More and more every day, you see a new “smart” product, whether it’s a smart watch, smart thermostat, smart… dog collar? Maybe some thing don’t need to be “smart.” Regardless, the connectivity things by the internet is what we call the Internet of Things! Although these innovations are largely viewed as beneficial to us, there are some glaring risks. Want to learn more about the Internet of Things? Tune in now to The Invested Dads Podcast, where Josh & Austin will tell you everything you need to know to understand this trend!
Main Talking Points
[0:38] – What is the Internet of Things?
[5:51] – History of the Internet of Things
[9:03] – Examples of Products Connected to the Internet of Things
[14:24] – How 5G Plays a Role in The Internet of Things
[16:09] – Security and Safety Risks of Having Everything Connected
[23:12] – Your Dad Joke(s) of the Week!
[24:14] – Benefits to Consumers from the Internet of Things
[32:10] – Benefits to Businesses from the Internet of Things
[34:20] – Companies with Exposure to the Internet of Things
Links & Resources
Episode 007: Autonomous Vehicles, Driving Us Into The Future
The Internet of Things (Investopedia)
A Simple Explanation of “The Internet of Things” (Forbes)
What is the Internet of Things? (WIRED)
Social Media
Full Transcript
Intro:
Welcome to The Invested Dads Podcast simplifying financial topics, so that you can take action and make your financial situation better. Helping you to understand the current world of financial planning and investments, here are your hosts, Josh Robb and Austin Wilson.
Austin Wilson:
All right. Hey, hey, hey. Welcome back to The Invested Dads Podcast. Today, we are going to be talking about one of my favorite topics. So, I consider myself relatively tech savvy.
[0:38] – What is the Internet of Things?
Austin Wilson:
So the topic we’re going to be talking about today is the Internet of Things. Josh, what is the Internet of Things?
Josh Robb:
Well, if you ask my grandma, she would probably think you’re talking about Amazon, “Yeah, that’s where I get my things on the internet. That’s where I order them.” But no, the Internet of Things, high level, it’s the connectedness of things or people on the internet. So the Internet of Things, high level, is the communication between items or people, or people to items, and how they interact.
Austin Wilson:
So, is this podcast on the Internet of Things?
Josh Robb:
This podcast is-
Austin Wilson:
It’s part of it.
Josh Robb:
… part of the Internet of Things because there’s data involved.
Austin Wilson:
Boom.
Josh Robb:
So the relation can be a person to person. So, you can use technology to communicate and pass data back and forth, people to things, things to people, or things to things.
Austin Wilson:
Okay. That’s a lot.
Josh Robb:
That’s one where the technology is really has exponential potential in the future. As when things are communicating between each other, that’s where you get that machine learning type of idea, the concept that, okay, now we can innovate without even the human hand on it. So, one machine says, “Hey, you know what? Here’s my data to you.” The next machine says, “Okay, thanks for that data. Now I’m more efficient.” Then together they improve and enhance whatever their role is or their job.
Austin Wilson:
So, there are significant implications for artificial intelligence and they’re building upon the data that’s gathered from this interconnectivity of things?
Josh Robb:
Yep. But when we talk about the Internet of Things from a consumer standpoint, a lot of people think about, okay, for instance, let’s say my alarm clock goes off. It’s a smart alarm clock, so it’s connected. Then it’s connected to my coffeemaker, it says-
Austin Wilson:
See, that’s so smart.
Josh Robb:
… “Hey, the alarm just went off. He’s getting up, start brewing that coffee or else he’s going to come back to bed.” So that’s the connectedness to machines talking to each other. Now for me, it’d be like, “Hey, don’t turn on. He doesn’t drink you,” then it would just go on with life.
Austin Wilson:
Yeah. I still don’t know how you may get to work in the morning, but that’s a whole another story for another day. No coffee for Josh. But looking at it from a consumer perspective, that would be the coolest thing because it was one step in 1989 when Americans got the ability to set their coffee before starting in the next-
Josh Robb:
Yeah. You put all the stuff in and then set alarm, yeah.
Austin Wilson:
But it is going to get to the point where I don’t have to put grounds in there, I don’t have to put water in there.
Josh Robb:
Does it all.
Austin Wilson:
I don’t have to set a timer. It does-
Josh Robb:
You have to drink it. It’ll just go straight it like somehow you’ll absorb it.
Austin Wilson:
Straight in the IV. It’s just going to be automatic.
Josh Robb:
Yep. Then, from there, a lot of people now have smartwatches, all right. So that’s connected to your phone. There’s data transfer there. But what if the smartwatch, through this connectivity, would also be able to communicate with other things for people and say, “All right, I’m running late.” So your smartwatch says, “I know the calendar. I know he’s supposed to be at his meeting, but he’s still walking there. I’ll send a quick text message saying ‘I’m on my way.'” The ability for it to do things based on the data it’s receiving. Or your car, the cars are getting smarter. Your car knows when it needs new oil. It’s like, “All right, not only do I need more oil, but I’m now connected to your calendar. So I’m going to go ahead and book a oil change for you and block that off in your calendar.”
So the idea that this interconnectedness between inanimate objects is really the goal is that it takes that human’s ability in time to have to do all that stuff they’re scheduling for themselves.
Austin Wilson:
I think-
Josh Robb:
Or the fridge, right? I just talked about that, right-
Austin Wilson:
Oh the fridge.
Josh Robb:
… where we were shopping for appliances when we moved into our house, and we were looking at all the cool stuff. In the expensive aisle, before we went to our aisle to actually buy our fridge-
Austin Wilson:
The real world aisle.
