Blaze Your Own Trail - Why Failure is Essential For Success with Scott Boruff

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

In this episode of the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast, host Jordan Mendoza interviews Scott Boruff, a seasoned entrepreneur and real estate developer. Scott shares his journey from growing up in a real estate family to navigating the ups and downs of his career, including significant failures and successful rebounds. He emphasizes the importance of learning from mistakes, the value of teamwork, and innovative strategies in business. Scott also provides valuable advice for first-time investors and discusses his current ventures, highlighting the significance of resilience and adaptability in entrepreneurship.TakeawaysScott emphasizes that mistakes are essential for success.He believes in learning from failures rather than calling them failures.The importance of a strong network in business cannot be overstated.Sports played a significant role in shaping his competitive mindset.Real estate and insurance were pivotal in his early career.He learned valuable lessons from his bankruptcy experience.Innovative thinking can solve significant business problems.Teamwork and collaboration are crucial for success.First-time investors should seek out experienced partners.Resilience is key to bouncing back from setbacks.Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Scott Boruff's Journey02:52 Formative Years and Early Influences05:42 The Impact of Sports on Mindset08:39 Navigating College and Early Career Choices11:41 Lessons from Failure and Bankruptcy14:28 The Bounce Back: Rebuilding from Rock Bottom17:18 Innovative Strategies in Business20:21 The Importance of Team and Collaboration23:17 Advice for First-Time Investors26:16 Current Ventures and Future Aspirations26:58 Final Thoughts and Wisdom for TrailblazersConnect with Scott:https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-m-boruff-51371b126/https://safespaceglobal.ai/https://www.pitchequityfund.com/Looking for a dynamic Keynote Speaker for your next workshop, event, conference and meeting? Book Jordan HEREFree Weekly Group Coaching for Entrepreneurs HEREThe Blaze Your Own Trail Podcast is exclusively sponsored by CityGate Studios     Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza, and I'm your host, and I've got an incredible guest. His name is Scott Buruff, and I'm going to have him tell you a little bit about who he is and what he does today, and then we'll dive into his story here shortly. That's great. Great to be here, Jordan. Pleasure talking to you earlier before the call as well. So it's going to be a fun story.

I'm a real estate developer slash CEO of a public control. traded company. So the first half of my life, you'd call it, I grew up in a real estate and insurance family background. I watched my dad grow from scratch to nothing. So I was the middle kid, an older brother and a younger brother. But I was always a deal guy. I love deals, love making deals. Dad said you make your money when you buy, not when you sell. And so the first half of my life was doing small real estate deals, commercial real estate deals, fix and flips. You name it, we did it, develop golf courses. Second half of my life, I watched that original movie Wall Street where the guys walking down the beach and holding the big old phone on his

hand. It's like, I remember when 800,000 was a good year. Now it's just a good day. I'm like, man, I want to do that. So I went and got my Series 7 and 66 and living out of Knoxville, Tennessee, and worked on Wall Street. So I fly up on Monday, worked the streets, come back on Thursday night, and taking private companies public. And I love that. So I got to live that dream of, of what he did and raised over a billion dollars in debt and equity. I failed more times, and you can probably imagine, Jordan. So I'm a guy that takes action. And early on in my life, the action wasn't too good.

But I don't call it failing and just call it learning. So I've got several more degrees and learning. But that's how you learn, man. You can't learn from the sidelines. You've got to get in the game. And you can't still first, you know, with you foot on third and vice versa. So we'd love to walk through that story because today. Yeah, yeah.

We're going to dive in. There's so many nuggets already, you know. So I came up with this quote, Scott. I put it in my latest book, which is called, You'll Love This Title, The Life-Changing Power of Adversity. Oh, my gosh. I love that. I love that.

Right? I'd love to send you a sign copy afterwards. I'll get your address, and you'll love to send you a sign copy. But one of the quotes that I put in there was, mistakes show the puzzle pieces to success. The more you make, the bigger puzzle you can. all. You know, it's just showing people that let's reframe our mindset around when we make something, because it's not finite. It's not the end of the world, right? It doesn't mean that we have to go to

this woe as me victim place. No, how about we extract a lesson, right? Because that's the gift. It's the lesson, but we have to be willing to unwrap it, you know, and some of us are afraid to do that. And then it turns into resentment and it turns into bitterness. And that's not conducive for anything positive, as we all know. So let's dive in to the formative years. Yeah. I'm excited to get, like, where were you actually born and raised? And then tell the audience, what kind of kid were you?

