Transcript of The Investor Betting on AI to Protect Students in Schools – Justin Freishtat Explains

Welcome to the LevelUp podcast. I'm your host, Paul Alex. I went from being a cop to an eight-figure entrepreneur that helps average people like you and me make money every single day. I created this podcast to help you get motivated and to crush your goals. Let's win together. Remember, I have your six. Get ready to LevelUp right now. Hey, guys. Welcome back to the LevelUp podcast. This is Paul Alex. And today we have another phenomenal interview, guys. You know what I just know, we always drop these badass interviews every single Saturday here on the number one business podcast on Apple podcast, guys. Now, I'm going to be interviewing a former door-to-door salesman turned investor. Now, this man has gone ahead and actually helped scale companies to over eight figures. That's right. All right. I'm giving you guys some sauce. All right. All right, guys. So with that being said, Justin, give him the intro, brother.

Oh, man. What's the intro? I guess the intro is a kid that just couldn't find his place in the world. College drop out. Checked zero boxes in terms of what life's supposed to look like when they tell you what success looks like growing up. And, yeah, and door to door sales saved my life. And then it was off to the races from there and just always had that chip on my shoulder of the road less traveled and being able to do things that other people just make excuses. That's pretty much what it is.

No, exactly. So let's start from the home of beginnings, man, before you got into entrepreneurship. You were in door to door or sales for about 10 years. Tell us a little bit about that. What was the foundations, the core values that you learned from door-to-door sales, man, that led you to become an investor, to lead you to become an investor in an AI company, and to go in ahead and scaling these other companies as well?

Yeah, I think you build the resilience, the skills that are required to go do bigger things. It's easy in hindsight. A lot of the content we see on social media is people that are further along in the journey, giving their perspective at that point. But in the beginning, you're going to have to grind something out really hard, work relentlessly hard to become the person that can even go work smarter. This whole work smarter, not harder. You got to go hard first to even be qualified to work smarter. So I think door to door sales will teach you that more than anything else.

And what were you selling when you were going door to door?

I've sold cutlery, cookware, water systems, air purifiers, mattresses, freezers, grills. I mean, all kinds of consumer products. And it It was an organic food delivery company, but the appliances were where we made the margin in the business. So it was just add-ons. What other health products do you need in addition to the food?

So basically upsells that you were able to go ahead and you see an opportunity, you're like, Hey, by the way, let me hook you up with this, right? No, I get it, man. That's good. So go ahead. Tell us about the latest venture that you're in, dude. And I know we're going to be talking about this, especially for anybody that's looking into anything related to AI. All right, this is for you. So tell me the story behind Safe Space Global, dude, and how it's pivoting from healthcare tech to AI-powered safety.

Yeah. So CEO and founder, Scott Boroff. He's also my partner in the private side, Pitch Equity. That's our private equity fund. But he had a vision back in 2016. He wanted to go into senior health care facilities and get rid of the There was a big problem with elopements. So a dementia patient, let's say, cuts off their Wandergard bracelet because they don't know why they're wearing it. They get out of the facility, get hit by a car or something, and a life is lost. Or these senior care facilities will be extremely understaffed, and maybe grandma falls, breaks her hip, and nobody knows for eight hours. So the idea was we're going to use ambient technology, which is cameras, and integrate AI software that can detect a fall Or let's say, use bio facial recognition to say, this person should not be able to go through the store and lock it or open it because it's a nurse versus a patient. So that's what it started from. And that's why it was called healthcare integrated technologies because it was a healthcare use. And then just recently, we got approved by FINTRA to change the stock symbol and the name to Safe Space because the tech has evolved to work in so many different verticals, from schools, prisons, transit authorities, really any public space where a camera can use AI to make that space safer.

