Smart Access Solutions: Transforming Property Management with Ransel Wildes

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Hello, Hello. Jenny Bowling here with Pivot to Prosperity, sponsored by Pivotal Real Estate Investments where we help investors build wealth and income through commercial real estate that also improves communities. And today here we have Ransel Wilds. Ransel, thanks for coming.

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Well, you're welcome. And the name of your company, the name of the company that you're representing is Nimbeo and Secure and Nimble Access and I've been learning about that. It's very, very interesting and I think that our listeners will find it interesting as well. I'm going to read your bio first and then we'll launch into that. So Ransol served six years as a paratrooper in the US Army. The first landing in an airplane was the 11th airplane he boarded. And he still jumps out of airplanes with Phantom airborne Brigade. He's got 57 jumps and counting. We were just talking about that too. And it's phenomenal what he's doing. He's owned five motorcycles and has hit 182 miles an hour on two wheels.

That is.

How wide were those wheels?

Not very wide.

Not very well.

You cannot count the dots on the road.

No, I know it. We actually funny, I was on the back of a motorcycle running from Key west trying to stay in front of Hurricane David in the 1970s. Coming up to Orlando, it was, it was hairy. It was raining a lot too.

I bet you wished you were going 182. We did.

Anyway. His wife is from New Orleans and is New Orleans Saints fan. And they have a black and gold cat named who Dat?

That's right.

Awesome. And I met you at an apartment association event and we played Connect four, right?

That's right. I've been, I've been practicing ever since.

Well, so tell us about Nimbeo.

Nimbeo is a privately owned company headquartered in Las Vegas. It was started by some professional poker players. One one of our founders has two World Series of Poker bracelets and two World Poker Tour titles. And his poker name was the Professor. So if you want to look him up, that's enough information. And one of his buddies that had worked together in developing the first online poker company, electrical engineer Howard had bought a property in Las Vegas and being a techie, he had a Bluetooth gate controller system that was not reliable. And his buddies said, I can build something better. And the first Nimbyo device was born. It was shortly thereafter patented. And we use cellular 4G technology so we can program our SIM cards for any phone system in the world that has 4G. We're on every continent except for Antarctica, of course. And. But we're still a small company. I work out of Eustis, Florida. I'm the director of sales and operations. I have customer care reps scattered across the country. Very hands on with our customers and very unique in the access control field because we can piggyback on any existing operating system and remove the RFID fob or card or take your keypad system and turn your smartphone into your key. We've tailored our offerings. Our primary customers were hoas property owners with gated properties, gated communities, and then we branched more into smaller commercial properties. One of my newest customers are some PepsiCo distribution plants, manufacturing and distribution plants in Chicago. And we have a lot of traditional multifamily properties as customers. We did a project, which is how I came to NIMBY with the U.S. postal Service in New York City to eliminate the need for postal carriers to carry key rings, which as crime increased in the early 2000s, they were getting robbed of their keys. And then the criminals had access to every one of the buildings that was on that key. And so they would go in and open the mailboxes and steal everything, so on. And we put the capability onto the carrier's smart device, which is an Android enabled phone, basically that allowed them to buzz open the door just like a tenant would buzz them in from the outside of the building using our technology. Unfortunately, they did not want to sink the income into upgrading all of their devices. We were going to give them an amazing deal because the way we were going to make money was going to be charging the other delivery services to utilize our technology. But they backed out of that and so we pivoted quickly with our, the size of our company and our operations. I took over sales and so now I'm growing the company more organically and through events like this and through different outreach programs that we have going on across the country and across the world.

Yeah, it's really something when you think about how much access can really be a problem. Are you familiar with Megan's Law?

Yeah. Isn't that the law that was recently enacted where the key maintenance man, key custody?

Yep. Maintenance man raped or killed somebody. I can't remember which. Maybe both, but yes. So key custody is a huge thing that I would think that your, your system can track and, and right.

Absolutely. So every, every open, all of our technology is proprietary. Our server is in Las Vegas. It's everything is controlled by us. We do not have any of our. Nothing's on the cloud regarding MBO customers. So it's all proprietary. It's all on our servers. We consume very little data with our technology. So each property, your property managers that can only be assigned and removed by NEO personnel to make sure no one can negatively impact your property management status. Each property manager is able to control who has what key and literally within a second of someone removing, adding or removing access, the key is gone. And every key that's subordinate to that master key is gone as well. So if, if I'm, I'm a community member, I rent your property, I have my key. I've shared my key with this buddy, my, my poker buddies and I move out whenever you delete my key. All of my poker buddies keys are gone as well. And every time that I open the gate that I opened the community center, that I opened the swimming pool gate that I opened the gym at your property, it shows that Ransom Wilds at this time opened this door and every one of those is tracked. You can export it to Excel or CSV file. And so the security is always there and every open since the first time is logged on our server.

