From Professional Baseball to Inspiring Young Minds | Cole Freeman

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0:18Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today we have a tremendous conversation for you with Cole Freeman. Cole is a former LSU baseball star turned professional player who made it all the way to AAA before COVID derailed his career. Unlike many who would become bitter, regretful, maybe shame, doubt associated with having their dream torn away from them because of an external force that they couldn't control, Cole refocused his energy on a not-for-profit called Heart Has No Limit. It is the Heart Has No Limit Foundation where he is going into youth communities and helping them understand what it takes to be successful, how to overcome the challenges that we're presented with as young individuals, young adults in this world, and how we can put ourselves on a path to success regardless of where we start.

1:14This is an awesome conversation, and Cole really digs into some details about his life and how he sets and resets his mindset to be positive, be focused, be energized, be determined, and ultimately reach some incredible goals. You're going to love this conversation. And if you are enjoying this podcast, if you want to support what we do here, friends, subscribe to the show. Tell a friend about the show. I don't advertise the show. I don't buy ads on Instagram or any of that kind of stuff. This show grows by word of mouth. It grows by you guys, the listeners, sharing this with friends, sharing on social.

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2:37Cole, it's great to have you on the show, man. Appreciate you taking the time. I appreciate you working with me, too. Sorry about last week, too, having to reschedule like that. Oh, it's all good. Well, you know, for the audience, I mean, I realize this, but for two guys that probably at face value look like they should know what they're doing with recording a podcast, it took us about 10 minutes to get everything working. I can see why, you know, there's like a trend in podcasting where everyone's moving to these in-studio formats, right? And, you know, I think there's a lot of value in them.

3:09And, you know, especially for all these, you know, these people that live like in Austin, Texas or New York City or L.A. Where people are just dropping by all the time. That's very convenient. But I live in Albany, New York. People don't even wish their enemies come to Albany, New York. So like no one visits, no one visits, like there's no pop-ins for guests here. So that's when you called me, it popped up as Albany and I was like, damn, Albany? All right. So, so we have to use technology, which most of the time works good, but today decided not to. And all of that really horrible podcast banter guys is to share with you that we have a tremendous guest and Cole.

3:51I'd love maybe just break down a little bit of, you know, I guess when I was, when I was researching you and your story, one of the things that popped out to me that I couldn't get my head around was, and I want to get into your sports career and that transition. I want to talk a little bit about that, but I'd love to start kind of right in the heart of it, which is you have this not-for-profit. It focuses on mental health. It focuses on overcoming adversity, et cetera. What was the catalyst? What was the moment? What was the event that maybe stuck in you from when you were a kid or even when you were older that said, you know, this is kind of what I want to do.

4:32These are the, this is, this is the problem I want to help solve. These are the people that I want to help support. Yeah. Um, I really think that started happening once I got to LSU, once I was able to achieve my dream and really have that opportunity. Um, and especially after I got drafted and looking back at those two years that, you know, I was fortunate enough to have, I think I just kind of started reminiscing on like, I always said the question, why not me for me to get that position? But then I started kind of asking, okay, like why me? And I was just so grateful for me to get that chance to go out there and live my dream that, you know, I started thinking, I'm like, what is it that I can do to start helping people?

5:17And one of the things I looked at was what was a separator for me? and obviously it wasn't my height was the separator and I kept leaning back on it was kind of my mindset growing up and then getting to LSU it was just that I can do attitude that I'm not going to listen to the outside noise and that was one of the things I recognized after going through college and all was how many kids that I met or how many friends I had that definitely had the talent, but the circumstances weren't there. And the mental side of the game wasn't there. The taking care of the schoolwork, going to do extra work off the field, that really wasn't there.

6:00And when I was sitting back, you know, my last couple years of pro ball, I was thinking, you know, what is, I was so thankful for what I had. I was like, what can I do to give other kids the opportunity to feel the way I feel, to experience what I got to experience? And honestly, there was a broad spectrum. You know, there was financially supporting people, you know, finding mentors for them. And there's this big spectrum that we were going off of, but obviously honing down on, okay, where are we going to start? And I think being the mental health game, especially nowadays, is there's just epidemic crisis in the United States and really worldwide with it.