What did you get into? You know, in elementary days, were you into sports, was academics, the side that you focused on? I'd love just some context. Yeah, yeah, that's great. I was literally born in Highport, North Carolina. But my family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee when I was four, so for about, everything I've known, it's really been Knoxville.

I've lived there basically my whole life. So we have different places around, but I live in Knoxville, grew up in Knoxville, went to Hall's High School, played sports, did play sports, played basketball, but I set the bench. I was the number six guy, number seven guy, but I liked to be active. I played football, loved football. That was kind of my passion. I played football since I was little.

And then got cut in baseball. So again, baseball wasn't one of my former. I've never been cutting a sport at all, but in high school I got cut. And, you know, coach brought to this day, I hold a grudge. So, but it was fun. It was, again, a good lesson. Get out there to try and you just, you know, I just didn't make the team. But you live off that and learn off that.

And what a dichotomy is my older son was good in baseball. And he got drafted and went and played for the minor leagues, Kansas City Rolls. So it, you know, maybe there were some good in my jeans there. But yeah, growing up, it was just a good fun time. We had a community, nice community there. And my father was a developer. So I watched him kind of, you know, he didn't inherit anything. So I watched him kind of grow and develop the insurance and real estate worlds.

I got to see my parents work. And I was, you know, I grew up kind of as in when we, he started making money. So we didn't have the brand new cars, but we had a two-year-old car that looked brand new that didn't take the depreciation. So then dad's world is like, you go buy a brand new car. When you drive off the lot, you lose a lot of appreciation unless you just got money to throw away, which he didn't. And so I've kind of taken that principle with me as well.

So if I can, you know, range rover, I'm driving now. I called the owner of the dealership. I said, you know, I want to use car. I don't want a new one. And he gives his son a new one every year. So he said, my son's got one. And he's had it a year. It's only got 700 miles on it.

So I bought that one. and, you know, got it at a great deal. And that's kind of been the story of my life. You make your money when you buy, not when you sell, whether it's real estate, whether it's a t-shirt or a hat or a car or a house or whatever. And so I'm very picky on acquisitions. And I've kind of carried that throughout my life with business and growing businesses and all that stuff. Love it.

Yeah. Love it. So I've got a question about sports. So sports, I played sports, you know, 12 years of baseball, 12-year years of soccer. I probably should have played one. I was terrible at both of them. But the sports that I excelled in were like streetball, which I still play basketball to this day. And I started breakdancing in the early 90s, and I still do that to this day. And so when it comes to sports, mindset is a big part of it. So can you talk a little bit about what was a mindset like having to

sit on the bench? I know what it's like, because I was a bench writer too, but what was the mindset like? And you still harbor some feelings towards. this coach. So did that motivate you in a positive way to kind of shift you into other parts of your life? You know, it actually did. Like, you know, in basketball, I wasn't the tallest guy. What I liked about sports is, you know, it gave you something to do, gave you good exercise, I liked working out. And because I was in all those sports, I was very active. And I think that, along with life, you know, keeps you, keeps you busy. Like, to this day, I still play pickleball, played tennis, play golf, a snow ski, and I go down the triple black diamonds. And when I'm falling down the hill on my back, sliding, you know, 200 yards, I'm like, you know, maybe I'm a little too old to do this stuff now. But, you know, now we just do the blues or the, or the, just the black. But kind of carries on, it kind of keeps you out of trouble as well. So again, the kids that got in trouble, you know, seems like they didn't have anything to do after school. And they would get in trouble. And I kind of carried that with my kids. So I've got,

My daughter that's, you know, she was in cheerleading since she was four years old to 18 and she's 25 now and competition cheer. And then my younger son was in football and baseball and the older son was in football and baseball. They were in sports their whole life. They played, you know, college football. And so it kept them out of trouble. So they really, you know, it's kind of, I think it builds credibility and keeps you out of trouble and keeps you focused.

And the coaches become their mentors, right? So the coaches get up, teach them how to, you know, teach them how to go do whatever they're doing and and they carry that out through their life so now he's you know when they're selling real estate or insurance in life they've had that background and that training to know all right it's you know let's sit here's the to do here's you know here's how you win and win is being around yeah it's typically the first it's the first time we really understand what working with the team's like you know what it what it's like to have to count on each other you know what it's like to work together and the fact that if if everybody loses everybody loses everybody loses

right? We only win when we win. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, that's what I really loved about it. And then just having a competitive edge, you know, there's, I think that most entrepreneurs have a competitive edge or else they wouldn't try entrepreneurship, you know. And I think that the best entrepreneurs are the ones that keep that spirit. And they, and it's not about trying to be the best, but it's about being the best version of us that we can be.