Yeah. No, that makes sense, man. So what's your guys' vetting process when investing in emerging tech like Safe Space, MBO, AI? What made this opportunity a, how you could say, a level up moment for your portfolio.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, for me, coming into this company, because I'm a capital raiser, fund manager, I'm looking for competitive advantages. In the safe space example, It's really the team. In an early-stage startup, which I would still consider the company early-stage, somewhat pre-revenue because we're public, can't tell you what will be coming out in the Q10s. But at that stage, you're betting on the team. And when you have people that were executives at Google that are leaving Google to come to the company that have cushy seven-figure jobs, and they want to go to a startup, that tells you something. When your CFO has gone public four times, your CEO has done it four times, these are people that you want to bet on. So for me, having nothing to do with the fact that AI SaaS is also the best multiple you'll get in a public market. Absolutely. Everything just stars aligned. So it's super new. And when you look at the development side, nobody has more than three years experience in development with this. So it really is the Wild West. It's a space race with AI, and I think we have the right team to win that race.

No, absolutely. I mean, you guys look like you guys are heavily staffed. Raft, man. So it's a good thing, and success love speed. So you guys are on it. I love that. So let's talk about scale. Safe Space now operates across sectors like education, transportation, and prisons, right? How do you How do you see this diversified model helping future proof the business?

Future proof? Yeah, I think it's the back to the space race. It's the mass adoption of this. I think we won't be the only player. Securing patents is pretty important. One of the big Mag sevens has already tried to buy us just based off the patent because the tech has got to be developed, and there's going to be more and more tech development. So, yeah, it's really cutting edge stuff. And I think there'll be a bunch of players that are doing this. Some people will dominate the auto industry. Some will dominate prisons or whatever. There's plenty of space. The addressable market here is just massive. So I don't think we'll be the only ones.

No, absolutely. And it's just like any other industry, right? You're always going to have competitors. People are always going to say, oh, it's already done. It's saturated. It doesn't matter when you start. But is there a certain section that you guys want to dominate?

Yeah, I think Schools is probably the most passionate one for us. We're a Tennessee-based company. Marsha Blackburn has very close ties with our President. They come from the same company where he was the CEO of that nine-figure business. And we were on Capitol Hill a few weeks ago, We're talking with Marsha, and she's in charge of this Safe School bill that passed. There was a ton of government funding to make schools safer. So we're leveraging those relationships. We met with Cash Patel, Dr. Oz. Dr. Oz, by the way, has a $2 It's a billion dollar budget. It's double the budget of the military. So they only solve billion dollar plus problems. We're trying to solve billion dollar plus problems, or we will solve billion dollar plus problems. That's what I'm talking about. So, yeah, that's where we are. I think the school thing also hits Home for Everyone. If you can be the company that stops school shootings in the United States, that would be quite the thing to put on your resume.

Dude, it's a game changer, dude, because I remember as a kid, the first school shooting that ever happened. And ever since then, how many more dozens, if not hundreds, of school shootings has there been? So if you guys are able to stop that problem, man, that's massive.

We had our entire team at a lodge in In the sticks of Tennessee. And the day we were driving there, there was a school shooting down the street. And the person who did it was in the parking lot for 16 minutes with the gun brandished. And if our AI had been on the facility, it would have seen it. It would have taken a video, sent it to the school resource officer. It can lock down the school before the shooter can get in. It would have never happened. So that's, I think, the immediate priority.

That's huge, man. I know there's going to be a lot of Americans that are going to want to invest into this as soon as it's out there in the stock market, man.

It's already out there. It's already public.

Well, there you guys go. If you guys are looking for a stock to invest to, right? Okay, so Safe Space has a panet. It's an MBO AI system. Can you break down what makes that tech so unique and valuable in today's AI Gold Rush?

Yeah, the tech side is really complicated. I should have the CFO or the CTO here to do that. But I didn't know this. In India, they rank all the developers from one to the end of the thousands. It's like a competition thing. So we have, I believe it's number 34 and number 130.

Out of how many?

Hundreds of thousands. That's amazing. So we have two of the smartest developers in the world on the tech side. Our CTO already sold a business for a billion and a half, a tech company. So he's just running his playbook again, hiring tons and tons of developers and putting it together. So they're applying for patents left and right. I can't even keep track of it because it's such a rapid acceleration of adoption with AI. It's moving so quickly.

Wow. That's amazing, man. So let's talk I love this, man. I want to dive in a little bit more into mindset and leadership. I'm big on that, dude, especially come from law enforcement. So how do you lead through uncertainty, dude, both as an entrepreneur and an investor.