Josh Robb:
… you walk down the cool aisle where… I don’t know who buys that stuff. But it’s over there and it’s like, “Okay, here’s one that has a camera on the inside of the fridge and has an app.” So when I’m at the store, I can pull up my app, I can then say, “Okay, I’m looking in my fridge. What am I missing or what’s the low?” Instead of which my process is is to call my wife and say, “Hey, can you look in the fridge and tell me are we almost out of milk?” which is a very annoying process because I do about six times while I’m at the store. She would probably be all in for this technology, so just look for yourself.
Austin Wilson:
Now, when you were shopping for that fridge. If I recall you’re telling me the story, there was a Samsung fridge probably-
Josh Robb:
There was.
Austin Wilson:
… which means that the native app would have been very at home in Josh’s world.
Josh Robb:
That’s right. I don’t know if there’s an iFrigerator.
Austin Wilson:
I don’t know if it was the iFrigerator. Yeah, the Apple hasn’t really jumped into the refrigerator business yet. But I really think of a really cool application, like you mentioned is the connectivity of your phone or your watch or whatever in your car. I drive a car from 2010. When I get in and drive it, I feel like it’s pretty modern until you get an a new car. New cars have crazy apps and technology. You can start it from your phone and all these things. But have we gotten to the point where you can have your phone in your pocket, and you walk up, and your car knows it’s you just by walking up to it because of your phone?
Josh Robb:
I do believe that there are some cars now that use your phone as the unlock and lock app, and the near field can do that, I think.
Austin Wilson:
That’s pretty cool.
Josh Robb:
Now, mine’s a 2011, but it’s also a Jeep-
Austin Wilson:
It’s new, it’s new.
Josh Robb:
But it’s Jeep Wrangler. So, although it’s a newer year-
Austin Wilson:
It’s rugged.
Josh Robb:
… technology wise, I don’t even have automatic mirrors. I have to crank those things up and down.
Austin Wilson:
That’s okay.
[5:51] – History of the “Internet of Things”
Josh Robb:
So, I’m just guessing. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that technology. But long story, that’s the examples of when we talk about the Internet of Things from a consumer standpoint, that’s where it’s at. Forbes had an article, and this was a couple years ago, I believe, but they have an article, we’ll link in the show notes. They’re talking about how this has been around for a while. I know, Austin, we’re going to talk about when it first started this term. But they had a fact that in 2008, so this was… the iPhone came out 2007, I believe.
Austin Wilson:
Yes, I believe so.
Josh Robb:
This was a year after the very first kind of heavily adopted smartphone came out. There was already more things connected to the internet in 2008 than there were people connected to the internet.
Austin Wilson:
That just blows my mind.
Josh Robb:
So, it’s just weird to think that way back then, there was already this.
Austin Wilson:
We didn’t think there were like even that many devices, but there were.
Josh Robb:
Right. There was no Apple Watches out there. There was just the iPhone, a big square block of a phone that did a third of what’s going on now. So, it’s been around for a while. Industries use this a lot. Austin, you can talk about that part of it where it started and why.
Austin Wilson:
Yeah, absolutely. So, it’s really hard to believe but according to Investopedia, and we’ll throw a link in the show notes, too, the term Internet of Things was coined in 1999. That is mind blowing because, first of all-
Josh Robb:
Were you born yet?
Austin Wilson:
I was eight. Thank you very much. But Kevin Ashton-
Josh Robb:
The guy from that 70s show, yep.
Austin Wilson:
Yeah, Ashton Kutcher. Kevin Ashton in an article… he worked at… Where did he work? Procter & Gamble, I think is where he worked at the time. So he wrote an article and he was describing really RFID technology and tagging and supply chains and tracking all that. So that’s like radio frequency identification. That is where that term Internet of Things came from, but it’s such an umbrella term that we use today, when it was actually focused back then on something that we still use a lot today, but it’s so much more than it was back then.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. So, the reason why the RFID was important back then was it’s a way of tracking, radio frequency. So, they’re able to see something from farther away and can use that data.
Austin Wilson:
So, it was like an inventory movement and stuff like that. So first of all, I remember ’99. I know I was young, but I do remember it. That’s when our family got our first computer. It was a Windows computer. It was white and had a huge thick screen. It was running operating system Windows ME.
Josh Robb:
ME, M-E. Yeah.
Austin Wilson:
Windows Millennium Edition. It was cool. So, the joy of the internet in those days, dial up [crazy dial-up sound effects] that was the good stuff. But it’s so funny that we didn’t really have Wi-Fi, but we’re talking about the Internet of Things. But can you imagine all of these devices we’re talking about running around like phone cord.
Josh Robb:
Trying-
Austin Wilson:
You got your smartwatch with a phone cord plugged in.
Josh Robb:
Hang on, I got to seek my watch. That would be bad.
Austin Wilson:
That’s a lot of phone jacks in your house. I would say that’d be a pretty jacked-up house.
Josh Robb:
The long extension as you walk around the house.
Austin Wilson:
That’s pretty jacked up.
Josh Robb:
Jacked up.
Austin Wilson:
So, anyway, Josh, move past my tangent about dial-up internet because those were the good old days, like, “Mom get off the phone. I need to get on the internet.” Those were times. Tell us some examples. We have mentioned some already, but some more examples of Internet of Things items.
[9:03] – Examples of Products Connected to the Internet of Things
Josh Robb:
Yeah. So, there’s things that people wear smartwatches, fitness trackers. Those are all things that people use for their own health and wellness.
Austin Wilson:
Where’s yours today?
Josh Robb:
Yeah. My watch is not on.
Austin Wilson:
You’re not wearing one.
Josh Robb:
It stopped connecting. So my $20 smartwatch that I’ve for about four years now I think-
Austin Wilson:
You got your money’s worth.
Josh Robb:
I got my money’s worth out of it, but it stopped… or it synced, but it wouldn’t charge. So as soon as my battery was out, I could not recharge it.