Right. You know, and it's you versus yesterday versus me, you know, me versus tomorrow. I know it's you versus yesterday because today is we got to be in the present as we're moving through the day. Yeah. And every day is a new day. You're not promised anything. You're not promised tomorrow. So yesterday is gone.

Tomorrow's, you know, tomorrow, today is get up and make it happen. So, you know, in business and the life, we get up and I cherish every day. I mean, again, literally, that's what makes it happen. It makes it fun. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk after high school. I know you mentioned your dad was building businesses.

I'm just curious. Which path you took? Did you say, hey, you know what? I want to go to college and get my degree or maybe I want to jump into the family business. I don't know which path you took, but I know the audience is interested in learning. Yeah, so, you know, for me, there was not a different path. So for me, the dad said you're going to go to college. And so I went to college, went to a small college.

I lived in Knoxville, so University of Tennessee was the big college. But ETSU, about 100 miles north, was the weekend college. So we'd go up there during the week, come home on the weekends, and kind of had the best of both, you know, an hour and a half away from the family. I got involved in fraternities, intermineral sports. Again, staying busy, staying active, team sports. Just had a great college life. Got out of college, got married.

My family had money. Her family had money. I got out. I didn't have any money. It's like, you know, you're going to just work for it. And so it started out in real estate. insurance and grew that business. So I got lucky. So I kind of have a vision like my dad, like in business, if you find a problem and solve the problem, money changes hands. And so the

bigger the problem, the more money changes hands. So in real estate and insurance, I saw in insurance back in the day, this is back in the 80s, right, of 85 to 95. The typical insurance agent was two men that were licensed agents. Two women were secretaries. They were secretaries. They They could grow their revenue at about $250,000 in income. And that's about all they could do with the amount of paperwork. And I was like, well, first of all, I want everybody that's at the agency to be licensed. So we got the ladies license. So now everybody that touches the phone could sell, A, B, we were real big into cars and car lots.

And car lots sold most of their cars from five at nine, five in the afternoon to nine at night. But guess what? Most of the insurance agents work from eight to five. So there's nobody to bind that coverage from five to nine. And so I equipped our two sales ladies with laptops and said, we're going to work nine to nine. So when the dealership is selling a 16 year old of Ford Mustang at seven o'clock at night, that guy's, he's ready to buy. But the dealership couldn't insure it because it was against their policies because everybody kept wrecking and their insurance wouldn't allow them to do it. They could call us. We could quote them, bind them.

We had policies there at the different leaderships all over town. And we went from doing 400,000 a year in gross revenue premiums to 400,000 a month within about a year. So we had a quantum leap in revenue just because we solved a problem. So I grew up that agency for like seven years, rock and rolling, working all the time, and got divorced. My wife's like, yeah, we kind of grew away, got divorced, lost everything, went bankrupt. up and I'm like, yeah, this is not good because I invested in other businesses, gave money away. And that's another lesson I learned, you know, I would make money and my friends would come to me. I would loan them money and that he wouldn't pay it back.

You know, I bet I've loan 20 friends money, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars and never got paid back from any of them. And then didn't become friends. I was like, so one of my policies is I'll do anything for my friends. I just won't loan a money because, you know, when I went broke, I went to my dad. like, hey, I'm a million and a half in debt, divorced. You loan me a million and a half dollars. And he's like, son, you dug this ditch, you know, you can lay in it. I'll house you and feed you, but I'm not going to bail you out.

It's probably one of the looking back now, if one of my kids came to me and needed that, I was like, you know, that was probably a tough lesson for him, probably hard for him to say no, because he could have written a check. But for me, it was one of the best lessons. That wouldn't have helped you. They wouldn't have helped me. I wouldn't have earned anything. And so, you know, I've learned at an early stage from, you know, all of a sudden,

being the guy that was rolling up insurance agencies, buying all the guys, you know, the president of the professional insurance agency, being the man on top to all of a sudden a year later, I'm selling agencies, getting out of debt, bankrupt and broke and divorced. And that was a tough deal. But, you know, again, you know, you can feel sorry for yourself. You can kick your feet up and go back and do it again. And so, you know, then we're going to be. Yeah, that's true, Scott.