I've always been a lead by example type of human. I love that. I shouldn't have to convince you to show up the way you should, but I would never expect you to show up in a way that I won't. So I've always led from the front. I do a whole lot more than what I say. I think it's really important. And then as you get bigger, there's going to be certain skill sets where you got to insert a leader to take the role of something that you just don't have the skill set on. So It's a combination of leading from the front, but also knowing where you suck and putting the right person in that seat and just having no ego about it all.

Brother, man, you are preaching to the choir right now, man. This is my brother from another mother. I'm just saying, I always say that? I'm a visionary guy, man. I'm a startup guy. Other than that, I don't like management. If you were to be like, Hey, Paul, what about the finances? Let me hire a CFO. Let me hire somebody that has the education on that, right? So no, I got you on that, brother. So Okay. What lessons from hedge fund management, or you can even use your experience from doing door-to-door sales, that's helped you lead teams or back startups like this one?

Number one thing I learned from door-to-door sales was the vehicles everything. We had a small margin product. So in a way, the business was somewhat flawed in terms of how we could scale it, because how am I going to recruit top Top door-to-door salespeople that can go to a roofing company or a solar company and make double the commissions that I can pay in the food industry? Yeah, you're right. So I think it was a blessing in disguise, battling through how tough it was to make a very low-margin business work where you could be doing 10 million in sales and barely making any money. So I took all those lessons and said, Okay, what I do next is going to be monster margins, recurring revenue. We're going to do this work once and get paid forever. All these different things that you learn for the future business that you're going to do. So for me, it was there's nothing better than the money world. There's no bigger margins than the capital world, public markets. We just moved our market cap $100 million in a week, and it didn't cost very much to do it. So that's a huge change from working six months door to door, driving 50,000 miles a year to do a million in sales.

Path of least resistance, my friend. I love it. Okay, so let's go ahead and talk about impact, man. Love it a podcast. It has a lot to do with self-help, helping others and their mindset, and impacting the world, dude. That's what it's about, right? It's entrepreneurs. What fulfills you, dude? How you guys are trying to go ahead and secure all the schools in America. I think it's phenomenal. So let's talk about Safe Space Now has reached in the US, Singapore, India, and Europe, okay? The global vision for the in the next three to five years, what do you think and how are you structuring the leadership to meet that demand or that your team is?

Yeah. So we're opening up offices all over the world. And Theo Davies is leading the global expansion. He did it at Google. Nobody better to do it. So, yeah, it's just putting all the right people in the right seats, having the right products to implement, and modeling things correctly where you can handle the scale. Fulfilling at a high level is It's different than small business that hits these breakpoints and the systems fail. So when you have people that have gone to billion dollar unicorns before and they know how to implement those systems, it's incredible to me to watch some of the confidence and just how It's simple, it seems for them. And the vision is so clear because they've done it before. It's hard to explain when it's like watching this thing come together. And CEO Scott is like, Yeah, $10 stock price, billion dollar unicorn, three to five years max, just 100 % sure it's going to happen.

It's that level of confidence, man. And I feel once you do it once, you could do it again and again and again. It's almost like we were talking about entrepreneurs. Sometimes some entrepreneurs, they lose their shirt, and then they gain it all back, and then they lose it again. But they know how to gain it back, right? So it's good, man. Skillset. I love it.

I used to feel bad when I would see people take big Ls until I took my first huge L. Now it's like, I wish it upon you. I wish it upon all of you. If you haven't had that just face in your hands moment overnight crying, not sure if you're going to make it. If you've never been there, you're not trying hard enough, and you got to go through it.

I'm going to tell you something, dude. I'm pretty sure if you guys even want to see me at this state of the game. This was in the very beginning when I started this podcast, And in the very beginning of this podcast, it was early 2024. I started with just the vision of going ahead and providing value. That's it, dude. I didn't want to monetize this podcast. I didn't want to do any of that. I was running three companies at the same time. Hired two CROs, a CEO. All at the same time, dude, I had one of the CROs take six figures in cash from one of the businesses. I had the other CRO almost bankrupt one of the businesses. Dude, I was in depression, and I gained 40 pounds. It was crazy, right? And I remember I was interviewing somebody, and I was just like, Bro, you guys never want to be the founder. You guys never want to be a CEO. Stick to sales. Because you don't got to deal with the problem, dude. You're not taking the liability. So But with that being said, I had to go through that. I had to go through that to find myself, dude, because if I never would have done that, number one, never would have focused on my health.