Austin Wilson:
Did you depreciate it over four years and do just five years of-
Josh Robb:
It was-
Austin Wilson:
… $5 a year of expense?
Josh Robb:
The actual watch head, it’s a normal watch, and I had to replace that battery as well, which was a normal watch battery. So, it still works. I could wear it as a normal watch. It’s no longer smart, it’s dumb now.
Austin Wilson:
Maybe you’ll get a Samsung watch now.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. They’re expensive. Yeah, smart phones, I mean those are connected to a lot of things. Anything you’d see the word smart in front of is a good idea that, that’s probably Internet of Things.
Austin Wilson:
Unless you’re talking about me.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. So, light bulbs is an example that I think are crazy. So, they have smart light bulbs.
Austin Wilson:
They’re called Hue, like the Philips Hue I think.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. That’s their brand and-
Austin Wilson:
They like have colors, and you have a control of an app.
Josh Robb:
Right. Yeah, you have an app. That’s the key is. I’ll get to that in a second. There’s also the hub or the… Google has their home thing, Alexa. There’s-
Austin Wilson:
Apple.
Josh Robb:
Apple has theirs.
Austin Wilson:
Don’t forget Apple Josh.
Josh Robb:
That’s right. That’s the central spot that controls a lot of these, so you can use one app to get to control a bunch of different smart things.
Austin Wilson:
Exactly.
Josh Robb:
The idea is that communicate together. So, for instance, I’d know they sell light bulbs that also have speakers in them, so then they can connect. So, they’re your Bluetooth speakers in the house to your whatever your music device is.
Austin Wilson:
That’s crazy.
Josh Robb:
Or, if I’m on vacation, and I want to turn on and off lights to make it look like I’m home, or if I leave a light on and I’m gone, I could turn off to save energy.
Austin Wilson:
Sometimes you can do that now with security systems with locks, automatic lock from your phone. You can put garage doors up and down. You can set your lights to be on a schedule while you’re away, which is incredible.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. It’s crazy.
Austin Wilson:
I don’t know how we got this way. There’s also thermostats. Thermostats are cool.
Josh Robb:
Thermostats are nice.
Austin Wilson:
We have a Nest. So, this is really funny. So, my wife and I a few years ago bought our house. We love our house. It’s gorgeous and beautiful, and we love it. It is a house that, reportedly, it was built in 1865.
Josh Robb:
Oh, boy.
Austin Wilson:
No duct work, no air conditioning. It’s an old house. We have a boiler for heat and hot water. So we have a Nest smart thermostat, hooked to our Wi-Fi, but no air conditioning-
Josh Robb:
Can’t control anything. It’s just telling you what’s going on.
Austin Wilson:
… and no forced induction heat or whatever. Our smart thermostat, it does work with our boiler, but it’s that’s all it works with. During half the year, it just sits there.
Josh Robb:
It’s just telling you what the temperature is, with no control over changing it.
Austin Wilson:
Yeah, exactly. That’s the smart thermostat. The doorbells-
Josh Robb:
Doorbells are nice.
Austin Wilson:
So, the Ring and I think that does their own.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. There’s a lot.
Austin Wilson:
Doorbell with a camera. It pretty much hooks up to your internet, and you can talk to people. You can, obviously, have a record of who came to your door and all that stuff. My wife showed me this video on Facebook because I’m not on Facebook, because I’m an old man, but she showed me this video that someone she knows, literally, had the recording from their smart doorbell of someone walking up and stealing a snow shovel off their porch.
Josh Robb:
Snow shovel.
Austin Wilson:
That is really desperate.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. I mean I know people have been taking packages when you have a package shipped your house, they’re stealing those.
Austin Wilson:
Yeah. A snow shovel.
Josh Robb:
Snow shovel.
Austin Wilson:
First of all, you might have had to use your snow shovel three times a year.
Josh Robb:
Yeah, maybe.
Austin Wilson:
But who steals a snow shovel? They’re like $10.
Josh Robb:
Yeah, I know, seriously.
Austin Wilson:
It’s not worth the risk. So anyway, that’s my funny side story about the doorbells. There’s other things like, yeah, you’re talking about the smart speakers like Amazon Alexa, all those Google Home things that control all these other things we were talking about. That’s crazy.
But another one is autonomous vehicles. So, we’re not there yet. We had an episode, which we’ll link in the show notes, where we actually talked about specifically autonomous vehicles. We’re headed to the world where your car and my car driving down the roads by themselves, Josh and I are asleep, or are playing like Minecraft on our phones. They talk to each other. So, Josh goes like, “Whoa, bro, Austin’s cars creeping up on me.” My car’s like, “Whoa, you’re creeping up a little bit on Josh’s car.” They talk without even interacting with us. We’re headed there. I think that that’s a pretty interesting feature.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. Again, when we’re talking about communication, we communicate with our cars, whether it’s the idea that we need oil change, so then it syncs to our counter and finds the time to do it, or a car’s communicating with another car, or the car is communicating with the road itself.
Austin Wilson:
Smart roads.
Josh Robb:
Smart roads. So, we’re here in Ohio, and you always had to remind me from Columbus to-
Austin Wilson:
Marysville. Yeah out on 33, I think.
Josh Robb:
… Marysville, there was a grant for them to develop or build this smart road to try to test out this technology. Now with 5G coming out, there’s a lot more ability for communication that way. But the idea would be, like you said, it’s not only am I communicating, “Hey, my car’s getting too close to another car,” the cars communicate. But within the road, it was okay you’re swerving off the road. The dashes or the paint on the road, in a sense, are interacted to the car and communicating, or if they’re slippery or whatever, there’s the communication to go with.
