that's been something that we've come to realize that there is no truth to such existence of something as absolutely safe sex. You know, if you're practicing barrier protection with everything, there's still risk associated with sexual intercourse. And the practice of safer sex is minimizing and mitigating that risk as much as possible. And it's more than just using using barriers for penetration, right? I think actively testing yourself is a key part of the practice of safer sex. Knowing what your status is is a key part of that process. Just because, you know, if you're testing frequently, you're going to minimize that exposure window for potential partners that you're dealing with. I think some of the other things that we hear frequently out in, and not necessarily just lifestyle related, just sexual practice related, are, hey, I'm clean. I've only been with one partner, so therefore there's zero chance I have a sexually transmitted infection. I have no symptoms, so I'm the safest partner you can potentially have, right? And that's not true. You may have only been with one partner, but how many partners has your partner been with? Were they completely monogamous? What did they bring to the table? So again, we don't really ever know what our full status is unless we're getting tested. And every time we bring a new partner into the relationship, we should be getting tested just to know what our baseline status is. I think one of the things that frustrated us as we listen to other content producers and other people in the lifestyle is the frequency of testing and the fact that they would proudly show their test result that is from a month ago or is from two weeks ago. And I believe this is just Mr. Jones's opinion, but I think there's a lot of false sense of security there. That, look, I'm doing my due diligence. Here it is. I'll show it to you. Therefore, I don't really need to know anything else. This is my ticket. But we've always said, well, wait a minute. What happened after four weeks ago? You know, what tests did you take? What tests did you not take? There's so many more things that we need to consider for safer sex than just simply holding up the results of a test. Absolutely. You know, I watched a TikTok video of an STI testing group like us that sat up in a hotel room before a cruise recently. And they were bragging about people coming in to test before the cruise. And I applaud that behavior. I don't want this to come across. as I'm picking on them or that behavior, because I think it was absolutely fantastic. But the reading said in some of the comments that were like, oh, hey, those people are going to be safe for this entire cruise. Maybe, maybe not. Like, they could go out the first night. Maybe Monday or Tuesday. Yeah, exactly. We don't really know. We know that they're clean as of that moment, but they could be within the incubation period of something that they could have picked up even the night before, but they're not showing symptoms of or even what we call seroconverted for that they might convert the next day like if we tested them on the monday or tuesday they could have tested positive on monday or tuesday like we just don't really know always so what are so what are some um besides test results what are some observations i can make with my eyeballs right uh to to not only myself and my partner but others that may lead me to ask a question about what I'm seeing. What is observable? Yeah. Any discharge, particularly purulent discharges, are concerning. So if you have yellow, green, anything that smells funny that's being discharged from any of the sexual orifices are concerning. If you notice lesions, like when we described something like a herpetic lesion. You know, oftentimes they look like an ulceration, a sore. Anytime you notice sores around the genitals. Warts are a concern, you know, particularly for HPV. And HPV is a really common virus that most people aren't getting tested for necessarily. And it's hard to be protected from that. But if you see it, you know, it's something to be concerned for, concerned about. If you happen to see any of those things, it's probably enough to think about and maybe not play with that person at that moment. Not necessarily to say, hey, that person's going to be out of your playgroup permanently and we're going to go shun them and exclude them from every event in the future. It's just they might need to go get looked at and treat it and then they could come back to events at a different time. Where do you see people overreacting to a certain positive test? Historically, herpes has been one that a lot of people overreact to. I think that's one that has brought in a lot of fear over the years because there's not a hasn't been a lot of good treatments for. But in actuality, you know, herpes is something that a lot of us are going to encounter during our experiences if you're going to have multiple partners during your lifetime. It's a fairly ubiquitous virus at this point. And we used to really describe it as being genital herpes or oral herpes. And I still see that language in some articles are out there. And really, we should be classifying it more as HSV-1, herpes-1 versus herpes-2, because there's so much intermingling of the way that these viruses exist. Hey, Dr. Budd, could you just talk about the difference between the two, just so everyone gets an understanding? Because I don't know if that would be mentioned. Yeah. Generally, herpes 1 is less severe in nature. And what I mean by that