Revolutionizing Real Estate With IoT Technology

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If you re still not sold on the power of the Internet of Things IoT then listen to this episode There are endless applications of the technology in real estate and our guest John Humphrey joins us to discuss how STR owners can mine crypto on their property using IoT and create passive income He also talks about their company LinxSTR and the work they do to help people optimize their business operations and build wealth by leveraging the potential of IoT 00 01 – 06 20 Decentralizing the Internet John talks about his background Helium and creating the world s biggest IoT network 06 21 – 20 15 Passively Earning Crypto Rewards Losing money in their short-term vacation rental properties during the pandemic Starting a technology arm of their business Building their own Helium hotspot box How STR owners can benefit through mining HNT What s LinxSTR s next play Smart solutions using IoT John breaks down the best way to set up the hotspots in properties 20 16 – 21 24 Closing Segment Reach out to John Links Below Final Words Tweetable Quotes Almost a hundred percent of our lives in three years right now is going to be all interconnected – John Humphrey Me and you won t be talking over cellular towers anymore Our phone our actual communication is going to box to box to box to box to box to get anywhere it needs to get – John Humphrey —————————————————————————– Connect with John for a strategy session Book now at iotjohn com Connect with me I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns Facebook LinkedIn Like subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts or whatever platform you listen on Thank you for tuning in Email me sam brickeninvestmentgroup com Want to read the full show notes of the episode Check it out below 00 00 00 John Humphrey Right now in the next three years 75 billion new devices are going to need a place to hook up to the internet I mean this is everything what s going to happen Almost a hundred percent of our life in three years right now is going to be all interconnected It s really crazy 00 00 28 Sam Wilson John Humphrey s a seasoned entrepreneur author and is best known as The Revenue Generation Expert He is an expert at implementing systems to generate ongoing income for not only his own companies but also for his clients worldwide John welcome to the show 00 00 42 John Humphrey Sam Great to be here Thanks for having me 00 00 44 Sam Wilson Pleasure is mine Three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90 seconds or less can you tell me where did you start Where are you now And how did you get there 00 00 51 John Humphrey Okay Started 20 years ago originally from New York I m out here in California 20 years April this past April is 20 years My wife and I had been out here in California Yes We came out of California to create fame and fortune and become entrepreneurs And that s where our kind of our journey started Fast forward 20 years you know I ve been in business with like one of my best friends that I met out here california when we first got out here Jerry Conti and we ve owned three or four different companies together on our latest company right now LinxSTR is revolutionizing the new IoT Helium platform that s being launched worldwide And that s our latest play right now And it s a it s super exciting what we re into 00 01 35 Sam Wilson Can you can you break this down for us You may have used a bunch of words that if entrepreneurs like me just said what did he just say Helium IoT LinxSTR and my eyes glaze over Break it down for us 00 01 48 John Humphrey I m going to tell you all about it It s actually it s it s a it s a pretty cool concept It s right around a little bit over two years ago a cryptocurrency called Helium the actual cryptocurrency said okay listen we re going to create our own new cryptocurrency 00 02 01 John Humphrey You know it s right now there s 8 000 cryptocurrencies in the world that most people will never hear right This one said we re going to do something different We are going to create the world s biggest IoT network and IoT stands for internet of things Now if you don t know what that is I didn t know what the hell it was when we got this whole thing rolling 00 02 20 John Humphrey But basically it s a network that is an basically an outdoor network of the internet I m just going to give you the plain plain simple truth So like I was sharing with you saying like inside our house we have you know we have our wifi in the house right But we go outside we re using cellular data but there are billions of new devices that are being developed right now for everything from from a motor scooters to the cameras that go around your property to temperature monitor to to leak detection to all sorts of things that can happen with a property These all these little devices need to be hooked up into the internet but typically they re not going to hook up into the wifi cause a lot of these devices are actually outside the property So how did they hook up Well they re not going to hook up to cellular because it s too expensive and they re not going to the satellite cause that s even more expensive So over the last number of years there s been a there s been a network called the IoT network 00 03 18 John Humphrey Now the IoT network has been around in major cities for a very very long time So if you ever gone to you know swipe your credit card and a parking meter downtown Well your information is getting beamed into this outdoor internet network called the IoT network If you ve ever gone to a like the like the line motor scooters that you know the little electric scooters you see everywhere downtown how does that all operate 00 03 44 John Humphrey That s an IoT device So now what s happening is that not only are more and more IoT devices becoming made Right now in the next three years 75 billion new devices are going to need a place to hook up to the internet I mean this is everything what s going to happen Almost a hundred percent of our life in three years right now it s going to be all interconnected 