[14:24] – How 5G Plays a Role in The Internet of Things
Austin Wilson:
Now you mentioned 5G. I think that we talked about the slow speed aspect of things a long time ago, but speed is imperative when you’re understanding the Internet of Things, especially, when it comes to safety things. So cars, if a car is to be connected to the internet, whoa. You cannot have latency, what’s called latency, which is the lag.
Josh Robb:
Right. The delay. Yep.
Austin Wilson:
You cannot have lag. So when we get to this point where we’re on the fifth generation of wireless internet really-
Josh Robb:
The fifth generation of G.
Austin Wilson:
The fifth G. When we get there, and speeds are 100 times more than we are now, which I can’t even fathom because I think they’re really fast. That is going to increase safety and allow this to be more scalable in technology that human lives are at risk. So, airplanes, and cars, and all these things.
Josh Robb:
Yep. So one other example before we move on is a bathroom scales.
Austin Wilson:
I don’t use them.
Josh Robb:
Yep. So, I had a regular bathroom scale at home. I would step on, it would tell me how overweight I was. Now, I have a Internet of Things scale. So I can step on, and then it reminds me the whole rest of the day how overweight I am. So that’s the benefit. It can continually tell me how-
Austin Wilson:
Is it like a Fitbit scale?
Josh Robb:
Yeah. The same idea, it’s not a Fitbit one itself because that’s expensive. But the same idea is I have an app.
Austin Wilson:
Went through an app in a phone?
Josh Robb:
Yeah. I have an app. Then the nice thing is then though, when it comes to communication with that app, it can pull a lot more data and then trends. So then, maybe I just had a lot of donuts that day or whatever. You can see that.
Austin Wilson:
Yeah. Put that in a note to explain the spike.
Josh Robb:
That’s right. But the idea there is the connectivity there is available. Along with that, there’s some problems. The biggest one is security right often.
[16:09] – Security and Safety Risks of Having Everything Connected
Austin Wilson:
Yeah, security risks are a real issue when you’re talking about all of these devices being connected and all this information out there. So, if you have a wireless network at home. You shouldn’t really have a password on it. So a lot of people don’t. That’s not good.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. Because unless you live in the country with 160 square miles around you, nobody-
Austin Wilson:
No one, yeah. Who’s sitting your driveway and steal your Wi-Fi.
Josh Robb:
But other than that.
Austin Wilson:
Yeah, if you live in a place with other white… I know at my house, I have neighbors all around me. If I get on my phone and I look at the available Wi-Fis, there are 10.
Josh Robb:
Always like the creative people when they name them, like FBI van.
Austin Wilson:
I know.
Josh Robb:
I think it was in the neighborhood I used to live in Indiana or somewhere, but they had one of the routers name was FBI van. That was creative.
Austin Wilson:
That was really funny. Mine is like the password and the name of it are what came on it, which is really annoying for people because it’s like a really long password or whatever.
Josh Robb:
That’s horrible, yeah.
Austin Wilson:
But anyway, you need to have a password on your Wi-Fi, especially if other people are around because if people can just get on your Wi-Fi, then there are ways where they can access all of these things that are connected to the internet.
Josh Robb:
Anything connected to it. Yep.
Austin Wilson:
That think about like it’s really weird if you have a baby monitor with a camera that’s on the Wi-Fi and you don’t have a security feature on your internet that people can just get on. That’s not cool.
Josh Robb:
Crazy.
Austin Wilson:
We don’t want to do that. So our advice to you, as not security experts, this is just humans. This is general advice.
Josh Robb:
General knowledge.
Austin Wilson:
Please put a password on your Wi-Fi.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. There was an example of that where a couple years ago, there was a bot to tack on some internet servers were actually shut down a lot of the internet for a while. They traced it back to this-
Austin Wilson:
FBI van.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. This virus that used those type of devices that were… What they found when they went backwards and looked at this afterwards was, and these were cameras, so like those infant cameras and just those cameras of people in the houses. They had a password that they came with to protect them when you would try to log in and get to the settings, but no one changed the default password, which anybody that bought it had the same default password. It wasn’t random. It was the “password” or whatever it was. So, they built this virus that then went in and logged into all those.
Austin Wilson:
Anyone who had it. Yeah.
Josh Robb:
Then had each of these devices overwhelm the servers by putting in these requests on the servers that overwhelm them. There’s a whole term for it. I’m not a tech expert. Since it shut down these servers because millions of individual devices were requesting things from it at once.
Austin Wilson:
Wow.
Josh Robb:
This one virus, this one thing got these ton of bots uncontrolled, these cameras, these innocent people didn’t know were being used for this, but because they had the default password still on there, they were then, at that point, unwitting participants in this. So, yeah, please, if you don’t have password put on, if you have a password, that’s just the default-
Austin Wilson:
For a device.
Josh Robb:
… for a device especially, you might want to switch that. Yeah.
Austin Wilson:
Another risk is really safety. So, we just talked about how cars are going to start being able to talk to each other and all of these things. Especially when human lives are at risk, safety is very, very, very key, and the quality standard when it comes to human life is perfection. If there is any opportunity that this technology or this device that’s connected to the Internet of Things, and all talking to these other things, whether that be a car or a medical stuff or whatever, there’s potential that it’s going to fail. Even if it’s pretty minute or it only feels very, very, very rarely, it’s going to be scrutinized like crazy.
So that’s a big risk. The technology is never going to be perfect. But I think that even though we’ve had a lot of advancement in the last 10 years, specifically, we’re still to the point where there’s a lot of room to grow. That’s only going to get better over time.
Josh Robb:
With the risk, those overlap, obviously, just with things being connected, you want to make sure to communicate effectively and efficiently. But then, anything that’s on the internet can be hacked. If our cars are on the internet and we saw this happen is people were trying to disable cars that had this new technology. So, there’s got to be safeguards put in place for that.