Yeah, so it was fun. Have you heard this quote, Scott? It says adversity introduces a man to himself. How true is that? Yeah, it really does. And I remember I was depressed for about all of one day because I'm a very optimistic guy. I'm like, you know, at least I learned what to do, how to do it, how to grow a business, how to stop. Most people just don't take action, right?

I had to take action. I didn't have a backstop. So while I was growing the real estate and insurance, A.D.C. again, you know, I knew what not to do the next time. And so, so that's it. You learn from those lessons, which is, and you said, man, this, this sucked. This didn't feel good. Definitely not doing that again. You know, you had all the things of what not to do, right? And yeah, and rock bottom, it's, it's said to be the purest foundation, right? It's, it's like, you know, there's only one way to go. You can't go any further than when you're, when you're that low. So as long as you can start

climbing out of that dang pit, eventually throw that leg over the cliff, and then you sounds like you're off to the races. So let's talk about the bounce back. Let's talk about after you fell in the pit, climbing out, you make your way out. You don't have a wife now. You're literally all your revenue is gone. No one's answering your phones. So what do you decide to do? I know you pick yourself up. What was move one? Yeah. Move one was to go find the insurance companies, that I dealt with before and get my contracts back with them in my name, in my new company name. So I built great relationships and had, you know, good relationships with all of them, still a bunch of people.

And then so I got my contracts, got my real estate, and I focused more on the real estate side of the development side of it. And still with the entrepreneur side in me, I still had people coming to me, you know, hey, will you loan me this? Will you do that? I was like, I won't loan it to you, but tell me your business plan. So one of them was a sign company, right? And so we started, so you can imagine now I'm starting from scratch, got my real estate license, broker's license, got my insurance license, and started hiring people to sell insurance again like I did before, and just started that slow growth back.

And then as businesses come to me, one was, again, the sign company. So a gentleman come to me, wanted to borrow, you know, $10,000. I said, Arville, what do you want to? $10,000 for. He's like, well, I've got this contract for this shopping center. And again, understanding shopping centers. He said, you know, I can put these Christmas lights up. I get paid $12,000. I need to buy this, I need to buy this truck to be able to put the lights up. You know, this little boom truck, they call it. I said, well, how much is the boom truck? He said, it's $10,000. I said, well, how much is the job? He said, it's $12,000.

I said, well, how much equipment, you know, I, e. Christmas slots do we have to buy? He said, we don't have to buy any lights. They supply the lights because it's the shopping centers, theirs they did you know do it under their common ear maintenance and I said well how long it would it take you to put them up he said two days about two thousand dollars one day to take them down after Christmas so that's three thousand dollars in labor nothing in the materials all we need is a boom truck so I went and bought the boom truck we went and got into the signed business and all of a sudden now we did this one job made 12 grand paid him three grand in labor and we netted out a truck and and he's like hey I've got this other job it's uh it's uh it's

it's JFG coffee. They're going to pay us $12,500 down on a $25,000 job. I'm like, so here I am broke. Now I'm getting a check for $10,000 in. We bought the truck. We're getting a check for $12.5 in. And we've got to buy like $4,000 worth of lights. And there's about $2,000 worth of labor.

So about $6,000 on this whole job. But we're making $25 on. So within 60 days, we've got a truck that's paid for and about $15,000 in cash. and that's how we rolled in the side. I said, what's wrong with the sign business? You know, what's the problem in the sign business? Because this guy had been in the sign business his whole life. He said, well, every sign company out there says,

I'll deliver the sign July 1st or June 1st or April 1st or whatever, and they missed their deadline. I said, why do they miss their deadline? He said, well, it's neon lighting. Nobody has enough neon lighting. I was like, oh, interesting. So neon is like a specialty. So long story is your story.

short, I was like, I found a facility because I'm in real estate that we could start manufacturing these signs. I mean, building them from scratch. I can't build anything. I can't even change oil in a car. But these guy could. And so he's like, I got this guy. You and me too, brother. Can we go hire Al? And it was all of a sudden, you know, three months into this new sign company, called All Signs. We had a brand new truck, not a brand new truck, but used truck, 10,000 car truck, boom truck. And we had two sales guys and a little manufacturing place. And all of a sudden, Al, again, comes with a book of business. So Al does about a million a half dollars, two million dollars a year in science.