6:40and once I got partnered up with my partners, an old-time friend of mine and one of his friends out of Nashville, we kind of honed in on, hey, if we've got one opportunity at these kids and we will never get a chance of touching them, what can we leave them with? And really this is what we've kind of landed on, these tools that they can hopefully take for the rest of their lives. So you had a very successful baseball career. You get drafted. You make it to AAA. you talk about how grateful you are now I played baseball in college I played a little bit after as well and I've met hundreds of dudes who make it to double a triple a and they don't come away grateful they come away bitter right I didn't make it to the show I didn't get that my cup of coffee I never got a look right so they come away from that experience and they're bitter like like they didn't hit their goal.

7:36And you're telling me that you got to that same place. And I, and I, you know, I looked at your career, I know how successful you were, like, you got to that same place, you came away, you were grateful. How, what do you think is different, special, unique about your mindset and the way you view the world that you go through this experience, and you come away grateful, and so many of your peers come away, and at least at the beginning, they're right, I'm not saying eventually over time, they don't come to appreciate what they had in the experience, But like they often their initial take is this bitterness of not getting to the show.

8:10And I'm just interested in that difference for you. Yeah, I mean, I think it's just perspective for me. And honestly, one of our core pieces, it's reframing. It's reframing the situation in my mind. I'd be lying if I say I wasn't bitter in some aspects for sure. um but I mean I feel like that's just anything when you go anybody going after something they're trying to achieve it and you know it doesn't work out in their favor I think that's kind of just a natural instinct and humans um but what does it do for you you know what is being bitter do besides bring me down and remind me of something I didn't achieve and really my main goal in life was to play for LSU.

8:58I knew how much that meant to me. I knew how much that meant to my family, my entire family. And I wanted to not only give that experience to me, but I wanted to give it to them as well. And that, once I got to see the reaction of my parents, of them getting to live out our dream, I mean, that was, that was everything for me. So after I get drafted, after my junior year going in the 18th round. I turn it down, best decision of my life coming back from my senior year at LSU. And then I get drafted in the fourth round. And when you say like, okay, bitter, I didn't have a place to go play baseball after college.

9:37I mean, after high school, I didn't, I didn't have any place. So I got another four years, two at Delgado, two at LSU. And now I'm drafted in the fourth round. Okay. So I go out and I have a great first two years. I get to the fall league. Then we have this thing called COVID hit after my greatest year of baseball, top 15, 20 in all the minor leagues. I'm knocking on the door. I'm thinking I'm getting that big league invite, this and that. Well, there's an uncontrollable. COVID ended up messing that up pretty bad for me. All right. It messed up my career a little bit, slowed it down, but how many lives did COVID actually mess up?

10:13So in the grand scheme of things, is it really that big of a deal to me? It is to me, but in the vast reality of the world. No, it is not. People lost their jobs. People lost their livelihoods. People lost their families. People couldn't say bye to their grandparents for the last time because they're in the hospital. What, it messed up my career a little bit? Okay. Poor, pitiful me. No, it's the perspective on everything is, I think, is I think how you can navigate through life the correct way or feeling out of control. You know, I end up coming back in 2021 and I'm not starting the first two games.

10:51And I'm thinking, I just possibly won minor league player of the year, base runner of the year in 2019. I went to the fall league, started off back and got better. And then now I'm not starting over somebody that wasn't, didn't even play below, above low A. And so I fight my way back. I get in the starting line of them, started the rest of the year. And Then next thing you know, I go into AAA the next year and I'm like rolling. I'm like, dude, I'm one step away right here. We had a new GM come in, which obviously just like any company, a boss comes in, you know, they're going to get their people.

11:24And then, you know, they got to put food on the table. And I just wasn't one of his guys that he wanted. So I ended up getting released August 8th of 2022. And that time was tough for sure. but when I started looking back at it, I'm like, and just to bring back the question, how can I be better? I got another almost nine years of playing baseball after I was told I wasn't playing after high school. I lived a dream. Yeah, my last goal was to just get one day in the MLB. My biggest thing is I wanted my dad to say my son was a big leaguer. That would hurt not being able to achieve. But why focus on that one thing that brings me so much heartache when look at everything I did before.