00 04 05 John Humphrey It s really crazy So what do they do Well they created this so Helium said we re going to create the world s first 100 connected worldwide network and how they re going to do it is not by building it centrally They re going to decentralize the internet So now this isn t the size of an actual box but it s about the size of what s called what s called a Helium hotspot 00 04 28 John Humphrey Okay So imagine having this in your house and all this little device does is it looks for other IoT devices and all it does is it beacons and witnesses it just basically shares the network to create a network So think of it this way If Netflix got started today they would send you a little device that you would plug into your router 00 04 50 John Humphrey This is what they would do And they would say great we ll send you the device And when your neighbor orders a TV show or a movie and the movie has to go through all these devices to get to your neighbor And this little movie goes over your box to get to your neighbor s box We re going to pay you every time that that happens 00 05 09 John Humphrey This is a peer to peer network that is being built This is really what You know Web 3 0 really is it s called decentralized the network having the people own the network So Helium is known as the people s network and this is what s getting built right now So super exciting There s about like I said there was about 700 000 of those little devices worldwide in 5 800 cities and 200 000 of them are in the United States 00 05 36 John Humphrey So there are quite a number but people are saying well you know how many will it take It ll take about 2 to 3 million devices to completely blanket the United States So think about this in a few years and this is this is kind of crazy me and you won t be talking over cellular towers anymore Our phone our actual communication is going to be going box to box to box to box to box to get anywhere it needs to get 00 06 02 John Humphrey The entire world this is where it s going to be happening So Helium s going to be really the biggest data provider you know in in the world in the next few years this is what s happening 00 06 13 Sam Wilson That that is really amazing I mean this is this is obviously you re you re at the front of this I guess Tell us give us the backstory on how you saw the opportunity here I mean was this what your background was in and you know are you a big tech guy 00 06 28 John Humphrey Nope not a tech guy I love tech you know I like to use tech but I m not in the weeds when it comes I m going electrical engineer or anything I m more of a user right So so here s what happened So my my partner Jerry we ve had a short-term vacation rental development company for many many years And we actually taught people how to convert large homes into luxury short-term rentals And we did that in the arbitrage model where we re basically we would go rent a giant house I convert it And then Castro the property was amazing I mean one of my properties at Arizona I was paying 10 500 a month rent which was nuts 00 07 05 John Humphrey Right But it was bringing in 35 000 a month and bookings Super great business but then 2020 happens and we all know what happened in March of 2020 we had the pandemic And what people don t realize is in the month of April Airbnb came out and said listen we know everybody s panicking with travel so here s what we re going to do regardless of your cancellation policy with your host if you want to go ahead and cancel go ahead And we ll give you 100 of your money back Well listen that was great for the traveler but it sucked for us as the host Jerry and I lost 600 000 in bookings in 30 days cause everybody was canceling and there was no recourse And so that really scared us And we said whoa listen if we re really hooked into a big tech giant here like Airbnb or BRBO and they do something like this it could really kill your business 00 07 58 John Humphrey And so Jerry decided Hey let s start a technology arm of our short-term vacation rental business where people can create websites where they can book direct that we we can we can do pricing We could do marketing social media marketing where people can go out and get their own bookings So they can be empowered to have their own business regardless of what happens if they got knocked off of Airbnb or knocked off of BRBO 00 08 22 John Humphrey And the same thing happens in marketing right People have a Facebook account and it gets shut down for some All their marketing drives up So we want it to do that for the STR world So we re doing this for a little bit and a friend and we were looking for all tech to put into our homes and somebody said Hey you want to check this thing out 00 08 40 John Humphrey It s called Helium We don t know what it was And they said well listen you can put a box literally add this Helium hotspot to your short-term vacation rental properties And you can earn crypto You ll get rewarded in crypto currency And we looked into we said wow that s really amazing We jumped on it But then as soon as we jumped on it we saw a whole bunch of pitfalls of why it wasn t going to work 00 09 04 John Humphrey And so one of the big reasons is is that I show you this little box right This is the size of a Helium hotspot You would get off the internet It doesn t work and it reason it doesn t work is it s not powerful enough So what we did was is we hired a guy from Motorola who took that thing apart We deconstructed it and we built this kind of this it looks like a utility box 00 09 26 John Humphrey I don t have one right here with me at the office but it s a it s a small utility box probably the size of a toaster And then we put an external antenna on the roof and we did this whole thing So we basically souped up the Helium hotspot We contracted with a manufacturer and we created our own customized box 00 09 44 John Humphrey And by doing that we built a better mousetrap And then all of a sudden this was doing even bigger than our short term vacation rental businesses as people kept calling us saying I want one of your boxes I have a property