So all of a sudden, Al brings in the hotels. You know, now we're doing this, you know, Ryan Steakhouse hotels and the Ryan Steakhouse contracts. We're like 40,000 our contract. So long story short, to not to be able to deliver on time, I went and hired a glass blower, basically, for the neon. So now all of a sudden, we were the guys that could deliver on time because we had ever piece of it. it from soup to nuts. You know, we could complete the whole sign by herself. We didn't have to wait on anybody else third parties. And long story short, because we had the neon plants,

we grew a year later. We did like two and a half million our first year, like three or four million or second year, added another full-time neon plant. So all of a sudden, after three years, I've got two full-time neon plants running seven days a week. We were making enough for our own business, but we're also selling to our competitors. And so our competitors would give us that overhead. And again, so we grew that sign company to about $10 million in about, I don't know, less than three years in revenue. Wow. And I learned manufacturing one-on-one, what working capitalists. I was having good margins, good profits, but I was selling myself out of business because PlastyLine at the day was a $100 million sign company. They had about $31 million in

accounts receivable and whip, which means I needed to have about 30, 35 percent working capital. And I'd only had, doing 10 million of revenue, I'd only had a million a half in working capital. It was basically my profits that I'd build up. But I was broke. Every Monday I'd come in. You'd have to pay cash for the materials. And again, that's how I learned working capital. Ended up exiting that signed company for a good profit, sold it to my investors,

and then, you know, continue to take that money and build on real estate and doing other deals. And so that was, you know, that was a good success. Love it. I see some, yeah, I want to call out some ingredients. that made this all happen. I think there was some pretty obvious things. So the first one was your desperation made you get creative, right? And think outside the box and think about five steps ahead of everybody else.

And so you basically, you started asking great questions, which gave you the exact pain that they were dealing with. And then you found somebody that you could, a strategic partner that you could invest in that turned into the capital to bring on the other people. And so you kept leveraging your gifts, which are finding. the people to put into places and then all the people and then you solve the supply problem by creating the supply for yourself so that you could have even more business and then you're able to exit. So brilliant strategy. I love I love to see when things work out the way that you literally

probably in your head thought about it was going to work out. I'm sure there were some bumps in the road and obviously not collecting a paycheck and not having money. Of course, that sucks. But the exit was nice. Yes. And sometimes, you know, I've I've been building a startup in Europe for the last three and a half years. And believe me, Scott, it wasn't on my five or 10 year goal to go to Europe. Like there wasn't anywhere in my, in my purview, but God has the way that he works, right, works things out. And so now I've been in Europe three and a half years building a global tech startup. And there's lots of ups and downs. And I'm dealing with language barriers and the EU and jurisdictions and the GDPR and all this stuff.

And so I'm learning, right? Because I didn't know any of this stuff before I, I went, but the versatility that happens when we put ourselves in uncomfortable situations, it's just tremendous. And I think that is something that you would probably attest to yourself. I do. I do. And it's a, and it just continues on and on and on. I've had probably 22 exits. 18 of them good. The other four learning and PhDs. And some, some exits and not exits were bigger than others. So, you know, you make money, you lose money, you make money, lose money in life. Who is it the great tennis player? The best tennis player in the world I saw a podcast with him the other day. He was talking about he won, I think 82% of all his games in life, but he only

won 53% of his points, which was interesting. So he's like, you know, if a double fault, that's just a point. That's the game. It's over with. You can. can't grab it. You can't go back and get it. I got to play the next point. And so he was 82% winner, 50-something percent of points that he won. But I was like, you know, that's pretty good. I mean, again, that is life, right? You're not going to, I haven't met many people that's won every single time. And those that I've had, then, you know, I don't, I don't know if I've met many of them at all. So, you know, I like the learning side of it. Yeah, I love it. And I'm the same way. I feel like I'm, you know, I was a terrible student that became a lifelong learner.

Yeah. You know, because I'm more of a tactical, you know, with ADHD and, you know, not paid attention to class. The traditional school system was not built for guys like me. And so I didn't go to college. I went and started doing door to door sales and hearing a couple hundred thousand knows before I turned 20. And that has served me very well.