12:12Look at what we accomplished as a family. And obviously, you know, there's times that you're dealing with it. You're like, this is tough. And, you know, damn, what should I go back? Could I have done this better? It's all what I could have, should have. You know, it doesn't do anything. And I just choose to look back on everything that, you know, God has given us and the opportunities that, you know, 99.9 % of baseball players will never experience. And I don't see any way to be bitter about that. Yeah, I think that's a wonderful way of viewing the world. I see that you wear a cross. Do you think faith plays a role in that?

12:50I mean – A massive, massive part. I'll tell you one thing about faith that I struggle with up until about a year year ago maybe she's maybe even about eight months ago we never were a big like church family but from the day I can remember my dad's got across just kind of like this and I've got it in my in my bag had just then I used to rock three of them but he gave me a cross and said I'm Catholic please call a priest just in case anything were to happen when I was gone and they always preach, you know, God and God gives us this opportunity. But we never were that family that went to church because me and my sister were playing ball left and right.

13:32We could not, didn't stop. And that was one thing, obviously, as I was matured, you know, I see people go to church or doing this and I'm like, are they, do they have a better belief than me? Like, am I not doing the right things? But in my mind, every good, bad scenario that happens is because of God. God already knows what I'm doing. He's given me a path. I've got a thousand different ways I can go with it. And it's just my choice, which I'm going to pick, but he knows which way it's going every single time. And so I started like struggling with that. I'm like, do I need to be better? And I'm like, I started talking to actually one of my partners, Brendan Hitzman, actually our curriculum writer, Luke.

14:09And I tell him how I was struggling with that. And I'm like, but I feel like my faith is as strong as anything. Like I talked to God in my head throughout the day of bad things happen and it could have been worse, thank God. God was watching out for me. And as of the last eight months to a year, I've really, I guess if you want to call it confidence in it, I know I am good with God. I know a fact. I know he's watching over me. The only thing I ever pray upon is that my family has helped. Everything else is lanyard. Yeah, I want, I want, I want. We all want, but I don't need anything but my family.

14:48And that's the one thing that I need to make sure is good. So, yeah, God is a massive, massive factor, and he always will be. I appreciate you sharing that part. I took some of that from how you were describing your experience as what we achieved. And I think that is a very unique way. I mean, I've interviewed thousands of people. I don't, I haven't heard too many people talk through their achievements in terms of the role they played in the larger scheme of the family. And I think, you know, and going all the way back to my initial question around gratefulness versus bitterness, to me, if you're living a faith-based life and you're focused on your family, it's very easy to be grateful.

15:33So that's a wonderful thing. No doubt. Now, so you get done with your career. Did you start the organization before your career was over or after? So the brand itself was started in 2017. It was right after we lost to Florida in the national championship. They didn't have NIL at that point. That would have been nice. But the brand started then. It was just me and my mom just kind of figuring it out. And it literally just kind of fell in my lap. We won't get too far into it right now. We can run back into it. But it was just a tattoo. that ended up getting on my ribs and article came out kids were making shirts and I'm like wow I can do something with this started getting a bunch of responses back from kids saying you motivated me go do this and I'm like what is going on like this is just this was just a tattoo for me and now it's blown up into something so we started that I just wanted to make it as like a motivational movement to go out there and achieve you know whatever your goal was uh in life it didn't even have to be in sports by no means.

16:37But after I ended up retiring, I knew I wanted to do a nonprofit. But when I tell you I knew zero about what a nonprofit was, I thought if you brought in a million dollars, a million dollars went out. Obviously, that's not how it goes. You need to do operations on the backside. But I didn't even know what I wanted to do. Obviously, I wanted to help people go after their dreams. But like, okay, how do you do that? So we ended up starting it. I took about two months off after baseball, really just kind of reflecting on my career, really trying to figure out what's next for me. What should I do? And that's when I called one of my partners now, one of my longtime friends, Brendan Hitzman.

