From Professional Baseball to Inspiring Young Minds | Cole Freeman

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Speaker 4 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.

Speaker 4 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 his career.

Speaker 4 Unlike many who would become bitter, regretful, maybe shame, doubt associated with having their dream torn away from them because of a external force that they couldn't control, Cole refocused his energy on a not-for-profit called Heart Has No Limit.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 This is an awesome conversation.

Speaker 4 And Cole really digs into some details about his life and how he

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

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This show grows by word of mouth.

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Speaker 4 if you're enjoying it, if you like this content, I would love for you to help spread the word. With that, no further ado, let's get on to Cole Freeman.

Speaker 6 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home,

Speaker 4 Cole, it's great to have you on the show, man. Appreciate you taking the time.

Speaker 6 No, I appreciate you working with me, too. Sorry about last week, too, having every schedule like that.

Speaker 4 Oh, it's all good. Well, you know,

Speaker 4 for the audience, they may not 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 it to get everything working.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And, you know, especially for all these,

Speaker 4 you know, these people that live like in Austin, Texas or New York City or LA where people are just dropping by all the time. That's very convenient.
But I live in Albany, New York.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 6 So that's where you called me. It popped up as Albany.
And I was like, damn, Albany? All right.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And Cole, I'd love maybe just break down a little bit of,

Speaker 4 you know, I guess 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,

Speaker 4 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 right in the heart of it, which is

Speaker 4 you have this not-for-profit. It focuses on mental health.
It focuses on overcoming adversity, et cetera. Like,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 These are the, this is, this is the problem I want to help solve. These are are the people that i want to help support

Speaker 6 yeah um

Speaker 6 i 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

Speaker 6 I always had the question, why not me?

Speaker 6 For me to get that position. But then I started kind of asking, okay, like, why me?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And one of the things I looked at was what was a separator for me.

Speaker 6 And obviously it wasn't my height, was the separator. And I kept leaning back on.
It was kind of my mindset.

Speaker 6 growing up and then getting to LSU.

Speaker 6 It was just that I can do attitude that I'm not going to listen to the outside noise.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And the mental side of the game wasn't there. The taking care of the schoolwork, going to do extra work off the field.

Speaker 6 That really wasn't there. And

Speaker 6 when I was sitting back, you know, my last couple years of Pro Bowl, I was thinking, you know, what is,

Speaker 6 I was so thankful for what I had. I was like, what can I do to

Speaker 6 give other kids the opportunity to feel the way I feel, to experience what I got to experience?

Speaker 6 And honestly, there was a broad spectrum. You know, there was financially supporting people, you know, finding mentors for them.

Speaker 6 And there's this big spectrum that we were going off of, but obviously honing down on, okay, where are we going to start?

Speaker 6 And I think being the mental health game, especially nowadays, is there's just an epidemic crisis in the United States and really worldwide with it.

Speaker 6 And 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?

Speaker 6 And really, this is what we've kind of landed on: these tools that they can hopefully take for the rest of their lives.

Speaker 4 So, you had a very successful baseball career. You get drafted.
You make it to triple-A.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I never got a look, right? So they come away from that experience and they're bitter, like they didn't hit their goal.

Speaker 4 And 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.

Speaker 4 You were grateful. How, what do you think is

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And at least at the beginning, they're bitter, right?

Speaker 4 I'm not saying eventually over time, they don't come to appreciate what they had and the experience, but like they often, their initial take is this bitterness of not getting to the show.

Speaker 4 And I'm just interested in that difference for you.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, I think it's just perspective for me.

Speaker 6 And honestly, one of our core pieces, it's reframing. It's reframing the situation in my mind.

Speaker 6 I'd be lying if I say I wasn't bitter in some aspects for sure.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I think that's kind of just a natural instinct in humans.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I 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

Speaker 6 that, once I got to see the reaction of my parents, of them getting to live out our dream,

Speaker 6 I mean, that was that was everything for me. So, after I get drafted after my junior year, going into the 18th round, I turn it down best decision of my life coming back from my senior year at LSU.

Speaker 6 And then I get drafted in the fourth round.

Speaker 6 And when you say, like, okay, bidder,

Speaker 6 I didn't have a place to go play baseball after college. I mean, after high school.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I get to the fall league.

Speaker 6 Then we have this thing called COVID hit after my greatest year of baseball.

Speaker 6 Top 15, 20 in all the minor leagues. You know, I'm knocking on the door.
I'm thinking I'm getting that

Speaker 6 big league invite. This and that.
Well, there's an uncontrollable. COVID ended up messing it up pretty bad for me.
All right, it messed up my career a little bit, slowed it down.