Yeah, that's huge. That really is. And a lot of people don't like the invasion of privacy and all, but, but when you're dealing with apartments and many people like us apartment owners, you have to care about that kind of thing and accountability. And so I think that's a wonderful thing and we talked about maybe showing it on your. From your Website. Should we do that?

Yeah, sure.

Okay, let me share my screen a second.

So the Nimbyo device itself and being able to connect it to the existing infrastructure at a property, if you have a gate controller outside, well, then it's mounted inside of the gate housing and it works from 6v to 24v AC or DC, so we can pull power directly off of the existing control systems. It's all low voltage. And then if you have cell service there via Verizon, AT&T T Mobile, we program the SIM card to what has the best signal to provide the best connectivity.

And Ranzo will know about connectivity because he's worked in the telecom world for most of his career, so he knows all about that stuff, right?

That's right. That's right. And the seven years, the five years I've been in Florida and worked for Comcast Cable, we responded to all of the hurricanes from Irma all the way through Michael, everything. And I can tell you that you lose your Internet connectivity from your legacy providers before you lose your sales service. And you definitely get cell service back before you get those wires back up on the poles. So.

So if it's an electric gate or a door, it's. Your phone will work before the door does or the gate does. Right?

Yeah, yeah. As soon as power is back, we'll be back operational.

Okay. Yeah. But you do need. Well, you need. Not for your phone, not for Nimbeo. You need it for the. The hard asset.

Yeah, yeah. So.

If.

If power goes down in a storm or whatever the case may be, well, then without power, nothing is going to work. But as soon as power comes back on. Our systems typically reconnect with the network within 10 seconds. So as soon as it reconnects. Now, everything that you had the moment that the power went off, you now have right back. So all of the control that you.

Had so they don't have to call you to come reconnect everything. That's big.

That's. That's right. Good.

All right, so let's look at this here. Okay. This is more efficient building management. The solution for the largest challenges in property management. Balancing convenience and security through common access points. Amen. With Nimbeo, you get both without compromising either. So let's see. Manage all of your service providers and employees across all of your buildings under one dashboard with the tap of a button. Our Nimbeo Pro platforms. The need to ever travel to unlock the door again. You are able to approve or revoke keys remotely within seconds, all while granting full or Partial access to your portfolio of buildings on a key by key basis. Nimpio Pro creates efficiency by giving you 360 degrees of management, whether it's approving a digital key for your maintenance team or viewing access logs across all your buildings. Nimbeo Pro for property managers on the go.

Do me a favor, Jenny.

And service providers, an employee, pardon me.

Go back to about the 25 second mark on there, the polls right there and let me explain what we're looking at. Okay, so this, this is a property management company that has buildings in primarily Manhattan. They have a handful in the Bronx. They have market rate and rent controlled properties in there. So they wanted Nimbeo Pro. We created this product for property managers just so they don't have to send people to open gates, open doors. And then if you think about the topography of New York City, you know, you, everywhere you go, you either are walking or taking a train or maybe a bus. So it's a huge drain on manpower and on hours. So with Joe's maintenance here, they are able to assign specifically the properties that Joe needs. And they can further assign keys. They could assign a doorbell key so that Joe, whenever he's pulling up to 2477 Arthur Avenue, he hits open and it notifies the property manager that Joe is at 2477 Arthur. And then they confirm it. Now the door buzzes for Joe. Or they could give Joe a key that only works on Mondays and Thursdays between the hours of 2pm and 6pm So a lot of customizable features on here. But just like this, you know, if, if Joe was working on Arthur Avenue, they could give him access to Arthur Avenue only until he's complete with work there. And then they can remove those keys and give him the 3rd Avenue addresses and so on and so forth. Yeah, this is good and it's instantaneous. So and then on that dashboard that you see behind there is where you manage everything. And it's so very simple to utilize. Property managers love it. Now in this application, this gentleman said, look, so traditional Nimbeo for buildings is you're providing keys for tenants. Given New York City's housing laws, he could not provide keys for. He did not. The property owners would not pay for keys for all of the tenants. So he told us, nimbyo, if you want to sell keys to the people that want to pay for a digital key and have the convenience of using their smartphone as their key, well, then you can. So we have tenants at all of these addresses that pay us annually for a digital key. And we build a tenant directly. And that's also something that a property management group could manage themselves by the key from Nimbeo and then build a tenant at the rate that they want.