17:13And I'm driving across the causeway just getting back from Scottsdale. And I call him like, hey, you want to do a shirt with me just for like fun? You know, whatever we make on the end, I'll break you off. And he's like, yeah. And then he asked me, obviously, the big question. What do you want to do with the rest of your life? And I'm like, I don't know, dude, that's what I'm trying to figure out here. And I brought up the nonprofit. And he's like, oh, he's like, well, my business partner, Joel, does a bunch of stuff with the nonprofit world. He's like, why don't we get on a call, see if it's something, you know, that intrigues you.

17:43And then we'll take it from there. We jumped on a call the following Monday. And right after that, I was like, I'm all in. I'm all in on this. Um, so, you know, we started the process and we got our 501c3 status on September 27th of 2023. So nice. So talk a little bit about exactly what you're doing. So what we're doing is we hired a doctor and a curriculum writer and our curriculum writer and doctor, they've studied historical figures over the years, all the way down for Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill. and we read about these guys all the time and girls all the time but why why are we reading about these specific people so what we did was we studied them and we ended up pulling out these common traits that they all have all these similarities and it was all based off the mindset deleting the fear of failure learning how to be resilient being a major one reframing like i spoke on earlier finding that calling and passion finding that identity learning how to trust all of these things that accumulated to them getting the opportunity to be that historical figure that we talk about.

18:54So what we did was we pulled all those key points out and we wrote our own curriculum on, you know, how, what the definition is, what the word actually means, how you actually apply it, where you can apply it. And what we're going to do is we're going to actually film it. Obviously the video world is the biggest thing, especially with the younger generation. And we're going to make a film up in Tulsa, Oklahoma with one of our other partners, Cody Jefferson, world-renowned speaker, and what he has lived through. And we're going to have them in about eight, seven to nine modules. And we'll run them through.

19:28They'll be about an hour, and they'll go through about 10 or 15 minutes, and then they'll stop. And they'll do a worksheet, work through that process. And it'll be all those modules like trust, identity, all those things that I touched on. And so once we do that, we believe this stuff works because we've lived it, we've studied it. But our biggest thing is we don't want to have to tell you this. We want to show you it works on a piece of paper. So what we're going to do is we partner with the Boys and Girls Club down in Lafayette, the Juvenile Correction Center, the jail itself, Extra Mile, and a couple other organizations down there.

20:03And we've set up a pilot program. So we're going to run these kids through a pilot program ages 10 to 16. We'll have two subgroups in that, 10 to 13, 14 to 16, and then one will be with a facilitator and one without. Obviously, our hypothesis is that one with the facilitator is going to do much better. But for scalability-wise, then you have to start training the facilitator for everything. Not a problem. We can get it done. We've even started to look into AI LMSs to start trying to help these kids a little bit. but we'll run them through that program. And hopefully at the end, the data shows that they are in a much better mental state than they were before the program.

20:44And at that point, if we've got actually hard data showing that these kids are getting better, we become a different animal there. And as of recent, we've actually been in talks with LSU, obviously the school I went to, we have a meeting with them on Thursday to actually try and see if we can get their student athletes through this. So we'd have to change up the verbiage, change up the format in a little bit and the production, obviously, because it won't be based from 10 to 16 year olds. It'll be more 18 to 25. But yeah, I mean, we just want to make sure that it is working. And if it's not, it's not a total failure.

21:19We just got to change up our delivery a little bit. Okay. That didn't work. This kind of hit, take that and go. So there is no failing in this. It's only learning. How do you measure success in these scenarios? Or what looks like progress? Progress is a kid saying, I feel better than before I was in this program. Success is to get that data back, showing percentage points that they are doing much better. I want to see the kids head high. And the ultimate success for me and the words I can't wait to hear and I know my team can't wait to hear is for us to work with one kid and then to achieve their dream or get that job or be that father and then to say, I don't think I'd be where I am without Heart Has No Limit.