Yeah. When you could not be worried about rejection. Yeah, because you've heard it all. It's like, yeah, yeah, go ahead. What, what, okay, what's the real? reason. Yeah, exactly. Because you've heard it all. You know, that's where it becomes a real value ad. Yeah. And so, listen, your journey, Scott, is nothing short of inspirational. I know you went on and exited so many different companies and, of course, learned the lessons from the four that

didn't work. But our listeners, they might be in a position where they go, you know what? This is the year, Scott and Jordan, that I want to invest in something. I want to invest in my first project. So can you set the path that they can blaze for us real quick? can just give them three strategies that you would give to first-time investors. I think that would be a big value ad. Yeah. And so, again, being open, thinking outside the box, your network is your net worth. So again, when you're investing, invest with people that do have a track record of whether

good or bad. But, you know, you can determine like, you know, again, if it's short-term investment, long-term investment, one of my specialties is taking private companies public. So I've had the honor to ring the NASDAG bell, the New York Stock Exchange's Bell, and those came with risk as well, because when you're taking pink sheet companies and growing them, you're asking people to make investments in companies that typically go out of it. It's like the pink sheet companies do not have the best reputation for businesses. But we had the pleasure of growing an oil and gas company from, again, that I took over as CEO of that was a non-reporting

pink sheet company, but it had a good base, had a good team of, you know, one of the most prolific drillers, a secretary that could, you know, do oil and gas, but he hated, you know, he hated finance, legal and accounting, all that stuff. So to grow up perfect, you know, to grow a public company, always tell people you've got to have, you know, the whole cake, you got to have all the ingredients, mix them together, and then you can grow. If you're missing any ingredients, investor relations, public relations, legal, finance, accounting, don't know, have a great product or whatever, then it'll never get out of its own way. And so, you know, finding that team, building that team.

And when you're going into, you know, investments, I mean, the pink sheet world, you can buy a stock for 10 cents a share. It goes to 20 cents. You've doubled your money. And I know a bunch of millionaires from investing in us that have bought shares at a dime, watched them go to $9 and just, you know, we call them the millionaires. And so as we start up companies, I call my friend and say, hey, we've got the startup company. You can buy in the friends and family around at 10 cents a share. raise capital, take that capital, grow the company, and then check the boxes. And with pink sheets, we start with the end in mind.

So for me, it's building the team, building the product that solves a problem, setting the board, and then checking boxes to uplist, which means shareholders and shareholders equity and market cap and things like that. So the company we're growing right now is called Safe Space Global. So again, we started out in 2016 and went public in 2018. and we saw a problem that people are living longer and there's less people to take care of them in nursing homes. So the only thing that's out there,

everybody's heard that commercial help, I'm falling, I can't get up where the ladies, you know, has a little lanyard. I said, well, I want to do ours with no lanyard and no watches. Let's form something with AI technology that can solve that problem of in this, till to this day. And so we've done that. We've built that product. It's called Safe Space Space.

global now and again we're just checking boxes to the New York Stock Exchange and it's been a great thing because when you go into nursing home you know they don't want to wear a lander to watch makes them feel old and the ladies that are men that get there they have dementia so they escape out of the nursing home and they die they in the cold weather they don't know where they are things are happening so we've got a we've got a biometric facial recognition that that literally cameras on the doors it sees mom or dead when it gets near a door that they're not supposed to be at it locks the door down. And so that product is like taking off like crazy across the country because it's a better

product at a better price than the old product that's out there. Like, you know, WonderGuard is the product that's out there. And I mean, again. And it's to prevent accidents and save lives, you know. I mean, there's no better two things to help with, which is great. And it's, you know, so one thing we're passionate about is school shootings, right? So again, it's happening. People die.

Kids are died. and we believe no kid should die at school. School should be your safe space. And so our AI, so we're AI first camera agnostic. So it literally looks into the school parking lot. It identifies the person, place, or thing. It detects what the person places or thing is carrying. Is she carrying a gun?

Is it carrying a knife, a bomb? What is the threat? And then it alerts the school resource officer. So we build a product that identifies, detects, and alerts. and we're going to make school shootings a thing of the past. And so, again, as you can imagine, my daughters just graduated University of Tennessee. You got her master's in education. She teaches first grade.

She doesn't even want to talk about it because it's just like PTSD to kids. You know, when we were growing up, I didn't have to think about that. So again, I had to worry about fighting somebody in the park, you know? That's what I had to worry about. No, so it's a man. So finding a global problem and find a solution now we're executing. It's been a longer ride. Again, 2016, I started.

We reversed merged in 2018. So from 2018 to 26, we've been building a team, building a product. Now, I knew nothing about technology, right? So I tried, LIDAR, radar, censors. My first guy that I signed up and paid $100,000 to write this code, I went in one day and he'd lost the code because my credit card had expired. And they're dingin it for like 50 bucks. I said, I paid you all this money for the code.