Speaker 6 But how many lives did COVID actually mess up? So, 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 It messed up my career a little bit? Okay, poor, pitiful me. No, it's the perspective on everything is, I think,

Speaker 6 is, I think, how

Speaker 6 you can navigate through life the correct way or feeling out of control.

Speaker 6 You know, I end up coming back in 2021 and I'm not starting the first two games. And I'm thinking,

Speaker 6 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 bad and got better.

Speaker 6 And then now I'm not starting over somebody that wasn't, didn't even play below above low A.

Speaker 6 And so I fight my way back. I get in the starting lineup.
I'm starting the rest of the year. And then next thing you know, I go into AAA

Speaker 6 the next year. And I'm like, rolling.
I'm like, dude, I'm one step away right here.

Speaker 6 We had a new GM come in,

Speaker 6 which obviously, just like any company, a boss comes in, you know, they're going to get their people. And then, you know, they got to put food on the table.

Speaker 6 And I just wasn't one of his guys that he wanted.

Speaker 6 So I ended up getting released August 8th of 2022. And that time was tough for sure.

Speaker 6 But when I started looking back at it, I'm like, and just to bring back the question, how can I be bitter?

Speaker 6 I got another

Speaker 6 almost nine years of playing baseball after I was told I wasn't playing after high school. I lived the dream.
Yeah,

Speaker 6 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 league.
That one hurt not being able to achieve.

Speaker 6 But why focus on that one thing that brings me so much heartache? When look at everything I did before, look at what we accomplished as a family.

Speaker 6 And obviously, you know, there's times that you're dealing with it, you're like, this is tough. And, you know, damn, what, what, should I go back? Could I have done this better?

Speaker 6 It's all what I could have, should have. You know, it doesn't do anything.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 I don't see any way to be bitter about that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think that's a wonderful way of viewing the world. I see that

Speaker 4 you wear a cross.

Speaker 4 Do you think faith plays a role in that?

Speaker 6 A massive, massive part.

Speaker 6 I'll tell you one thing about faith that I struggle with up until about a year. A year ago, maybe shoot, maybe even about eight months ago, we never were a big like church family.

Speaker 6 but from the day I can remember, my dad's got a cross just kind of like this and I've got it and

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Speaker 6 they always

Speaker 6 preached you know god and god gives us this is the opportunity but we never were that family that went to church because me and my sister were playing ball left and right we could not then stop And that was one thing obviously as I was matured, you know, I see people go to church, they're doing this, and I'm like, are they,

Speaker 6 do they have a better belief than me? Like, am I not doing the right things? But in my mind,

Speaker 6 every good, bad scenario that happens is because of God.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And I'm like, I started talking to actually one of my partners, Brendan Hitzman, actually our curriculum writer, Luke. And I tell him how I was struggling with that.

Speaker 6 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.
Bad things happened and it could have been worse. Thank God.

Speaker 6 God was watching out for me. Like,

Speaker 6 and as of the last like eight months to a year, I've really, I guess if you want to call it confidence in it. You know, I know I am good with God.
I know for a fact. I know He's watching over me.

Speaker 6 The only thing I ever pray upon is that my family has health. Everything else is land yak.
Yeah, I want, I want, I want. We all want, but I don't need anything but my family.

Speaker 6 And that's the one thing that I need to make sure is good.

Speaker 6 So, yeah, I

Speaker 6 God is a massive, massive factor, and he always will be.

Speaker 4 I appreciate you sharing that part.

Speaker 4 I took some of that from how you were describing your experience as as

Speaker 4 what we achieved. And I think that is a very unique way.
I mean, I've interviewed thousands of people.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And I think, you know, Ant, going all the way back to my initial question around gratefulness versus bitterness.

Speaker 4 To me, if you're living a faith-based life and you're focused on your family, it's very easy to be grateful. So that's a wonderful thing.

Speaker 4 Now,

Speaker 4 so you get done with your career. Did you start the organization before your career was over or after?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 We won't get too far into it right now. We can run back into it, but it was just a tattoo.

Speaker 6 Then up getting on my ribs and article came out, kids were making shirts and I'm like, wow, I can do something with this.

Speaker 6 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...

Speaker 6 This was just a tattoo for me, and now it's blown up into something. So we started that.

Speaker 6 I just wanted to make it as like a motivational movement to go out there and achieve, you know, whatever your goal was in life. it didn't even have to be in sports by no means.