22:08That is the ultimate success because not only do we change that kid's life, that kid is going to reciprocate this to all these other people. So it's not even just us reaching out to them. They are going to start reaching out to other people. So it's this chain reaction. But those words I cannot wait to hear. Yeah. I mean I love it. I think that – I'm going to take this a slightly different direction just because I have a couple interesting questions, questions that are interesting to me. So I've been doing motivational content for a long time, and it's funny. There are people that get it, and then I have a lot of other people that would be like, oh what are you just trying to be like a youtube celebrity or whatever and i'm like no one no one no one gives a shit about a 43 year old white guy who you know no one cares but um i said too i i do it for like you said if there's one person who picks up on whatever um but i feel like and i know what you're doing is has educational components and it's based in research and science and all that kind of stuff too.

23:13So I'm not, don't take this as diminishing what you're doing, but at its core, you're motivating these kids to believe in themselves and giving them research and data to support that, but you're motivating them. How do you work past, my belief is you have to be very optimistic to be in the world that you're in. You have to wake up every day believing, you know, this kid's life may be a little fucked or this kid over here might be having a hard time or his dad left him and whatever, and all these terrible things that we know happen in childhood. And you have to be optimistic that if you sit with them, if you show them something, if you get them with a group of kids over here, you can.

23:56But there's so much cynicism around this type of stuff. How do you, especially like with TikTok and Instagram reels and all this kind of like real time, and there's just as much negativity as there is positivity, and how do you start to win that battle, I guess? How do you win that battle personally? Well, I think everything's based off of faith for me, for sure. That's where that's the bottom line. That's the foundation. You know, that's one of the things that I've thought about more and more is it's easy to be optimistic in my mind, I think, because of where I came from. I never struggled for a meal.

24:42I never thought I might not have a roof over my head. So it's hard for me to put in perspective what they are truly going through. But then something I've been kind of tinkering with a little bit is everybody's reality is their reality. So my worst day is maybe not getting a meal at the end of the day. Okay, that might be my ultimate worst day. Well, this kid over here's worst day is not having any friends, not having a roof to sleep under and hadn't had a meal all day. Okay, well, that sounds a lot worse, but in my mind, this is as bad as it gets that I know of. This is as bad as it gets over here that they know of?

25:29Whose is worse? From whose perspective? Like that's, that's this hard thing I'm trying to find out. Like the thing I always try to do is put myself in their shoes. I need to know how they're feeling. If they're trying to like for a cop situation, put yourself in their shoes. They're walking up to a car. They have no idea. They don't know what's in the car. They have nothing. And they possibly could lose their life, but then somebody gets the cop walks up and they throw an attitude. It's like, well, that cop might've lost his friend the week before. You've got to try and see their side of it. The trust part is the biggest thing.

26:09And I think that's one of the first modules we're going to start with is because in order for you to try and get better at life or take that next step or be optimistic, you've got to trust something. You've got to trust somebody. You've got to trust yourself more than anything. And I think that's the biggest part with the kids that we're going to be dealing with is they don't trust themselves. They don't trust their judgment. They don't trust this and that because they're struggling. They go, like you say, online and they're seeing this and that. And, you know, they're living in a house with five other siblings and they're fighting for one meal a day.

26:46And how are they going to trust a decision that it's like, okay, well, maybe I should be looking and trying to make these decisions over there. Well, what are those decisions? Well, maybe I should just try and go get this job. Oh, I don't trust myself enough to even know what to do for it. And I think the trust part is the biggest thing is I trust God with whatever I'm doing. If it goes south, it goes south because it was supposed to go south. I trust that he's going to lead me on the path. And I mean, for me, that's everything. I think that's the hard part that we're going to have to find is because we don't want to base it all off of faith.

27:29Because if they don't believe in that, then I still want to help them. I don't shun them because, oh, you don't believe in God? No, you have your belief. But I want to get on the same side of the table with you. I want to figure out how we can learn or get you to learn to trust or believe in whatever you want to believe in. And then we start building off of there. But if you don't have that foundation, it's going to be a tough road. Yeah, I love that perspective. I live a very similar way. I am a believer, have been my entire life. Was raised Catholic and kind of Methodist, I guess. so very confusing you couldn't get two more opposite uh sunday experiences um but then similar to you as well i played sports my entire life and um sundays are there's games on sundays and you know and and i i've heard people say well you know you should go to church instead of play the game and i always said to my i you know in my mind if if god wanted me to go to church he wouldn't have made me a baseball player.