Austin Wilson:
That just happened in my show. Designated Survivor on Netflix.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. They hacked it.
Austin Wilson:
Hackers all over the place. They were hacking missiles and-
Josh Robb:
Is that show still on or?
Austin Wilson:
Josh, that’s a touchy subject.
Josh Robb:
All right. I want-
Austin Wilson:
The show has two seasons from ABC, then I got dropped by ABC, got picked up by Netflix. They made a half of a third season, and then dropped it again.
Josh Robb:
What? Half of a third season?
Austin Wilson:
Yeah. I think they made a full season, but it was just a compressed one.
Josh Robb:
Okay. Half of it. Okay.
Austin Wilson:
So, we’re loving it. Don’t get me started. I’m really having Kiefer Sutherland. He’s an awesome guy. So anyway, sidebar again. We have a lot of sidebars.
Josh Robb:
Sides.
Austin Wilson:
That is okay. So, another risk is data. So you, obviously, think of things like Cambridge Analytica with Facebook. You put a lot of data on the internet on your Facebook account. At one point, there was an issue with data privacy and who had access to all of that. Well, all of these devices that we’re talking about contribute data that largely go back to the company who created the product. So, if you think of things like you use Google for everything. Google has-
Josh Robb:
They know everything about me.
Austin Wilson:
… everything. How many times Josh walked to the candy machine? They know how many times.
Josh Robb:
That’s right. Unless I leave my phone, then they don’t know.
Austin Wilson:
Unless you leave your phone, then you’re off the grid.
Josh Robb:
Sneaky.
Austin Wilson:
Anything you use that’s connected to the internet, that data is somewhere. Somebody has the data.
Josh Robb:
They have to disclose that which is why everybody has agreed to those user agreements. Read through it. Read it.
Austin Wilson:
I read every word. I don’t do anything else. That’s all I do is read agreements all the time. No, in reality, all of us just click Agree, scroll down the bottom, check the box and click Agree.
Josh Robb:
I do read 90, 95% of user agreement.
Austin Wilson:
Are you serious?
Josh Robb:
You can ask my wife. She gets so mad at me.
Austin Wilson:
My iPad just-
Josh Robb:
Yeah, iPads make a note. That’s my wife.
Austin Wilson:
Heard me say Siri.
Josh Robb:
Oh! Are you Siri-ous?
Austin Wilson:
Yeah. You actually do-
Josh Robb:
I try to, if I’m signing an agreement, to read through it.
Austin Wilson:
Josh, no wonder you don’t get anything done.
Josh Robb:
I know. I am one of those people that when you’re standing in line and they agree to this and I’m like scrolling through it. Stop scrolling!
Austin Wilson:
I really said that as a joke because I honestly thought no one read that stuff. So, imagine-
Josh Robb:
Warranties, oh, man!
Austin Wilson:
… You just moved. You read every page of that mortgage document when you closed on your birth?
Josh Robb:
Yeah. Yep.
Austin Wilson:
Oh, my goodness. Well, now we know, Josh, you need help.
Josh Robb:
I do, I do. But guess what? I know where my dad is going.
Austin Wilson:
That’s true.
Josh Robb:
I do know where my dad is.
Austin Wilson:
That’s true. Well, in light of you needing help. I’m going to help-
Josh Robb:
Yes. I sent it to Google because they’re very good. They’re good at what they do.
[23:12] – Your Dad Joke(s) of the Week!
Austin Wilson:
In light of you needing help, I’m going to help you out. I’m making you laugh today, Josh. The dad joke of the week comes in jokes of three.
Josh Robb:
Jokes of three.
Austin Wilson:
I marked two pages. There’s multiple series, Josh.
Josh Robb:
Ready.
Austin Wilson:
Why should you never call someone average?
Josh Robb:
Why is that?
Austin Wilson:
Because it’s mean.
Josh Robb:
Mean.
Austin Wilson:
All right, number two. Why do you call a lot of killer whale… Nope, nope, nope, nope. No.
Josh Robb:
He said the answer.
Austin Wilson:
No, I did not.
Josh Robb:
Okay. You can start over.
Austin Wilson:
What do you call a lot of killer whales playing musical instruments?
Josh Robb:
Go ahead.
Austin Wilson:
An orchestra.
Josh Robb:
I was going to say that, but I don’t like to take your thunder.
Austin Wilson:
Okay. Here’s a good one. Why did the dad spider tell his son to go outside and play?
Josh Robb:
Why did he?
Austin Wilson:
Because he was spending too much time on the web. That’s actually kind of timely considering the episode.
Josh Robb:
That is good one. Times in with this one. That’s good.
[24:14] – Benefits to Consumers from the Internet of Things
Austin Wilson:
Internet of Things web. Josh, what are the benefits to consumers of the Internet of Things?
Josh Robb:
You just mentioned one of the potential problems is the data. That’s also benefit because there is a lot of data. If it’s used for the right reasons and use effectively, that is a benefit. So, medical is a good example of that. Data. The medical information that I need to have transmitted quickly and efficiently when I need care can be done through the Internet of Things.
So if I have a monitor hooked up, so you have a watch, an Apple watch that has that cool heartbeat thing, and it can tell you weird things going on with your body. The new Apple Watch does that.
Austin Wilson:
Well, it freaks me out sometimes, yeah.
Josh Robb:
Yeah, it’s crazy. But that data can be useful because it could say, hey, there’s something wrong with you. You need to get that checked out.
Austin Wilson:
It has actually saved lives already. That technology is only getting used more.
Josh Robb:
Right. So, those things are there and think about within the hospital. Monitors, those type of things that can be hooked up, and then that data can be sent to the right people and the right machines to interpret what needs to be done. So, in that case it’s huge.