You don't even have a backup? up. I'm like, again, another lesson, Jordan, another learn. I'm like, you can't, you can't make this up, brother. You can't make it up. I can easily stop. I was like, I looked at this guy and I said, you were going to be out of business. I said, this is not right. But I just picked myself up, you know, just kept going. Finally got the right, right people around me from sales to technology to, you know, we got these coders that are, you know, we have 50 people in India right now writing code every day to solve this problem. And so it's exciting time. again. Yeah. So. Well, we have a lot to talk about, you know, obviously, you know, our listeners

have gotten so much value, but, you know, I mentioned my tech company in Belgium. We're solving life, fire safety problems. So we're building technology that enables two-way communication between owners and renters and apartments in government buildings and universities to the fire teams. So we're working with fire teams, the Belgian government. And so, yeah, we have a lot to talk about offline because there might be a way our tools might be able to collaborate or integrate. Yeah. So, man, this is getting even more exciting. I'm getting pumped up. So, you know, Scott.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. There could be a collaboration. Yeah, absolutely. Sounds exciting. I know our listeners are going to enjoy this conversation. You're somebody that's had gone from, you know, growing up in a small town to watching great

examples of leadership. your dad and some great coaches and not being willing to put yourself out there and fail and get back up and fail and get back up and extract those lessons. And then the other thing that I really appreciate and admire about you is you're not willing to say, listen, I don't know at all. And I need people around me to put them in places that have the skill sets that I don't have. And that's something that I really enjoy doing too. And it took me a long time to get there, brother, because I used to be the guy that's like, I need to be the one doing this. And I felt so tied to it. But once I started to release that, man, the value that came from it has just been

tremendous. So I want to just give you kudos there. So where can the audience find you? I know you got a busy schedule today. I want to get you running, but where can the audience go to connect with you, Scott? Yeah. So safespaceglobal.a is our public company. www.safeaspaceglobal. A.I. And again, stocks trading 10 to 20 cents a share. We've literally, Jordan, checked, five of the six boxes that needs to be checked to get to the New York American. So our goal this year is to uplist. We're working towards uplifting. So the last box to check is $2 a share box. And on the pink sheets, it's honestly, it's just more people buying the stock and buying, investing in the company than selling. And so, you know, stock goes up and more people buy

and sell stock goes down when more people sell than buy. So it ran up to like $1.59 earlier this year. It shouldn't have done that. We didn't have a product that was finished. We didn't have revenues. We didn't, you know, again, it just shouldn't have got crazy. But now our product's finished. We have revenues coming in.

We have contracts coming in. We have facilities signing up. And so this is the year for that company to go hit, you know, go hit it out of the park. And we have no debt, $6 million in cash that we raised from friends and family. So it's one of those perfect storms where, you know, for me, I am not an operator. So we've got about 70 employees. I'm a finance and deal guy and problem solver. And so now we've hired who's to take care of the, you know, to take the business to the next level.

And I just get to do what I do best, which is raise capital and build the teams and then get out of the way. Give the teams the tools to do what they need to execute and then get out of their way. Love it. Well, we're going to make sure the show notes has got the. that link there so people can reach out. Who knows folks might hear this story. And to me, you talk about school shootings and that's something that everyone should want to invest in, especially if you have children or you plan to, you've got grandchildren. We got to invest in our future of our society, you know, and those things just take out so many people and it's so terrible,

you know. So that's something that I'm excited to know that you're helping with that, especially knowing the things that we're building, because there's definitely some real synergies And so I think there could be some fun stuff that we do in 26 and beyond, brother. Well, I appreciate you coming on. I do want you to share one last word of wisdom for folks that are on there. They're trying to blaze the trail. Maybe they're stuck today. What can you help them with?

Yeah. You know, take action. Most, you know, most dreams go to the graveyard and die because they don't do one thing. They don't take action. So the only thing that can hurt by taking action is you can, I've always said I can go back to work for Crover. Kroger's was one of my first jobs as a bag boy and a cash rest of guy. And I've always said, if I fail, I can just always go back there because the manager love me and all that stuff.