is it doesn't cause as much discomfort typically as herpes 2. The outbreaks don't typically last as long. They're not as painful. And over time, the number of outbreaks generally diminishes as you get older or the longer you move away from your initial infection. Your herpes 2, you typically have more painful outbreaks. The outbreaks tend to last longer and you tend to have them for longer periods of time. They used to pretty generally be isolated to herpes 2 was almost always isolated to the genitalia. Herpes 1 was almost always isolated to the oral pharynx. But now we see that there's a lot more commingling the two than what we thought there was. And it's not uncommon even to see children with herpes outbreaks from a parent passing it on to their child through giving them a kiss on the lips or even touching their face with herpes on their skin. You know, it doesn't necessarily mean there's a sexual molestation that has occurred, right. And because of the way that it looks, I think a lot of people kind of shun. have had a tendency to find people that have had herpes. But there's a lot more positive influencers out there who are now coming out and saying, hey, look, I have herpes. I lead a normal life. I have a normal sexual life. I'm just careful when I have outbreaks. Right. So while you're on definitions, can we go back to MGEN and explain what that is? So MGEN stands for mycoplasma genitalium. It's a intracellular parasite. That is an emerging sexually transmitted infection. It's one that's been identified over the last probably 15 years. In the last three to four years, it's become much more significant. We probably see within the lifestyle community, we see more mycoplasma genitalium than we do any other sexually transmitted infection. And it's because, I think, it's one that we generally don't test for. You know, if you go to a public health laboratory, most public health laboratories are not testing for this organism. Some OBGYNs may or may not test for it. So they're overlooking the importance of it. And it does have some pretty significant implications. It creates some of the same symptoms that we see with chlamydia and gonorrhea. It creates pelvic inflammatory disease. It can be particularly painful, especially for women, and it increases your risk of getting other infections. The good news is it's, as of right now, it's relatively treatable that we are seeing more emergence of drug resistance. So we're in development of a test, a questionnaire that we're putting on our website that we've been spending several months working on that'll be live here really soon, where you're going to be able to go through, answer your questions about your lifestyle, whether you're vanilla or not, where anybody can come to our website, go through that questionnaire, and we will pick a test for you. The one thing that I would stress to everybody, if it's the first time that you're testing, you should test for everything. You should test for everything. And, you know, when we design our test and the beauty of being the lab is we do have the ability to sit and consult with people like Dr. Budd and say, we don't want to make HSV 1 and 2 on our 13 panel because the vast majority of the people are going to test positive for those antibodies. and we don't want people to pay money to be testing for something that really they just need to test for it and know that they have it or they don't um but i would suggest like doing the ultimate hero which tests three sites do that first as your baseline and then depending on your play style which you'll be able to get from our questionnaire you can make a decision on what test is best for you um i will tell you that we sell more advanced kits um than we do any other And we did recently add three-site testing to our common test. So, a common STD test basically gives you 90% of all the most prevalent STDs out there. So, and we included MGen in that. So, we did add where you can do three-site for that, for chlamydia and gonorrhea. That would be my suggestion. And when you want to test, every time you introduce a new sexual partner, you should get tested. And that would be my recommendation. But again, we're working on getting that questionnaire out. So it's going to be something that's going to be able to help. I know we're on the phone with Dr. Budd talking to him like, what about with this and this and this? We're going through all the questions trying to get it right. So that's it from me. That's my marketing ploy, I guess, my pitch. All right. One of the first questions that we have, and I'm sure you've heard this before, The likelihood of transmission with PIV sex, penetrative sex versus oral sex, because everybody knows about condoms, but not a lot of barriers, you know, for oral sex. So can you talk scientifically why that is, which is more likely? Yeah. So there is an increased likelihood of sexual transmitted infection transmission through penetrative sex as opposed to oral sex. Primarily because penetrative sex is more... Friction? Not necessarily violent. Intrusive? More intrusive. Yeah, that's the better word. It's more intrusive. There's more trauma associated to the vagina or the rectum. So you're destroying the integrity of the epithelial cells. And so you're opening them up for the viruses or the bacteria to become more accessible to... To transmit. Yeah, to transmit. To create the infection. Yeah. You know, generally, our body does a pretty good job of fighting off the infections. With that being said, though, you