I m a property management company I have a thousand properties I want to make crypto like I could add this on and just make residual money without doing anything I m in And that s kind of how LinkxSTR got started six months ago 00 10 07 Sam Wilson Six months ago That s rapid growth Tell me tell me about the opportunity for commercial real estate investors 00 10 14 John Humphrey Yeah this this is what s amazing If you have a property if you re if you have like a commercial building if you have real estate residential doesn t make a difference what it is is what we have done is we have created a software where we can literally predict how much cryptocurrency your location could mine meaning how much it would get rewarded So what we do is we invite people you know to get on our calendar We will literally get on a zoom call with them and say Hey let s go over your 5 to 10 property that you have or maybe it s even more We ll analyze them in real time And then they ll make a decision on where they want to put hotspots because the one pitfall that we did see Sam was that in the beginning people were just buying hotspots plugging them in and then all of a sudden I m seeing all over social media 00 10 59 John Humphrey This is a bunch of BS Like I m not making any money This is what they re still like well what is this And it s because they were literally taken a little box like this plugging it into their router box stick it next to a window on the first floor of their apartment And the signal was going nowhere absolutely nowhere 00 11 16 John Humphrey And so that s what we found so for real estate professionals commercial real estate people at buildings we can put an antenna on the roof and you could just be earning residual crypto rewards I mean to me it s a no-brainer for people It really is 00 11 31 Sam Wilson I mean what s what s the break even on that I mean is this something where Hey it s a thousand bucks for the box you know in three years you break even on it 00 11 39 Sam Wilson I mean it s it sounds like I m just going to be in being forthright here So don t let me offend you Obviously you ve got a you guys are going somewhere with and you ve got traction with it so I m just the naysayer trying to clarify 00 11 50 John Humphrey This is great I ll tell you the costs right now or how it works Real simple So the box is 29 97 So if you bought a retail box about three grand now people say okay now listen you can I will tell you I ll be the first one to tell you You can go onto eBay right now and buy a box for 500 You can but it s going to look like this right And it ain t going to work 00 12 12 John Humphrey I m just telling you it s a 500 waste of money So what we did is we we have a premier piece of tech that we put together for somebody Now here s the reason we did it It s not for how much it costs but how much it s going to make So let s say for example you put our box out there and it gives you five tokens a month meaning five HNT 00 12 32 John Humphrey Yeah it s rewarded for you basically do enough and the box is sitting here and it s just pinging in witnessing So over the course of a year that 60 tokens in five years that d be 300 tokens that you would have in your crypto wallet worth whatever the value HNT is going to be Now I will tell you in five years HNT is supposed to be around 250 a token and let s just make it a round number 00 12 54 John Humphrey Let s just say it s 300 a token And you ve got 300 tokens you know that s not bad That is not a bad if you you know if you do if you could do the math on that that s pretty good money That s 90 grand on a 3 000 one-time investment with no maintenance fee no anything It costs about 5 a year in electricity to run the box 00 13 17 John Humphrey So this is what people are looking at in terms of ROI is that I m in it for more of the 10 year play You know Jerry and I want to mine a few million coins in a in 10 years Our goal is to put 20 000 hotspots out in the marketplace and that s a hundred million dollar business right there I mean it s going to be massive 00 13 37 John Humphrey So everybody that gets a Helium hotspot you want to be thinking right now just accumulating coins because then when Helium goes to 500 or a thousand maybe becomes a Bitcoin one day and goes to 10 or 20 000 You re going to be sitting on a fortune for a very very minimal investment 00 13 56 Sam Wilson Tell me about this You know we re long in the RV resorts space So talk to me about that application 00 14 03 John Humphrey Yeah We re putting them everywhere RV resorts are fantastic because there is an office there right That does have internet And the reason I say internet is because the the box needs to be powered by the ethernet right now it s simply that it plugged into the ethernet port of your router box 00 14 20 John Humphrey It doesn t use data It just uses the power Now in the future they re going to have other locations where it s going to be Siler and you don t have to plug it in but RV resorts are great And one of the reasons they re great is because you can put literally a 40 or 50 foot tower like an antenna like in the RV resort And the higher the intent is the more HNT the more crypto rewards you re going to earn because the more boxes it s going to reach Everything is about height with us everything So the higher you know the higher the relocation of your intended the better So RV resorts we have put Helium hotspots and our RV resorts very good because they can kind of make their own rules they don t have an HOA they can just build some fricking tower there that we ll help install And now they re just mining tons of crypto there 00 15 05 Sam Wilson What is your guys s angle You know I know you guys want to mine your own Helium but what or HNT I guess as you call it maybe that s the short short three letters for it but what s your guys angle other than selling the boxes which is a one-time sale I mean maybe you re making some money on your box but there s gotta be more to the business than that 00 15 23 John Humphrey Correct So we re sharing Every box that we put out there we re sharing the HNT with that person So