Happy New Year and welcome to the new decade! After about 50 takes I figured what the heck, let’s just launch this thing. It’s raw and vulnerable, warts and all. Clearly I need a media training refresher from my wife who is a former TV reporter. But that’s ok, the polish will come later with practice and reps.
Without further ado, coming to you from the WIMS, Inc. War Room it’s The WIMS Guide video edition! I’ve procrastinated for years now on doing video content as surprisingly, it may be the one area I’m a little self-conscious. But that’s also why I needed to just put myself out there and DO it already. So here we are.
I definitely cringed a little (ok a lot) watching the play back, but I will absolutely get better. I’ll begin conveying my thoughts my clearly and concisely. But if you could give your boy a little grace here in the beginning, I’d appreciate it. Or don’t, feel free to roast me too I can take it.
As the blog this is meant to be about the never ending/ongoing journey of business, entrepreneurship, professional development and much more. I’m going to try to provide you with as much value as I can through the insights gained from running my companies, WIMS Consulting, EolianVR, and ARRE (along with perspective and experience gleaned from dozens of clients across a variety of industries and sizes). But I also want to learn more from you too, and even build a community around our shared insights and experiences.
My goal isn’t to build a Gary V or Grant Cardone or Ed Mylett style vlog. It’s to just force myself to get better, get out of my comfort zone, and try to serve my community in any way I can. That’s really all I can hope for. It could last a week, or a decade, we’ll see…
Here goes nothing!
The WIMS Guide Video Edition will focus on business topics such as Entrepreneurship, CRM, Marketing, Sales, B2B, Business Development, Web Design, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, and much much more. To learn more about Mike Simmons and his company WIMS Consulting, click here.
As the calendar has turned to October the temperatures in Charlotte are finally cooling off slightly after some record heat through September. While the weather may be cooling down and the fall spirit is spreading from Ballantyne to Belmont the business community around the Queen City is staying busy. Cranes can be seen all around the city and the roads are packed with dump trucks and construction vehicles. The real estate market is continuing to be very active as new residents continue to move into the Charlotte area and millennials embark on their first home buying purchase. Technology jobs are expanding across Charlotte bringing high paying jobs to the city and diversifying the entire regional economy. As job growth continues the real estate market in Charlotte is becoming one of the hottest real estate markets in the country. As an increased number of jobs are being created and the major infrastructure investments are made across the region the area is striving to move forward and be positioned for the economy of the future. While challenges including access to affordable housing and congestion exist the improvements and efforts of public and private leaders across the Charlotte region are addressing critical issues and moving the city towards a brighter future.
A Southern Tech Hub
Charlotte is expanding beyond being more than a financial services hub, it is becoming a major destination for tech talent. The CompTIA Tech Town Index 2018 ranked Charlotte as the best city to embark on a technology career. The lower cost of living, 1.3% below the national average make Charlotte a desirable place to move, begin a family and purchase a home. The cost of living is particularly more affordable than other tech hubs including the Bay Area, New York, and Boston.
Many workers from the Midwest and Northeast are relocating to Charlotte to settle down in a place with lower taxes and an abundance of recreational activities to supplement career growth. The projected number of openings over the next five years in the tech sector is a steady 11% showing how the growth in the Charlotte tech sector is here to stay. Many Charlotte companies desire tech workers including some of the largest regional job creators including major banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Mooresville, NC based Lowe’s is opening a tech hub in the South End neighborhood of Charlotte bringing 2,000 jobs by 2021. This favorable job growth is spilling into the real estate market which consistently ranks as the one of the most active markets in the US.