know, oral sex is still a risk, right? Particularly if it's oral sex for a man to completion, where you do have significant fluid, exchange, you're more likely to ejaculate viruses and bacteria into your partner's mouth, and you can have micro abrasions in the oral cavity that can cause it. It's more likely for a woman to contract an STI from her male partner if she's performing oral sex to completion. The other interesting thing is we've seen with HPV, however, though, it's more likely for a man to receive HPV from his female partner than it is on the reverse. And the reason being, you know, the female tends to have more HPV in the cervix, and there's significant fluid exchange going that direction as well. So it does go both ways. Right. Interesting. Okay, here's the next question. One of our members says, look, one of our regular play partners tested positive for HSV-2. Does that mean we can't play with them anymore? We've tested regularly and are negative. We always use condoms, but most times during soft swap, genitalia is still touching. They have told us that they haven't had any breakouts. Do we have to worry about mouth-to-mouth kissing? I would say the risk of getting HSD with mouth-to-mouth kissing is probably very limited. And I would say, you know, they don't have to exclude the partner in perpetuity. I think they need to have good open communication about where that particular partner is in their stage of infection. Your risk is highest when there is an active lesion. With that being said, we don't know, though, which which type of partner it is. Male partners are more likely to have asymptomatic shedding than female partners are, though. So there is always a risk, no matter which partner it is, that there could be some asymptomatic shedding that can occur. But the risk isn't as significant as it is when you have a lesion. And I would say as long as they're using barrier protection, they can mitigate the risk as much as possible. And if the partner is using prophylactic therapies, preventive therapies like Valtrex, they can mitigate the risk and still lead a very happy, normal sexual life. Yeah. I think Valtrex is going to come up on the next question. But before I go there, there are just so many different factors involved here. How susceptible the person is to begin with. Whether there's a breakout that I have seen or not seen. Whether there's lubrication, you know, involved. Whether there's open sore. I mean, so back to the whole safer sex thing. You know, the only way that you're not going to be at risk is just not to have sex with anybody. I mean, really, that's what it comes down to. So, you know, trying to get people to see the bigger picture here that, again, while testing is really important, you know, there are so many other factors involved in the likelihood that I'm going to either receive or transmit something. Yeah, 100%. You know, we did a roundtable discussion at Naughty Nolens this year, or last year. And one of the questions kind of came up was, could you have two people have intercourse with an infected person, and one of them get infected, and one not? And the answer to that is absolutely. Your individual immunity plays a very large role in this. If you're going into an event and you're exhausted and stressed, your chances of getting an infection are a whole lot higher than if you come into an event well-rested, feeling great, well-hydrated. Your immunity plays a very big part in keeping healthy for everything. a herpes from another couple. I would recommend that the person have a conversation with a physician in that case. My understanding of the literature in this case is I don't believe they typically put the recipient on a preventative treatment. They typically put the person who has HSV on something like the Valtrex or the acyclovir. They put them on the medication to reduce their chances But how accurate are the tests? What do you see as false positive and false negative rates? Yeah. So PCR testing is probably the most accurate testing on the market. But with that being said, there are still chances that you do get an inaccurate result. The likelihood of getting an accurate result is mostly related to where you are in your infectious cycle. So if you are in the early stages of infection, when your viral load or your bacterial load are at their lowest, the chances of us not picking that up are at the highest for us. With that being said, the highest are less than 5% of them. So it's still a pretty strong chance. We detect minute copies of these organisms. We're picking up one to 10 copies. of bacteria or virus per microliter of sample. So our chances of picking up the viruses of bacteria are very high, but you don't make a lot of copies of these viruses in the early stages of infection. So there still is a chance. The other side of it, though, is if we have a patient who's testing at very high levels, there is a slight chance that we can get carryover to another sample next to it. This is an unfair question, so I'm going to ask and then I'll answer part of it for you. Is it unrealistic to participate in the lifestyle and hope to remain free of either herpes virus? My opinion is it's unrealistic to participate in the lifestyle and not be exposed to it would be my uneducated answer, but I want to throw that at you. Yeah, I think I agree with you. I think eventually you're going to get exposed to the herpes virus. I think, you know, what we do testing for antibody testing for herpes, and we see people in the lifestyle