Realistically, dude, I was making money, and I was happy, and all that. I was eating, dude. I was just like, whatever. I don't need to be fit. Dude, saved my life. Saved my life. 42 pounds lighter now, like in six months, dude, which is amazing, right? You work out, dude. So health is wealth. It's being successful in every aspect of your life, right? Your values, what you believe in, your health, your mind, everything, dude. I'm a big believer in that. So let's continue to talk about global expansion, bro, because this is some exciting stuff. You're getting me pumped up about this. I love this. What do real-world results look like, dude, for Safe Space?

Real-world results? It's big contract. It's getting... Because it's a per camera model, very AI, SaaS model.

So recurring monthly. Are you guys going to have it for just massive corporate accounts? Are you guys Are you guys thinking of actually if you guys and when you guys dominate that area? Because I don't say maybe, I say will. Are you guys thinking of actually expanding probably to residential as well, for home use?

Yeah, I would think so. Definitely with the fall tech on the health care side, I can definitely see that being a use case for homes, not just big health care facilities. If you've got mom and dad don't want to leave their house and you want to make them safe, instead of getting them life alert, which they may or may not be wearing, you could have this tech working, and then you would get a text message if something happened with a video.

Brother, I'm telling you, that's a billion dollar idea right there.

Right. In that one little vertical.

Yeah. And just that. If you guys are watching this, don't take that idea. Good luck.

It's patent, dude. We got it already. Good luck. You're going to be getting some slap with that patent lawsuit.

Some letters for me. But no, no, yeah. Just that in that vertical, dude, it's a game changer Because I always worry about my parents. They're in their 70s. And even though they're very capable, there's thoseipsies, dude, where they fall and they can't get up. Like in the commercials. So if I can get a camera, get 911 on the way, cool. Get it My alert, just like my alarm system. That's a game changer. Puts me at ease. Okay, so let's talk about capital raising and vision for Safe Space, brother. So how are you helping Safe Space structure its next capital raise or uplisting opportunity right now?

Yes, we wrapped up our friends and family raise. Company has no debt, didn't need to raise the money in terms of for burn rate. But when you're uplisting from the pink sheets where we are now in the over-the-counter market, there's all these boxes you have to check to get uplisted onto a Nasdaq or in New York, one of the main exchanges. So one of those is you got to have a couple of years of burn rate sitting on your balance sheet. So that's why we did a funding round just to check that box and put $10 million on the balance sheet. So we didn't go to any institutions, no family offices. We've given zero of the company to any VCs. This was all friends and family, and we brought in about 10 million in three weeks.

That's badass. That's badass. I love that.

And I've raised capital for private deals, now a public company, and some of them couldn't get a dollar in. Some of them, I raised 10 million like nothing. And what it taught me is that when you really do have the best deal or a great deal, and it's better than everything else that's out there, the money will find it.

When it's a no-brainer, people see it. Do you think the person that's actually going ahead in finding the investors has anything to do with it? Like the person behind the actual vehicle? Of course.

It's like any sale, right? Put down the sales books. You don't need to learn tie-downs, word tracks, things like that. It's just maybe you do in the beginning, but eventually, the master salesperson is a master of authenticity. And being a subject matter expert on the product. You got to be able to educate to confidence. That's going to get you a sale more than anything else. And then whatever those common objections, as people call them, but they're really more the complaints. They're not really objections. But whatever people are going to be concerned with, you get ahead of it on your terms and you diffuse it. So when you get to the end of any sales process, you should not have to close. It's just my personal opinion.

No, it should be very easy. And I agree. I'm a very nurturing type of guy when it comes to business. And at the end of the day, I like to use a formula. It's called H2H, human to human interaction, my friend. I'm old school. So at the end of the day, if they like you, you're providing value, and you're Are you kidding them? Oh, dude, you got in the bag all day, every day, right? And it's a no-brainer, right? Which this is. I'm excited about this. So talking about excitement, what are your investors most excited about right now?