Real Estate
The Charlotte real estate market was ranked fourth in the 41st annual Emerging Trends in Real Estate behind only Raleigh-Durham, Austin, and Nashville. The metrics from this report combine tech jobs to real estate investments in determining the rankings. The ranking of fourth marks a move from ninth in the 2018 report showing how the Charlotte real estate market is heating up. Some of the insight from the report also highlighted how strong home building prospects are in Charlotte, ranking second in 2019 up from fourth in 2018. The ability to attract technology and manufacturing to diversify beyond financial services is another factor driving regional growth and helping the housing market. Investments in infrastructure projects have provided additional benefits to improving desirability to Charlotte including improvements at Charlotte Douglas International Airport and an expanding Light Rail system. Along with massive success comes some growing pains and Charlotte, like many other Sunbelt cities, is feeling some residual effects of growth. These include higher housing costs, additional roadway infrastructure projects, and a need to improve stormwater systems. All things considered the real estate market is continuing to be very active, attracting 1.2% of US real estate investments from 2016-2019 while accounting for only 0.8% of the nation’s population. As additional companies relocate to Charlotte and retirees move to the desirable Carolina climate and tax situation additional single-family homes, apartments, and townhouses will be needed to handle continued housing demands.
Relocations and Expansion
Over the past 12 months multiple companies have announced major relocation projects. The Charlotte Regional Business Alliance has been working with local and state officials in South Carolina and North Carolina to attract companies to expand current business operations, open regional offices, or relocate their headquarters to the regions. Some recent projects which have created new jobs across the region include Honeywell, which has relocated their headquarters to Charlotte in a move expected to create over 750 jobs.
These jobs along with new jobs from Lowe’s and a continued presence by Duke Energy, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo mean some of the world’s largest companies have a major presence in Charlotte. Beyond these firms the startup community in Charlotte is growing with recent expansions coming from AvidXchange who is planning to grow to accommodate 1,200 new employees. This diverse economic landscape allows Charlotte to grow beyond traditional financial services institutions while utilizing the skills of the regions highly skilled workforce.
WIMS Partners
The WIMS team has a robust and expanding presence in Charlotte utilizing the skills of partners. As we continue to grow, we are always looking for new partners and if you believe you can grow with us, we want to hear from you to see if opportunities exist. With the continued growth of WIMS it is exciting to see the city and region around us changing and growing.
Concluding thoughts
Charlotte has established itself as a major economic powerhouse in the Southeast that is seeing increased investment and interest on a regional, national, and international scene. As companies continue their planning for 2020 and beyond, many in the Charlotte region continue to grow towards an even brighter future. The institutions in the city through public private partnerships are investing in the city’s institutions to continue to encourage investment and relocations to Charlotte. By focusing on sustaining growth and creating a better region for the future, Charlotte is positioning itself for long term success moving up the ranking of best places to live as the quality of life in greater Charlotte region continues to improve.
As business has continued growing rapidly for WIMS Consulting, the preexisting business model of leveraging elite independent contractors to assist with client projects has needed to evolve. So, we’ve begun growing more in-house as well in order to focus on enhancing client service by way of emphasizing project management and streamlining operations. Simultaneously, we’re more focused on continuing to grow and take on new challenges as well.
What’s been happening with my company’s EolianVR and Augmented Reality Real Estate (ARRE) either which have been exploding with growth recently too. We’ve landed deals with government entities, major health care companies, and are closing in on major real estate companies from brokers to developers to architects as we’ve refocused on improving development. We’ve also just filed a full patent to further expand on our provisional patent. It’s been an insane year and it’s not even halfway through yet. By the way we’re also hiring (Unity Developers particularly, and front end even more specifically).
Just wanted to take a few moments to update those that may be interested on some of latest developments in our world.
We’ve had Craig Oliver on as a project manager for a while now yet his role is continuing to evolve and grow with experience.
Tom Schaefer, Jr. has been brought on as a strategic partner to head up our business development efforts in both Charlotte and Miami (and beyond).
We’ve got interns Evan Shirreffs and Taisha Johnson who are helping with marketing, CRM, finance, and additional projects as well. Their roles will continue to expand as well heading into the summer.
Further, we’ll soon be announcing new partnerships as they’re formalized within the next month or two with people/firms in Los Angeles/San Diego, Atlanta, and New York in addition to more in Charlotte/Miami to go with our existing ones.
We are committed to working with the best and brightest team to ensure we bring the greatest possible solutions to our clients, maximize the value we bring to them, and to ensure they grow their revenue to unprecedented levels.
ARRE (Augmented Reality Real Estate) recently launched a new website (still in development but the landing page is ready to rock and live). Check it out here.