So just take action and get out there and do it. And it's exciting. I mean, the worst thing that could happen is you could succeed in a bigger way that you ever thought you could. So take action, do something. And if you do something that you love, you never work a day in your life. And, you know, one last thing, you know, pitch equity is the private equity firm that I have and we you make money when you buy but if I look back at the last 30 things that I've

bought I've never bought them the conventional way so what I would tell the listeners as well deals come to you I bought a few houses a few shopping centers golf courses just all kinds of deals but like when the deals come to you they always come to you with terms so like this house I bought from the guy that that developed some of the first Applebee's he had three and a half million dollars invested in this house. He was getting divorced. He owed a million six at the bank. The lender came to me and said, hey, you know, we want you to buy this house. And I said, well, I like it. I'll buy it. But he said, well, it's a million six is what he owes. You need to put 20% down and we'll finance the million three for you. I'm like, no, I'll, I like the house,

but I'll, I'll do a first mortgage for 80% and you, the banker, do me a second mortgage for 20% and I'll buy it for nothing down. And I've probably done that 15 different times in my lives. It's like their problem is not my problem, but, you know, we don't break the rules. We just bend them into where everybody understands the game and it's legal and it's honest and ethical. And I've gotten a lot of good deals that way. So, again, just think outside of the box. Yeah, there's a term in negotiation.

It's called a botna. And you're probably familiar with that, sky. But it's the best alternative to the negotiated negotiations. agreement. And trailblazers are good at using botnas, right? Because it's like, hey, why the worst negotiators say yes on the first offer, right? That's like the worst thing that you can do. So you have to come back with something because if a lot of times they're, that first offer is just, they're just trying to see what the waters are looking like, you know? It's trying to see what you're going to do. And they could tell if you agree on that first one that they got you,

right where they want you. So you have to ask great questions. In order to get, great answers, right? You're never going to get what you don't ask for. No, that's it. I like to find out, I have the saying, I like to find out what they won't take, right? So like, let's find out what they won't take. And then, you know, you've got, you've gotten to, you know, you've gotten to where it needs to be. And I'll leave you with one more token. There was a, there was a building in Knoxville, Tennessee. A is a A location and a C building. So it's a hundred and thirty thousand square foot building, office, back when office was out of favor. So it was about 50% full. Again, another divorce couple. So I think I have divorce

things coming to me because it just, I seem to attract them. They're building appraised for about $6 million. So I go to the bank. We like the building. But what does the bank want? They want to give you 80% of appraise value or cost, whichever is what, less, right? So we got it under contract for $4 million. So we're in the money with $2 million in equity made. But then the bank only wants to loan on appraised value or cost, whichever is less, or our cost is forced. We make money when we buy. So I don't ever want to put any money down because I'm making my money when I buy. So why use my money to put more down?

So under due diligence, we went and we told the seller, it was like, we need 120 days due diligence to, we're going to condo this building out so we can afford to buy it from you. So during that 120 days, we wrote a condo regime development. So it was 13 stories. So we went and gave the bank, here's you 10 stories. There was me and my attorney partner and my other longtime best friend partner. We each tuck a floor to ourself basically free. And of course, those 10 stories appraised for like $5 million for the 10.

And our cost was still four. So the bank's still going to loan us only, you know, 80% of four. So that's $3.2 million. Well, me and my partners took the other floors. They appraised for like a million bucks, $800,000. piece. We borrowed 300 grand a piece. Again, leveraged that floor, barred 300 grand. So now we had three, two, plus 900,000. Now we got $4.1 million to buy a $4 million bank. So we closed that deal with 100,000 cash positive plus about $200,000 in deposits that those office tenants had. Right.

So now we bought a $4 million building with zero cash, all legal, with $200,000, $300,000 cash after closing in the bank. And we took the next 18 months, drew plans up to turn it into apartments, condos or a hotel. A hotel buyer came in about 15 months after, right as we were about to run out of money because it was negative cash flow that whole time and paid us $7 million for the buildings. We made $3 million. Wow. So that's, again, you make your money. When you buy, we made it when we bought. We just didn't realize it until we sold. And so again, think outside the box. If you're getting a good deal, think outside the box. There's way. to structure them and and as we did that I looked at the like the last 20 deals up down I don't think

I've done anything conventional ever it's kind of crazy like if you get that pattern of life but uh but yeah love it well listen you know Scott you're a true trailblazer yeah you're blazing trails every day you know with the deals that you're doing with the people that you're helping and and honestly letting your team do their thing that's a true trailblazer too because we let other people live in those gifts and strengths it was an honor hosting you on the show yeah I know we're We're going to have many more conversations after today, lots to connect on. Keep blazing your own trail and thanks for coming on. Thanks, buddy. I appreciate it. Yeah, my pleasure.