Austin Wilson:
That’s why a doctor can just walk around with an iPad and be like, “Oh, I’m in Josh’s room. Boom, click it. I can see everything or I get an alert when Josh’s blood sugar goes up because he ate too many doughnuts that was not allowed in the hospital.
Josh Robb:
I sneak them in.
Austin Wilson:
You snuck them in.
Josh Robb:
So, that’s the big one. So data is not bad if it’s used efficiently correctly. So, if I’m consenting to give my medical data for a reason, then it could be to my benefit. Cost saving. So, if there is data being shared, there is less than needs to be realized and learned over and over again so they can be more efficient.
Austin Wilson:
True.
Josh Robb:
I was actually, just this morning, at a event that the local college was putting on about insurance. They were talking about some of that new technology where you plug it in your car, or you have an app on your phone where it tracks your driving abilities, or your driving record-
Austin Wilson:
Or disability.
Josh Robb:
… or disability. The idea there though was cost savings. They give you a discount if you’re efficient at driving. They don’t know that without the data. I could call them up and say, “Hey, I’m a very good driver.”
Austin Wilson:
I’m a very good driver.
Josh Robb:
“Give me a discount, please. I promise you I’m really good.” They want the data. But then on top of that, the insurance company can then take that larger data from a bunch of people and say, “Okay, here’s the age bracket, the type of people that are the safest or had the least amount of claims. You have to target them.”
Austin Wilson:
When driving is safer and not safer, and yada, yada.”
Josh Robb:
Yeah. We’ll add that to our actuarial tables because we don’t want to lose money nor do we want to go out of business, so we need to know how we’re pricing different insurance amount. So, the data there again saves money. Tailored options. The idea there is, if they store data, next time I’m somewhere, that data can be useful to make my experience more efficient and better for me.
Austin Wilson:
Well, on something, one thing that is evident in is, specifically, like a grocery store. So, I know like Kroger, if you go to Kroger and you have your Kroger Plus card. That’s how they track you. You buy all your stuff, you scan your Kroger Plus card, you check out, you’re good to go. The next time you go, or even right there, they’ll print off tickets for coupons, or they’ll mail you tickets for coupons of stuff that you buy all the time. That’s Internet of Things right here.
Josh Robb:
Yep. Then, again with my integration, my phone knows where I go, then it can make suggestions, “Hey, if you like that place, here’s another spot you may like.” So, they can make it tailored to my experience. So if I’m in a new city, traveling, “Hey, because you like these things, check these places out. You may like it.”
Austin Wilson:
I actually read that McDonald’s is working on drive thru technology, where there are license plate scanners in the drive-thru. It will recognize if you’ve come in before what you’ve ordered and they’re working on technology and a platform that then gives you suggestions on what to order on the screen menu and stuff like that.
Josh Robb:
Wow! So in a sense, your plate tells them what to put on the plate.
Austin Wilson:
Exactly.
Josh Robb:
Wow, interesting.
Austin Wilson:
Now, I wonder how that works. So, I am a bad citizen and don’t have a front license plate. So, it would be like-
Josh Robb:
July, June. At June, you’re a normal citizen again.
Austin Wilson:
I know. I’m a normal citizen, but now, I’m illegal. So anyway, I wonder if that would not give me my recommendation for my McGriddle. I like sausage egg and cheese McGriddle with, I want the hash brown on the sandwich.
Josh Robb:
They do that?
Austin Wilson:
They will, if you ask.
Josh Robb:
Oh, wow!
Austin Wilson:
I usually have to do it myself. It would recognize that, that’s what Austin’s getting. Oh, so good.
Josh Robb:
On top of that, adding to that, it’s convenient, right?
Austin Wilson:
Yeah.
Josh Robb:
So, if it remembers what I did is convenient then, so going back to your grocery store, especially as this technology advances, if my phone has my credit card tied to it, you can now pay using your phone. It knows my history of shopping when I get in there it’s like, “Hey, look at this. Look at what we’re doing.” It starts adding to your shopping list, what you need. The convenience of not having to track it.
Austin Wilson:
Amazon is working out preliminary cashier-less grocery store in big cities or just other stores.
Josh Robb:
Yep. Fill up your things, walk on out.
Austin Wilson:
But, yeah, you walk in, and they know based on whatever device you’re carrying or whatever you’ve… Maybe you scan your phone at the door, that who you are, and then there are probably some RFID tag on every piece of whatever on the store. So when you walk out, it knows that you walked out with it.
Josh Robb:
Totals it up.
Austin Wilson:
Charges you automatically. You don’t interact with a thing. You walk in, you grab a basket, and you fill up your stuff, and you walk out and go home. So, we’re headed there, which is also going to save companies money on having to employ less people, so they can probably just inflate their profits, which as shareholders, that’s really good.
Josh Robb:
There you go. The last benefit is traffic efficiency. So you think to, like we talked, about autonomous vehicles, but just the communication of not even vehicles, but my phone. So, going back to I use Google Maps for traveling because it’s the best map app out there.
Austin Wilson:
It’s not.
Josh Robb:
The Apple Maps has some problems.
Austin Wilson:
Not anymore. They fixed it?
Josh Robb:
They fixed it because they use Google Maps in the underlying.
Austin Wilson:
They redid the whole thing. I think they do.
Josh Robb:
Yeah, they did.
Austin Wilson:
Why mess with something if it’s not broke?
Josh Robb:
Either way, I get live up-to-date traffic. So, does a lot of the other navigation. But the concept there is that’s the communication, that’s the apps. So Waze is the other one. There’s a lot of ones out there that say, “Okay, anybody using that app, we will track your speed. If you’re not doing the speed limit, there’s probably a reason unless you’re just some old grandma driving slow.”