At ARRE our mission is to help you “Close Faster” by helping you “Streamline Deals from Concept to Capacity.” We provide a complete, firm-branded solution, and act as your partner with a relatively quick on-boarding process, to allow you to begin using augmented reality to accelerate the rate at which you convert your commercial real estate asset into revenue.
Have you seen the ARRE 2.0 Launch Preview Video yet? Let your imagination run wild as you see just the tip of the iceberg of what ARRE can do. The immense collaboration possibilities demonstrated by Debra (the Real Estate Developer), Brock (the Broker), Gena (the General Contractor), and Archie (the architect) alone are incredible. Couple that with the ability to walk prospective tenants through your building before a shovel strikes the ground (whether they’re a local firm, or a company based in Europe, China,, or anywhere else in the world) and you’ll start to see how we’re really onto something that just might disrupt the Commercial Real Estate industry for the better.
ARRE is hardware agnostic, meaning we work with just about any device our clients are using. While we prefer the HoloLens (and soon to launch HoloLens 2), Magic Leap, or the HP Mixed Reality Headset, we also understand that some aren’t quite ready to fully dive into the world of augmented reality and virtual reality just yet. Therefore, we also deploy our tech on web based platforms, as well as the phones/tablets such as the iPhone/iPad.
ARRE includes the hardware, software, setup, support, storage, and ongoing rendering services you need to start using AR to accelerate sales and development within 48 hours from signing up.
Whether you’re a commercial/industrial/mixed use real estate broker, developer, architect, general contractor, engineer, or otherwise let us show you what we can do to help bring you and your company into the future. Visit https://www.augmentedrealityre.com/ or send an email to [email protected] to schedule a demo.
Robin Branstrom has been an art consultant for over eight years, working with both individual collectors and business clients. She was formerly a partner in Robin & Robbins Art Consultants before forming Robin Branstrom Fine Art. Her company primarily operates out of North Carolina (Charlotte and Wilmington) and South Florida (based in Palm Beach) however she often travels around the country for projects (she’s particularly found of New York of course).
Robin Branstrom Fine Art works with both individuals and their private collections, as well as in the corporate section, curating collections for commercial properties and businesses looking to add some culture to their office spaces. She also works with interior designers to find the perfect piece for their client. Events are another specialty of the company, whether they have a fundraising/nonprofit aspect or simply spicing up a corporate networker, adding fine art to the mix is always a hit.
Often times it takes a special eye to find a perfectly curated piece that cohesively fits with their new décor. From Site Review to Installation, Robin Branstrom Fine Art connects the client with high caliber art that suits their living space which often involves the following steps:
Evaluation
We schedule an initial consultation to discuss your project. Our aim is to understand your business, and your budget.
Site Review
We visit the site or review architectural drawings to get a clear understanding of the space and identify potential art locations.
Presentation
We provide a broad selection of art options: paintings, prints, sculpture, works on paper, textiles and photography… as your project requires.
Selection
We work closely with you and your design team to select the art and specify the placement.
Framing
We offer numerous framing, matting and glass options to protect and present your art.
Installation and Lighting
We will expertly and securely install your art with an eye for detail and suggest the correct lumens to bring out the best in your collection.
Documentation
Upon request, we can provide documentation for your collection, including photo images, media descriptions and valuation.
Robin Branstrom Fine Art is continuing to grow and evolve its focus and services. Check out https://www.robinbranstromfineart.com for more information about Robin and her company and to follow along in their journey.
Blanq Commercial Real Estate is a commercial real estate firm specializing in buying, selling, leasing, and Property Management of commercial real estate located in Charlotte, NC, with operations across surrounding counties. They also have expanded to the Research Triangle Park area and opened an office there.
Blanq Real Estate is focused on providing diligent work on every project from the beginning of the transaction through completion. When dealing with commercial real estate projects, Blanq takes a holistic approach to maximize the value and understand the needs of clients. Operating this way serves as a valuable asset in the real estate industry since the ability to connect with clients and understand their needs sets good commercial real estate firms apart from great firms. Blanq combines knowledge and expertise in the commercial real estate industry with a firm foundation including strategic partnerships with vendors and service providers.