all the time that are negative, and some of them have been in the lifestyle for 30 years. So I think it's very realistic to participate in the lifestyle and not come down with It's all about practicing, like we said, safer sex. Safer sex, for sure. Safer sex. The last question we had is, can a woman catch a virus from hot tub water at a lifestyle event or a toilet seat or, you know, anything else that is not a sexual interaction with somebody? Highly unlikely. I have read some anecdotal literature that does talk about the toilet seat being potentially contagious, but it's exceptionally rare. Like you would have to have like fresh, wet body. I don't think I want to know what you have to have. I don't either. That's enough. I don't think anybody would sit there. So I think the true answer is no. Hey, we asked the question. We should be willing to listen to the answer. Yeah, of course. Okay. So is there anything that we've missed or is it anything that you all would like to share in addition to everything that we've already discussed? I think, you know, like sometimes we have conversations with people like they can get turned off. or scared. And that is not our intention at all. You know, we want to be here as a resource to help people in the lifestyle or like in my scenario, people that are going through, had gone through a divorce, right? To be able to experience sex in a positive way and not to feel intimidated or scared and to be able to explore their sexual in, in a safer manner. So I think, for me, that's something that's very important. I want to be able to provide that as a resource for the community. And I think having podcasts like this to spread our message is important. I just want to thank you guys for giving us this opportunity I agree. First of all, I'll say thank you guys for giving us the opportunity to come on and to speak to your audience and just be able to talk about it. I would tell you, based on the subject matter that we covered, we could probably do 15 other podcasts talking individually about some of this thing that I think would be intriguing for people. It's not very often that, you know, I as the CEO of our company get the opportunity to kind of share our philosophy and our vision and kind of who we are and what we do so that people know that we actually exist. Because there's a lot of people out there and we try to be very active. And I mean, I have billboards on college campuses, you know, for college students and, you know, to get STI testing because we feel like it's important. And, you know, we have all these different channels where we're able to basically share with people. who we are and what we do and let them know that we exist. And it's, I'm just thankful that you guys do what you do. And you care enough about your community that you want to talk to us and bring us out and let people understand that we're real people. And, you know, we're out here trying to make the world a better place. Right. And I mean, where do you put a billboard to advertise STI testing for people in the lifestyle? Like, there's nowhere to hang that billboard and nobody wants to see it, right? You know, Angela, we just go to events. We go to events, and at some events, we're lucky enough that people will allow us to put up a table and put up kits. And, you know, we try to do seminars as often as we can. And, you know, a big thank you to Dr. Budd with everything that he does. I mean, he's the busiest guy. I used to think I was busy. I think he outworks me about 10 to 1. But, you know, when we're going to an event and, you know, someone wants to do it, Well, hey, do a seminar, do a newbie seminar, or talk about STIs. Dr. Budd has done an amazing job for us to say, Alan, I don't care what it is. Just tell me about it. I'll make myself available. I'll rework my schedule. Because he truly cares, not necessarily about the community, but he cares about the people, about people in general, and just trying to help people. And, you know, that's what we're doing, too. I think what I want people to start to understand, especially people in our age group, maybe if you're over 40, 50, or even higher, the way that we have been educated both about sex, about STIs, and about health care, you know, we look at physicians as the be-all and the end-all and the know-all. That's how we were brought up. So if you stop and think about now, the technology that's available, both in us being able to share this message to a bunch of people, and the way that you can do your testing, the healthcare industry, the way that it's changing, all of the medical equipment that you described that is now available that makes this more affordable and actually doable, and then to take I think, Alan, I think it would be a visionary, I think is a good term for you because you see all of that and you're getting ahead of the rest of the pack because there are people that are going to cling on to traditional methods and methodologies. And so for you to come along and then put together this vision and this philosophy and then have a team of people that are passionate about what you do. And then, on top of everything else, for you to step into the lifestyle with your wife and to be able to see it from the inside out, all of those things put together are, I think, what makes STD Hero unique and well-positioned to move forward. So I'm going to just be one of your cheerleaders and encourage you guys to keep doing that because we have seen that, like I said at the outset, this is probably why