Austin Wilson:
They show it red as congested on your map.
Josh Robb:
Yep. So, the efficiency then is people behind me say, “Hey, let me reroute you to avoid this,” and then rerouting you fixes that problem sooner that had everybody kept falling into then pushing that delay backwards. It’s not only more efficient for me as a person, coming up to that, but people down the road 20 minutes behind me will have less of an impact because of people being diverted away. There you go.
Austin Wilson:
So, I think there’s a lot of opportunity in bigger cities. So we live in Findlay, and we do not have a traffic problem. It’s very-
Josh Robb:
Christmastime we do. It’s horrible
Austin Wilson:
Tiffin Avenue can get a little backed up.
Josh Robb:
10 minutes. 10 minutes to get across town. Mad!
Austin Wilson:
Yeah. It’s not that bad. But I think of the opportunity for bigger cities where there’s serious traffic issues, where specifically with traffic lights and stuff like that, machine learning can help all of these traffic lights talk and feed a database full of data of when all these cars come, when the traffic lights need to be on and off for certain streets and who’s making driving where.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. Or even making some one-way. So, I know cities do that during certain events. A two-way street becomes a one-way street because of the need for traffic flow. But if that was all done through communication of things, then you could make that a little more efficient.
Austin Wilson:
Exactly. So, what about-
Josh Robb:
If your cars know, you’re not going to have somebody accidentally going down the wrong way because it knows how to do that.
Austin Wilson:
We don’t want to go the wrong way and on one way.
Josh Robb:
Nope.
[32:10] – Benefits to Business from the Internet of Things
Austin Wilson:
Bad news for everyone. So, what are the benefits to business?
Josh Robb:
Well, the big one is data, obviously.
Austin Wilson:
Data.
Josh Robb:
Data. Data?
Austin Wilson:
Data. Data.
Josh Robb:
Data. Whatever. Whichever A sounds better to you.
Austin Wilson:
Yeah.
Josh Robb:
So, data-
Austin Wilson:
Data.
Josh Robb:
… is more valuable to them than most other things because not only does that tell them what their current customers doing, but it helps them plan for growing their market share and getting new customers.
Austin Wilson:
Data equals money.
Josh Robb:
Data equals money, so does data. So, they both equal money. The idea there is I will be willing to go back to those insurance companies. I’ll be willing to give you a discount for using my app because guess what I get? All that valuable data on you. And so-
Austin Wilson:
The math has to work out in favor of the company. The company is not going to offer a “discount” on a podcast. I hope to do that.
Josh Robb:
Yep, it’s all that.
Austin Wilson:
It’s not going to offer a discount. If it’s not going to more than make up for that, that wouldn’t make any sense to do that.
Josh Robb:
Right. Yep. Then the other thing is logistics. If I have the communication, I have the ability to better streamline how I get things from point A to point B. So, not only do I have more efficient, but I can track. So if something goes wrong, and my customer is calling and saying, “Where’s my stuff?” I can tell them exactly where it is and tell them when it’s going to get there. There’s no longer, “Well, I don’t know. It disappeared in shipping. I don’t know. I lost.” You say, “I know where it is.”
Austin Wilson:
Unless you’re delivering donuts, those get lost.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. When there’s just delivery charges involved. So those are the big benefits for business. But the other benefit for them is, as things advance and there’s more connectivity, you could have something that becomes essential. So, if all my things to my house to communicate, that central hub, whatever that is, becomes pretty efficient at doing that. I don’t want to switch from that. I don’t want to start all over. So, as things get more integrated, that network, so you go back to Apple, everything in Apple likes to communicate with each other. I don’t want to leave that network of things-
Austin Wilson:
They called it a sticky ecosystem.
Josh Robb:
Right. For a business, if you can be that stickiness, then, man, I’m going to not only get customers, I want to keep customers.
Austin Wilson:
Yep. That is good. That is profit in the future.
[34:20] – Companies with Exposure to the Internet of Things
Josh Robb:
Yep. So, Austin, research. What do we got? What do we got going on in the research side of things?
Austin Wilson:
Yeah. This is what I do. So, first of all, Josh and I are both going to plead that this is not investment recommendation in any way, shape, or form. That anything I say can and should be discussed with your financial advisor to see how it fits your financial plan.
Josh Robb:
But we’re just talking companies that are participating in this with no-
Austin Wilson:
These are not even saying these are great companies or great investments. These are companies that are in this space that have exposure to the Internet of Things. So, a couple of them are, first of all, two Chinese companies. So, number one, Alibaba. It’s similar to an Amazon over in China. Huge company, tech company. They created an industrial Internet of Things operating system. There’s a lot of business to be done in China. So, that is one opportunity. JD.com is another. It’s another Chinese e-commerce company. They have Internet of Things retail projects going on. So, specifically with retailers in China.
So, those are two Chinese companies, but then some European or American companies that you might be more familiar with. So, think about shipping and logistics. We talked about how that might impact that. So, companies like DHL. So I think that’s German. The logistics company. They’re yellow and red.
Yeah. UPS and FedEx, same kind of idea, shipping and logistics. SAP, German ERP company, Enterprise Resource Planner. Big into the Internet of Things there. Just tying everything together and keeping it all on the same page. General Electric is working on some Internet of Things projects. Some tech companies that we’re familiar with here in the States, Dell, Cisco, Amazon. 5G company working on 5G things like AT&T and Verizon. Thinking about how that speed is going to help the connectivity of devices. Google and Intel and Microsoft, those are obviously all tech companies working on connected devices and systems that work together. Salesforce is another one with their… They’re working on their own client relationship management and stuff like that. That is all tied together.