Clifford Blanquicet, Jr has created an outstanding reputation for himself. His expertise and diverse experience across a range of different types of real estate holdings allows Blanq to serve clients across different industries handling commercial transactions as they purchase or lease real estate.
From a financial standpoint Blanq provides services which are extremely beneficial to their clients by maximizing the value of each property managed. This is accomplished through a personalized approach where time and energy is spent to ensuring clients’ interests are aligned with the specific location of their real estate holding. The Net Operating Income (NOI) of each property Blanq manages has grown over time through a mixture of findings cost saving measures and leasing vacant spaces to maximize revenues. The ability to focus on measures to cut costs and grow revenues directly relates to the effectiveness of the Blanq team in communicating and responding to clients and strategic partners.
Blanq also offers a shared coworking space called BlanqCanvass CoWork for those looking to looking to have a professional address, professional office, and conference room to meet clients for their business? It’s located right near uptown Charlotte, offers free parking, use of conference room, craft beer and more, it’s what is needed to take your business to the next level.
Over the next several weeks/months we will be releasing in-depth industry outlook guides in order to provide additional value to our audience.
Yes, there are many industry outlooks out there already, most of them created by highly funded teams and experts with lots of resources to leverage. However, because of that, their focus typically remains at a very high and unapproachable level as they try to be relevant to too broad a target audience. Besides, we will be aggregating many of the most well known reports and curating them to extract the insightful, thought-provoking, and most importantly, call-to-action oriented data and trends that help move the needle in your business.
Whether you’re currently working in these industries, are service provides to clients in the space, or simply strive to remain knowledgeable about what lies ahead in the macro-economic environment, we are committed to making sure they provide tremendous value.
The initial roll out will include the following industries:
Healthcare
Commercial Real Estate
Legal
Accounting & Finance
Sports
Technology
Non-Profit
Startups
Each will also include a localized angel from our various locations, including Charlotte, Miami, and Southern California.
As we begin to launch this initiative what would you like to see in such an industry outlook? What would be most relevant to you?
Industry altering advancements in the augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and machine learning space continue to be released at a rapid clip. It’s almost impossible to keep up, even for tech nerds like ourselves. Because of this, the team at Eolian decided it would be worth taking the time to highlight some of the most earth-shattering updates, curate those that are the most relevant in our area of expertise, and even add a little insightful context so you can convert them into action items when appropriate. We’re calling it “The Eolian Report”. This is the first of hopefully many editions and we hope you find tremendous value out of it.
The industry is moving so fast and adoption along with it. It won’t be long before you look around and notice how widespread and rampant AR, VR, AI, and ML use cases are being implemented all around you. Don’t blink or you might get left behind. We would love to convert everyone into believers but for the purpose of this we will do our best to remain objective and hope that the facts and trends will speak for themselves.
Full disclosure: we are also working on developing some incredible applications and have launched a few in our core verticals of military/defense, healthcare, and real estate. So, we may share some of our major milestones as well.
While we are biased on the subject and feel that everyone should at least be exploring the potential implications and use cases for their own businesses we completely understand the delay and skepticism. Because of this we’d love to hear from you all to see where your mindset is on the matter, whether positive or negative. Perhaps you’re a hardcore skeptic. Or maybe you have tried launching an AR strategy and it fell flat or never made it off the ground. Maybe you have been thinking long and hard about it but have yet to pull the trigger. Better yet, hopefully you’ve built and launched a program and it’s been achieving a lot of success and on the way to massive ROI. Either way please reach out and let us know!
-Mike Simmons, CMO
Now without further ado, time to check out some of the latest developments in the space:
General Business
Tesla Patent Application Mentions Augmented Reality Safety Glasses
Healthcare Augmented & Virtual Reality Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecasts 2018–2026
http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4060124
Global Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) in Healthcare Market Extensive Study of Future Value Chain on Regional, Drivers and Technological Advancements Outlook 2018–2027
Technology Innovation in Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market to See Rapid Growth in Coming Year — Leading Players Are Google, Microsoft, Daqri, Psious Industry Analysis
http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4053337/
Commercial Real Estate
With Augmented and Virtual Reality, Tour Your Office Before It’s Built [We have a platform called ARRE (Augmented Reality Real Estate) out that can help you do just this and so much more!]