What kind of costs are we looking at? Can you, can you generalize?

So let's say 80 to Lancy Street. There they have about 50 units in that building. We charge $2. Nimbeo is unique in that we charge per unit versus per key. So 80 to Lancy, 50 units, we would charge $2 per unit per month. What we typically do if a customer wants to pay annually, we charge for 11 months instead of 12 months. So you would be looking at 80 de Lancie, 50 tenants that if the landlord were going to provide this, that amenity with one entry point would cost $120 per month for the entire property, which is security.

That's a lot of security for.

Yes. And, and so the security and the tracking, no longer maintaining the key cards and the fobs. We work with in New York City, we work with intercom companies that manage this for property management companies. And it's a big part of their business. And there's so many tiers and layers. With Nimbeo, you can simplify that to the property management level and remove those extra expenses and pay a fraction of what you would be paying these other companies to do to manage something that's going to get lost regularly. And you have to send an employee, send someone to allow a service person into the building. You have a trusted service person. Why not give them access to the building during their work week or emergency access when needed at a push of a button. Whether you're at home, at lunch or at office, you can do everything on your Apple iPhone that you can on your desktop.

Now, you've mentioned Apple and Android, so I gather it works with both.

Yeah, oh, absolutely, yeah. And we're, we're refining our CarPlay right now. So for people that have Apple CarPlay and have a Nimbeo enabled gate to get in and out of the property, they'll be able to use CarPlay to open the gate.

Okay, not familiar with that, but that's okay. But, but I see the value. Absolutely. Yeah. The ability to keep it all on phones. Everybody's got their phone with them now. Tell them what you told me before we started recording too, about how you can control pool access for minors.

Well, with the scalability of our keys, a property manager that has families moving in and out of the property, you know, if you, if Your standard is no. 1 under 16 is allowed access to the swimming pool or the gym if there's a fitness facility on the property. Well, mom and dad and the two kids that are 14 and 17, mom and dad get a full access key to all of the access points. The 17 year old probably gets a full access key to all of the access points. And the 14 year old, most 14 year olds have smartphones that he gets a key or she gets a key to just the common access points but not the swimming pool or not the gym. Mom and dad can have a shareable key so they can share that with grandma and grandpa that come over every Sunday for dinner. And so grandma and grandpa don't have to call, they just opened an embeyo app and let themselves in. And the property manager can see grandma and grandpa whatever, they open the gate if they check the logs, but grandma and grandpa can't share that key. So you can scale the levels of security. We have customers that have no regulations on sharing. We have customers that have share +1, but we can scale that however the customer wants it to be set up and then an added layer of security. We started out a lot with hoas and the board changes every year and HOA boards bicker and HOA board members get. Bob gets ticked off at Joe and removes Joe's admin access. And now Joe can't have any power over who comes and goes. So that turned out to be a problem. So the only way that admins can be added or removed is through Nimbeo administrators. So you have to call our 1-800-number, send us an email and say this person's off the board. Please add this person in their stead.

Right. Well that makes sense. And so yes, you were also talking. There's a lot of different businesses, even property owners are using this. So short term rentals, all kinds of things.

Right? Yeah. I was speaking to a gentleman this weekend that has an Airbnb where he utilizes Nimbeo. We have a lot of wineries out in California that use Nimbeo for their access control to their, their tasting rooms and to the publicly accessible property because they want all of their employees to be able to get in and out when they need to, but not when they want to. I was actually, I was actually in Belize in May and one of the last resort, I stayed at a spa resort. The gentleman looked at my car. They have a big dugout canoe over the bar and there's thousands of business cards and I take my business card and it's a husband and wife that manage it and she was asking me when we were checking in what I do, and I gave her a brief explanation and she told her husband. And so I'm talking to him about adding Nimbyo to his gates in Belize because he doesn't want his employees to have a key. So anytime something happens and they need to get in to the property, well, then he has to stop what he's doing and go let them in, which is extremely inconvenient. And for a few hundred dollars a year, he could have the convenience of Nimbio.

Yeah, that's great. I can really see. See some power there. And. Yeah, so. So we might want to do another recording after you get, get some more area. You know, you're, you're kind of new to this area, right? So people are just starting to learn about Nimbeo. So you'll, you'll no doubt have some great. You need to hit probably the Space coast and see what you can do for Virgin Atlantic and some of that. That would be exciting, right?