Another one, the one that’s one of my favorites is a small-cap company called Manhattan Associates based out of Atlanta, Georgia. They work on logistics and supply chain,, omni-channel is the term they use where it’s in your store, it’s in your warehouse, it’s in your factory. It’s all tied together, where things are in the process and inventory and all of those things. It’s a pretty cool thing. So that’s definitely all Internet of Things related. You could also make discussions that for GM, Tesla. Those car companies are all involved in this as well. So those are some specific companies in the space.
Josh Robb:
Or, like we mentioned, Samsung with that refrigerator, right?
Austin Wilson:
Samsung, Apple. Didn’t even say that?
Josh Robb:
Yep.
Austin Wilson:
But yeah, these companies, very tied to the Internet of Things, but there is a specific, and this is not a sponsored podcast, in any way. But there’s a specific Internet of Things ETF. So exchange-traded fund. The ticker is SNSR. That is the Global X Internet of Things ETF.
Josh Robb:
Okay. I’ve talked in the past about ETFs are newer. So, there’s not a lot of them out there from relative to mutual funds.
Austin Wilson:
They’re gaining.
Josh Robb:
They are. But my point being, naming those things because your ticker, the symbol, there’s a lot of room out there. I think if you’re the Internet of Things ETF, you could have gone a lot of ways with that.
Austin Wilson:
I know. I put this together earlier today. I just now put together that that stands for sensor.
Josh Robb:
Yeah. But sensor, I mean-
Austin Wilson:
Sensor, Internet of Things.
Josh Robb:
… have a lot of cool stuff.
Austin Wilson:
You could have IoT, something IoT would be nice. So, opportunity for the future. Maybe we’ll start our own.
Josh Robb:
I wish. I’m just going to start a business of naming things. Just tell me your company-
Austin Wilson:
It was like we just talked about. It’s domain flipping.
Josh Robb:
It is.
Austin Wilson:
But it’s ticker flipping.
Josh Robb:
Ticker flipping.
Austin Wilson:
You just claim it and name it.
Josh Robb:
Yep. So, again, there’s a lot out there. If this type of investment is appealing to you, again, talk to your advisor about how that fits, again, when we’re mentioning investments especially companies, owning an individual company, you want to do your research first to make sure they’re a good fit. But the idea is, there’s a lot of companies out there that you may not think as tech companies, but that based on the products they are involved in the Internet of Things. I mentioned insurance companies based on those products.
Austin Wilson:
Yeah, that’s true.
Josh Robb:
They’re an Internet of Thing based on that product or the app that they want you to use. Now, they do not fall on the tech category.
Austin Wilson:
I mean, banks, even. Same thing. So, then we’re mentioning all of these companies, Apple and banks and insurance. I’m like, “That’s Berkshire.”
Josh Robb:
Yeah. They have everything. Yeah. Going back, there’s a lot going on there. Again, this is not a new technology, all back to 1999. Even before that, things were connected. It’s more like the Al Gore of things because he invented this to begin with.
Austin Wilson:
He invented the internet, right?
Josh Robb:
Overall, we think this is something that’s going to be around for a while, and it’s just going to grow.
Austin Wilson:
It’s evolving, for sure. Yeah.
Josh Robb:
More and more things connect. Then the debate is what all needs to be connected? I saw on one article I was reading, they were talking about smart dog collars. Okay, great. Do I really need that? Maybe 20 years from now, everybody will say, “Yes, we definitely need that.” Who knows? There’s a lot of things that maybe don’t need to be smart. They can stay dumb and still be okay.
Austin Wilson:
Like me.
Josh Robb:
Yep. So, check out our free gift to you online. Go to TheInvestedDads.com. We have a brief list of Eight Times Principles for Investing. It’s a free gift to you. It’s just something we put out there to help you out. Check it out as free. Also, Austin, what can they do to help us on our podcast?
Austin Wilson:
Yeah. We would love for you to help us grow this podcast and keep pushing out new content every week to you to help lots of people. But we need your help. So, number one, what you could do is subscribe, if you haven’t already. We would just love for you to listen every single week when we put these episodes out every Thursday morning. Also, you can leave us a review on Apple Podcast if you’re on that platform. We would really value and appreciate that. If you want to hear anything specific, talked about, or have a question about something you’ve heard, do not hesitate to email us at hello at theinvesteddads.com, and we would love to hear from you, take your advice and answer some questions, if you have those. Also, if you really found this episode informative, don’t hesitate to share it with someone whom you feel would enjoy it, friends, family, whatever that may be. So, yeah, thanks for being here.
Josh Robb:
And challenged, share it using some sort of connected Internet of Things thing.
Austin Wilson:
Probably like your phone..
Josh Robb:
Yeah. It really is what it is. Yeah.
Austin Wilson:
So in case you missed it, check out our recent episode where we discussed market volatility.
Josh Robb:
Up and down.
Austin Wilson:
Up and down. Thanks, bye.
Josh Robb:
Talk to you later.
Outro:
Thank you for listening to The Invested Dads Podcast. This episode has ended, but your journey towards a better financial future doesn’t have to. Head over to theinvesteddads.com to access all the links and resources mentioned in today’s show. If you enjoyed this episode, and we had a positive impact on your life, leave us a review. Click Subscribe and don’t miss the next episode.
Josh Robb and Austin Wilson work for Hixon Zuercher Capital Management. All opinions expressed by Josh, Austin, or any podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Hixon Zuercher Capital Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions. Clients of Hixon Zuercher Capital Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. There is no guarantee that the statements, opinions, or forecasts provided herein will prove to be correct.
Past performance may not be indicative of future results. Indices are not available for direct investment. Any investor who attempts to mimic the performance of an index would incur fees and expenses, which would reduce returns. Securities investing involves risk, including the potential for loss of principal. There is no assurance that any investment plan or strategy will be successful.