we will get 50 of the HNT They get 50 of the HNT but we do everything We do the shipping we do installation 00 15 37 John Humphrey We do your hotspot maintenance your crypto wallet Everything is like we do it all for you And the reason we did that is we wanted to target real estate professionals that want to make the want to be in the money of just making money with their properties And this is extra money for them but let us handle the technology the tech of this We re not interested in people that want to tinker and you know like that isn t it 00 16 02 John Humphrey I come across those people saying like they re going I m going to go build my own hotspot I m going to go do that I said listen you go for it You know our goal is every box is out there It s a long-term play for us that we want to earn HNT but then the second part of this play is is that we re going to be creating a consulting division of LinxSTR that is going to be all about the devices 00 16 23 John Humphrey Cause this is the next phase of what s going to happen There s going to be 75 billion new IoT devices that are going to be introduced into the world marketplace So we re going to create a whole division That s going to be creating devices consulting with companies on how to get the data to their devices All of those things is really the next play and that s going to be massive That s gonna be massive 00 16 46 Sam Wilson The sales and the front end of these devices that s really just the entry point for you guys into the market collecting HNT 00 16 51 John Humphrey And there s tons of hard costs in a tech company So we don t we re not making a fortune off of devices We re really not I mean the whole point of this is the HNT and the consulting and how to use the data when the data comes up 00 17 05 John Humphrey And we we actually was interested We actually we spoke to an IoT device manufacturer the other day and they and it was this they have hundreds of devices and they re the funniest devices you ll ever see There are little devices right One of the ones and they were all designed for real estate they re all designed for how to maintain your property remotely how to how to do everything from like a leak happening on your property or fire damage or you know anything even critters 00 17 34 John Humphrey So the funniest thing I saw was an IoT mousetrap that they have So imagine you mentioned putting mousetraps out in your property you got critters And instead of hoping and praying that you re catching something the device is actually an IoT device So when something happens with the device it ll alert So you can put it out into your yard and it s on the network And as soon as something catches you actually get notification on your phone 00 17 59 Sam Wilson That s funny Yeah There s endless applications like oh your applications right now You if you re in Memphis it would be rats not mice So yeah I know right Everybody on the show just took their headphones out and went oh that s disgusting Yeah Well welcome to the Delta Yeah So that s it d be funny Yeah He caught a rat great Okay Tell me about saturation Like how far apart do these have to be Is there you know is it one per neighborhood Is it one per house 00 18 26 John Humphrey Great great question The hotspots ideally to be a thousand feet So if you had a building like you had an apartment complex or something or a fourplex you would only put one hotspot there 00 18 37 John Humphrey So that s it Now this is the also the issue that s been happening because when the whole network got started it s completely unregulated at this point So people were just buying things and what happened is there ll be too many hotspots in a concentrated location So there s a network called the IoT Helium network 00 18 56 John Humphrey And it ll tell you the great thing about it is that every hotspot that is live on the network you can see what that hotspot is doing in real time So there s actually a worldwide map and the way that they break it down is if I was to take this hotspot and have it go live it would show up in what s called a green hexagon 00 19 16 John Humphrey That s what it looks like on the map It looks like there s a green hexagon that is over my house here but the hexagon is literally two square miles And this this shows up as one hotspot within the green hexagon Now the ideal thing and the reason they do that is because ideally you do not want to have more than six Helium hotspots in one hexagon 00 19 41 John Humphrey You get past six then it s kind of like a pizza eating itself There s only so much that s going to be it s like a pizza and more and more people coming in If the pizza is the same size now that s this type of hotspot Right The one that we have which is built ours is going to go outside of our hexes 00 19 58 John Humphrey And they re going to go up to 200 miles away They re going to network with other boxes So it s going to go super far the signal like you don t realize how far the signal can go It goes really really far So that s why ours will outperform anything on the market 00 20 13 Sam Wilson Wow John this is fascinating Thanks for taking the time to break down this opportunity We have here with our properties That s that is the either There s always something new to learn in this This is certainly something new to me So I appreciate you taking the time to share it with us If our listeners want to get in touch with you or learn more about you and what you guys are doing how do they do that 00 20 31 John Humphrey Simple I just if you have some properties you want us to do an analysis of your property You want to learn about a little bit more what we re doing I d say just book some time directly on my calendar I always kind of do this I leave this open ended with everybody it s simple It s iotjohn iotjohn com And then you can book some time to get into valuations done of your properties and see if you re sitting on a crypto gold mine somewhere 00 20 54 Sam Wilson That s cool John thank you so much for your time today I do appreciate it 00 20 57 John Humphrey Thanks so much Sam be well Click here to visit this podcast episode