I think the fact the stock has tripled in the past two weeks. There we go. My personal goal was we raised from about 100 private investors into safe space in January at 10 cents a share. And I wanted to make 100 millionaires off of just the stock. And we did that last week. So that was a huge moment for me. When people trust you and they give you their money, it's one of the biggest responsibilities I think you can have. So to be able to provide that result And then we blasted through a dollar. And we were in the top three of over-bought companies by the 14-day RSI in the world as of Monday morning. So that's just a huge testament to the team, the products, the future, the buy in and our ability to execute.

I love that, man. I love that. So a safe space is working towards an uplisting. How do you prepare a company for that type of transformation? And what does it unlock for the mission?

So on the way to uplist, institutions can't buy your stock, registered investment buyers, broker dealers. There's no activity from Wall Street. It's a straight bootstrap in terms of just spreading the word, doing media like this. It's all retail buying. So So once you do get that uplist and you check all those boxes and the New York says, yes, you can uplist, you ring the bell, now it becomes a game of fundamentals. Now it matters in terms of your revenue, the addressable market, your recurring revenue, all of this modeling that goes into ultimately what the market will say is your multiple. So we could be as close as 2-3 months away from doing this. And at that point, it's going to be a game of just worldwide enablement and sales.

Yeah. No, absolutely, man. And I like the fact that you guys are bootstrapping it. I mean, it's family and friends that we're like the investors. I think that's key, dude. Coming from somebody who bootstrap every single company that has started in the past seven years, man, much respect, definitely for that. So let's go ahead and talk about some great motivational aspects of you, okay? Because this is the LevelUp podcast. You being a door-to-door salesman, there's a lot of people that are aspiring to go ahead and level up in life. Okay, so from going from door to door sales to now being an investor yourself with a great AI company with a great impact and purpose like this, man. I mean, this is awesome. What would you talk about one daily habit that you use to stay sharp and grounded?

For me, it's all physical. I like to break my day up into two working sessions. I like to work out, cold plunge, sauna right in the middle of the day, lunch, and then get back into another work block. But I'm a slave to my calendar in a good way. It's just there's so much going on. There's so many different businesses. We've got a whole private equity firm separate from this that actually takes a whole lot more time than the public side. And without organization, I would just crumble. So I think if you haven't gotten to the point where you can't manage your own calendar, you need to go harder until that happens. And And then you really realize how to gain capacity within the blocks that you have, where you can do a whole lot more than you think you can. It's interesting to me that people are either struggling to do one thing or they seem to be able to do a lot of things. So there's a barrier that you'll cross at some point when you get that cadence down and you can just focus on increasing capacity and efficiency.

I think the time blocks is key, especially in time management, because you're able to go ahead and put a little bit of urgency behind what you're doing. If If you give yourself four hours to do an assignment compared to an hour, guess what? It's going to take you four hours. It makes a lot of sense, man. I love that. What's one trend in AI or investing that people are underestimating right now?

Man, what are we underestimating?

You're like, besides the company that I just told you guys about for the past 45 minutes.

I think right now there's a ton of negativity around investing because we just came out of the most frothy free money period where You could invest in anything and you made ridiculous returns. So it's washed out all the free money, all the pretenders. You even see it on social media. There's a whole lot less like, invest in my coaching.

A hundred and twenty. Thank God. Thank God.

Yeah. So it's been interesting because all of a sudden I'm like, oh, man, it's going to be harder to raise money. And it's not. It's actually a good thing for the real operators, because if you have a real deal, There's a lot of money on the sidelines. We have a record amount of money sitting in money markets making three %. It's like, what is it, seven trillion dollars right now sitting in money markets. And I got a debt fund where I can give you 16. So it's a matter of just people getting some confidence again in deploying capital.

No, absolutely. Just like you said, man, it's one of those things that people are going to do business with people that do good business, the real operators, right? And that's what it comes down to. If you're a real operator, you have nothing to worry about. There's always money. We're always going to find solutions. So at the end of the day, I love that you said that, brother. So what advice would you give to one of our listeners or viewers who wants to break into high-level investing or future tech, but doesn't know where to start? What would you recommend?