we haven't talked about it. this, because we haven't found someone or a group or a physician or, you know, an organization that really covered all of those bases. So, we're extremely happy to have you in our circle and to collaborate with you guys. Well, thank you. Well, for Angel and I, we're glad that we actually went to an event, because the stereotype is not like the event, when you go. And, you know, she and I both said over and over and over again, if we didn't have a laboratory and we weren't in this business 10 years from now, I retire, whatever happens, we're going to go to lifestyle events. I mean, we absolutely love it, and we're traveling all over the country and going to events. We're going to a new event in Kansas City at the end of January, and it's a place we've never been to. before, like, well, you know what, let's go. Giddy up. So we're looking forward to it. And, you know, hopefully get to run into you guys sometime. Yeah, I'm sure. Well, we're going to go do a Libertine event later this year. So hopefully we'll see. Oh, we'll be at that. We'll be at that. We love Kate to death. We're excited about that. So, yeah. So we, I'm going to ask you where people can find you. But before I do, we have a large concentration of our community in Kansas City. So what's going on in Kansas City? It's a lifestyle event that's out there. And it's a cold puts that on. Kibash, I'll say it wrong. We recently met him through. It's funny that we didn't meet him through the lifestyle. We met him through the adult industry, through some people who are in the adult industry that said, hey, have you guys ever heard of this guy? I'm like, no. So he put us on a phone call and got us together and he's like, well, we're doing an event. I was like, well, we're going. That's great. So we signed up for the event and we're going to go check it out and hopefully meet some new people. Well, good. Well, we have you. We're affiliates of yours now. So we do promote STD Hero on our website. We are building an STD Hero site inside of our community. But where can people, find you? Yep. So you can go to Google and you can just Google STD Hero. It'll lead you to our website. It's mybls.com. And we did that. A lot of people don't understand the company. So our laboratory is actually Better Life Science. But, you know, our brand for everything is the Hero. So we have Allergy Hero, STD Hero, Tick Bite Hero. We have Fight Night Hero for people who are in combat sports to get their required testing. But, you know, you can hit us in any google search engine we sell on walmart.com um but our number one preferences go to our website and we do two-day shipping for free um with any of our test kits and we're accessible um i don't mind giving my phone number i don't mind giving my cell phone number out to people um you can call here in the office if anyone has questions and i just want to make sure that you guys um do have my phone number and and like anytime someone has a question i i don't take I don't recognize, but if someone texts me a question or asks something, I call them. I mean, you know, that's, I did that. We were doing 10,000 COVID samples a day, and I was out there. I would be on the phone 20 hours a day calling people trying to help them. Like, you do what you got to do. So, we want to be here to help. So, and we're glad to have you guys as affiliates and talking about us. And, you know, we're going to do a good job for you. We're going to work really, really hard to do a good job for you guys and for the community and for every customer that that comes across and buys one of our kits. We want to give them the Chick-fil-A experience and be exceptional in every way. That's just kind of my line. I want to be exceptional in every way. And we're real people. So that was, it was myBLS? MyBLS.com. Okay, and that's Better Life Science. Yeah, Better Life Science. You can Google Better Life Science. You can Google STD Hero and we'll pop up at the top there. And I will also put a link to your website in the show notes underneath the recording of this podcast. So we appreciate you giving Dr. Bud an hour off of his busy schedule today. Dr. Bud, thank you very much for taking the time. Yeah, I didn't give him an hour off. I actually added an hour to it or two hours. And by the looks on his face, he's just now discovering this. Yeah, probably right. Yeah. Thank you guys very much. Thank you guys so much. All right. Great talking with you. Bye. Take care. Hey, this is Jessica. If this episode stirred something in you, curiosity, comfort, or that quiet, I've been looking for this feeling, don't stop here. Go listen to episode 131, Finding Your Tribe and the We Got a Thing community. It's where the conversations go deeper, the connections get real, and you discover that this journey was never meant to be taken alone because if you're listening chances are you've got a thing a craving for more honesty more freedom and a space where you feel understood without having to justify who you are and we've got a thing a thriving community built exactly for like-minded couples and individuals ready to explore grow and connect with support that's as deep as the desire that brought you here head to we got a thing.com and come inside because the thing you've been craving It's not just a fantasy. It's a real community, and we're waiting for you. Follow us on at WeGotAThing on Instagram and X. That's W-E-G-O-T-T-A-T-H-I-N-G for a glimpse into the energy, inspiration, and intention behind everything we do.