And become buddies with Elon over there. Yeah, right.

To be as exciting as going to Belize, maybe. Right. But anyway, so I need to go ahead and wrap this up. So, like everybody, I have a big question to ask you and so you can think about it a bit first. But that question is, is there a pivotal person or event that has brought you to where you are today? Doesn't have to be work related, but just something that strikes you that you would be willing to share with us?

Well, there's several. I think everybody has several things today, milestones in their life that they look at that kind of altered or shifted the trajectory of their life. And I was a supervisor with Time Warner Cable, and we had a new supervisor come. Come into. And his name was Jeff Fry, big guy. And they assigned to me. I mean, I'm five foot seven at the time, 145 pounds. He's six foot five and as big as the door frame. So I'm training Jeff and we're doing great. And he gets, we. We both. Seven years into being a supervisor or so, and a manager position comes up. And I had a problem with not sharing my opinion, so I was too free with my opinion with management and my upper management. So Jeff, Jeff got the position. And then I ended up working for Jeff. And I remember Jeff saying, I told him, I, I said, I'll never let you down because I never want to lose your friendship. And so I was his best supervisor. And one day I shot my mouth off to a director or vp and he had to Have a coaching with me, and I'm a few years older than him. And he basically said, you're. You're the best person. Everything that you do, and from getting to know you over the last several 10 years, you've always tried to be the best at everything you do. You only have one thing stopping you, and that's yourself. And you know what you have to do. So I just learned to be a calmer, more introspective person. And less than a year after that conversation, I was promoted to manager and just kept climbing and climbing and climbing. And if Jeff appear highly respected friend had not taken the time to tell me that my opinion's not that important, I probably would have never learned that lesson. And it really changed the trajectory of my career and of my life. And as part of why I left North Carolina and came to Florida. And I wouldn't be here right now if not for that conversation. Say Jeff Fry.

Jeff Fry. And F R Y F R Y E. Oh, okay. So I need to boil that down a little more to be sure. I really understand. You're so he. At the end there, you said he. He told you that your opinion isn't that important. Is that what you said?

What he said was, everybody doesn't need to hear my opinion all the time, so.

Oh, I see. So.

Yeah, sometimes the best thing to do is utilize your ears and mouth in proportion. You should listen twice as much as you talk. And. And I wasn't doing that. And it's some of those lessons from the military that needed to be brought back in, bring me back into a more introspective person. And it stuck. And I know my opinion matters. He knew my opinion matters. What he was saying was, you don't need to tell the vice president that the of operations, that this idea he's been working on for two months is dumb just because you think it's dumb, because you don't know everything about it. It's like, yeah, Jeff, you're smart. You're right. So, yeah, if you can't. If you can't be humble and laugh at yourself, well, then you're going to have a miserable existence.

So, you know, it's funny, my dad was good with sayings, too. And he constantly would tell us, you got to play the game. And he raised us on sports. I always thought it was about the sport. Right. You got to play the game. And then as I got into business, he kept saying it, you got to play. But the funniest thing was he was known for telling everybody what he thought, yeah. So he'd get laid off or fired, and we'd be looking for a job again. Right. And so he involved the whole family. So we all knew it was because of his smart mouth. Right. Or whatever. And he told us we got to be more diplomatic and. Yeah. So, yeah, it's. It's funny how it goes around. But he didn't.

Oh, he did. I was gonna say he was telling all of you, you got to play the game, because I don't. Yeah, I know.

That was the funniest thing. But, yeah, no, I just thought of that because he was very similar. He's. And. And my mom used to constantly say, you don't have to tell the boss he's a dumbass.

That's what I was doing. And in more very, very eloquent terms. But nonetheless, it was not appreciated.

Yeah. Anyways, that might be funny. So, of course we're going to put the information of how to reach you in the show notes and whatnot, but some people on itunes or Spotify are only listening, so we.

Why don't you tell to me directly. My work phone is 702-509-9925. My first name is spelled Ransel R A N as in Nancy sel. And my email is ranselimbio N I M B I O dot com. And you can call, you can text, or you can send me an email. Always have time to talk about life and talk about work and meet new people and make new connections. Terrific.

All right, well, thank you so much. That was a fun interview. And we'll have to stay in touch for sure.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity, and have a great day.

Yep, you too.

See you, Jenny.