Landlords Look To Curate Tenant Mix So Companies Can Financially Benefit One Another
The augmented reality and virtual reality company that I’m a co-founder of, EolianVR, (DBA: “Eolian”), recently launched our Augmented Reality Real Estate platform (ARRE) specifically geared toward the commercial real estate industry. ARRE is an end-to-end system, complete with a platform, application, hardware, software, storage, and support that commercial real estate firms need to easily and immediately begin showcasing and visualizing large scale real estate assets in augmented reality.
This is a game-changing breakthrough for the commercial real estate industry as potential clients, investors, partners, and brokers, etc. can take a walk through a skyscraper, or 20 story office building, even before a single shovel (or excavator) strikes the ground. Architects can share their vision, make real-time adjustments, and determine the implications of said changes (i.e. total square foot change of the building, etc.) relatively quickly, in order to make sure a project remains within the necessary specifications, all before the project enters the tangible world.
You don’t like the color of the painting on the walls? We can change that. You prefer the reception desk be on the other side of the lobby? Done. You want to see a sliding glass door entrance to the building rather than revolving ones? You got it, just give it a minute. This is accomplished by leveraging technology such as the Microsoft Hololens, the HTC Vive, along with additional complementary & proprietary AR/VR hardware and software.
One can imagine the cost savings realized from a more efficient and streamlined project timeline. Think about less time-consuming walk throughs, change order processing, a simpler permitting process, along with countless other efficiencies that will be gained. Not to mention 3D building models are now rendered obsolete as in an augmented world, you can make real time digital changes to the building without having to spend thousands of dollars updating the model. How much money is lost (chalked up to customer acquisition/cost of doing business) right now just from things like lost efficiency from shuffling people around to your properties and making changes after they’ve already been built, $5,000, maybe $10,000 or even far more?
Take a moment to imagine something with me:
An investment firm’s key decision makers are sitting around their boardroom table in China while taking a tour of a proposed commercial building in New York, all while being able to make real time recommendations along the way (yes, they have headsets on). If they like what they see, they can then make a real-time offer from across the world. Once agreed the real estate developers can pass along their standard virtual contract, with certain covenants to be determined. While the lawyers review it, an initial deposit (binding or not) can subsequently issued via Bitcoin or another preferred form of crypto-currency (or even good ol’ US dollars if desired via an embedded payment processing application) which is deposited into an escrow account (also embedded in the application). All of this can happen in real-time, and soon enough will be how most large scale business transactions will be conducted. Within the next few years companies will be able to transcend international regulatory and currency barriers and just get down to business with the help of block chain technology. Of course, I’m simply summarizing for brevity’s sake, but things like this are just the beginning.
While the first iteration of ARRE is currently live and operational, subsequent editions and updates are subsequently being perfected as well that will leverage the latest and greatest technology to continue streamlining the commercial real estate industry as well as making it significantly more transparent.
One of Eolian’s core missions and mantra is focused on “Building New Worlds” and the launch of ARRE is certainly going to help us do just that.
About Eolian: Eolian is a software development and marketing production firm capable of conceptualizing and building Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) applications with practical uses in four main industries: Real Estate, Military, Healthcare, Education, and Marketing. Drawing from a combined 30+ years’ experience in software development and marketing, the team develops and deploys applications on the following VR and AR HMDs (Head-Mounted Displays): Microsoft Hololens, HTC Vive, Gear360, PlaystationVR, Google Cardboard, and Meta2 among others. Members of the team have already built applications such as interactive VR tours, interactive VR simulators, room-scale interactive trainings, hologram trainings, and much more. Eolian is also developing additional use-cases for additional industries such as: Travel/Tourism, Events/Venues, Golf Courses/Country Clubs, Action Sports, and Non-profits among others. For more information, please visit www.eolianvr.com.