So the first thing I see is when people start making money, they get their first five grand, 10 grand in the bank account, now they want to go be an investor. And I was guilty of this, right? I was too. Now I put like $500 in a stock, and I'm watching it all day instead of focusing on the thing that got me the 500 to begin with. Yeah. Right? So you got to really look at this realistically and say, okay, maybe I got 50 grand. Well, if I get a home run and I double it, now I got 100. Is that going to retire you? Absolutely not. Right? So I think the longer you can wait in terms of When you're really focusing on the main thing in the earning capacity before going to be an investor, the bigger you'll be able to go in investing. Yeah. So I just think people dilute themselves way too early, and they start dollar cost averaging into crypto in a $100 It's just like you're training your mind that $100 is worth investing. It should just sit in cash until you have at least six figures to deploy.

And I think the benchmark here is the accredited investor guidelines. So if you are not an accredited investor, to me, if you want to play at higher levels, you're not qualified to be an investor yet. So you should just sit in cash or reinvest your cash into things like skill sets or your marketing, whatever is going to make you earn at a higher capacity. That's what you to invest in before even thinking about being an investor. Yeah.

So, AKA, start your own business, possibly. Start something that's going to generate you cash flow, right? Cash flow, guys. So you get enough cash flow. You have enough to play with. Go ahead and invest Instead of gambling that money. So with that being said, this is the level of podcast, and we go deep into people's whys. So what is your why?

The why has been a tough thing for me to figure out over time. I just know I know that I got to go and keep going for it, and eventually I'll really figure out the ultimate why. But I think for me, it's been different at every level. When we were doing Heartland Foods, it was all about getting junk out of people's houses, teaching them how to eat, giving them access to a source of food that was good for their family. And then we did meal matches with Feeding America. We fed millions of people from the charity side. So that was really rewarding. It's different. And then you start to realize, okay, if I really want to make a big impact on the world, the worst thing I could do is go volunteer my time. The best thing I could do is get stupid, filthy, rich and use that capital to do good in the world. The people who make the biggest impact have the most dollars to put behind it.

Resources, man. All day, every day, you can't do nothing if you don't have the options, right?

Yeah. So I'm focused on that now, and I'm like, okay, when I come back into whatever is the next thing, obviously saving lives in a safe space is a huge mission. We're going to do that regardless. But With my personal wealth, I'm still searching for what I want to do with it.

Yeah. No, and that's good, man. I mean, to me, fulfillment is everything, dude. And if I can help other people accomplish their goals, their dreams, dude, that makes me happy. I'm a startup guy. So at the end of the day, I like taking ideas, making it happen, and then on to the next, right? So that's great, man. Anything you want to leave as far as where it's motivation, encouragement to our audience that's watching you right now, you have a very compelling story, dude. I love it. The fact that you were able to go from door to door sales to now being an investor, especially with an AI company just like Safe Space. And I think it's going to change the world, dude, to be honest, because you guys have the right goal in mind of actually helping people. That's what it's about. So where can people find you?

I'm everywhere, in every social media. There's only one of me in the world with my crazy last name. So it's @justinfreistat. It's F-R-E-I-S-H-T-A-T.

I love it. And guys, there you go. An amazing interview with Justin. Now, guys, if you guys are looking to going ahead and investing with his company, Safe Space, go ahead and make sure to shoot Justin a message on Instagram. Make sure to follow him on all socials, guys. My name is Paul Alex. This is the LevelUp podcast. Make sure to leave a five-star review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube, guys. We are ranked number one in business and Apple Podcasts and ranked top 25 in all categories. Thanks to you. Guys, we'll catch you on the next episode. Don't forget to LevelUp. Thanks for listening up to LevelUp podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to share with a family, friend, and everyone you know who's ready to LevelUp. Leave a five-star review on Spotify, Apple podcast, and wherever you tune in. It really helps spreading the word. And don't forget to check out officialpaulalex. Com for more episodes and resources to kickstart your journey. Let's LevelUp together.