Speaker 6 Um, but after we ended up retiring, I knew I wanted to do a non-profit, but when I tell you I knew zero about what a non-profit was, I thought if you brought in a million dollars, a million dollars went out.

Speaker 6 Obviously, that's not how it goes, you do whole operations on the backside. Um, but I didn't even know what I wanted to do.

Speaker 6 Obviously, I wanted to help people go after their dreams, but like, okay, well, how do you do that? Um, so we ended up starting it.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And that's when I called one of my partners now, one of my longtime friends, Brendan Hitzman. And I'm driving across the causeway, just getting back from Scottsdale.

Speaker 6 And I call him like, hey, you want to do a shirt with me just for like fun? You know, we'll, you know, whatever we make on the end, I'll break you off. And he's like, yeah.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 I don't know, dude. That's what I'm trying to figure out here.
And I brought up the nonprofit.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 that intrigues you, and 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.

Speaker 6 So, you know, we started the process and we got our 501c3 status on September 27th, 2023.

Speaker 4 Nice. So, talk a little bit about exactly what you're doing.

Speaker 6 So, what we're doing is we've hired a doctor and a curriculum writer.

Speaker 6 And our curriculum writer and doctor, they've studied historical figures over the years, all the way down from Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill.

Speaker 6 And we read about these guys all the time and girls all the time. But why? Why are we reading about these specific people?

Speaker 6 So what we did was we studied them and we ended up pulling out these common traits that they all had, all these similarities.

Speaker 6 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 call 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.

Speaker 6 So what we did was we pulled all those key points out and we wrote our own curriculum on

Speaker 6 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 they'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 uh 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

Speaker 6 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 partnered with the boys and girls club down in lafayette

Speaker 6 the Juvenile Corrections Center, the jail itself, Extramile, and a couple other organizations down there. And we've set up a pilot program.

Speaker 6 So we're going to run these kids to a pilot program ages 10 to 16. We'll have two subgroups in that

Speaker 6 10 to 13, 14 to 16. And then one will be with the facilitator and one without.

Speaker 6 Obviously, our hypothesis is the one with the facilitator is going to do much better, but for scalability-wise, then you have to start training the facilitator for everything.

Speaker 6 Not a problem, we can get it done. We've even started to look into AI

Speaker 6 LMSs to start trying to help these kids a little bit.

Speaker 6 But we'll run them through that program. And hopefully at the end, the data shows that they are in

Speaker 6 a much better mental state than they were before the program. And at that point, if we've got actually hard data showing that these kids are getting better, you know,

Speaker 6 we become a different animal there. So, and as of recent, we've actually been in talks with LSU, obviously the school I went to.

Speaker 6 We have a meeting with them on Thursday to actually try and see if we could get their student athletes through this.

Speaker 6 So we'd have to change up the verbiage, change up the formatting 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.

Speaker 6 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.
We just got to change up our delivery a little bit. Okay.

Speaker 6 That didn't work, this kind of hit, take that and go. So there is no failing in this.
It's only learning.

Speaker 4 How do you measure

Speaker 4 success in these scenarios? Like, what are what looks like progress?

Speaker 6 Progress is a kid saying,

Speaker 6 I feel better than when I was or 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.

Speaker 6 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 them to achieve their dream or get that job or be that father, and them to say, I don't think I'd be where I am without Heart Has No Limit.

Speaker 6 That 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.

Speaker 6 They are going to start reaching out to other people. So it's this chain reaction.
But those words, I cannot wait to hear.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I mean, I love it. I think that, you know,

Speaker 4 I'm going to take this a slightly different direction just because I have a couple interesting questions, questions that are interesting to me.

Speaker 4 So I've been doing motivational content for a long time, and it's funny.

Speaker 4 There are people that get it, and then I have a lot of other people that be like, oh, are you just trying to be like a YouTube celebrity or whatever? And I'm like, no,

Speaker 4 one,

Speaker 4 no one gives a shit about a 43-year-old white guy who, you know,

Speaker 4 no one cares.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 I said, too,

Speaker 4 I do it for, like you said, if there's one person who picks up on whatever.

Speaker 4 But I feel like,

Speaker 4 and I know what you're doing has educational components and it's based in research and science and all that kind of stuff too. So I'm not, don't take this

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 How do you

Speaker 4 How do you work past

Speaker 4 my belief is you have to be very optimistic to be in the world that you're in.

Speaker 4 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, you know, whatever, and all these terrible things that we know happen in childhood.

Speaker 4 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, you can, but there's so much cynicism around this, this type of stuff.

Speaker 4 How do you, especially like it with tick-tock and instagram reels and and all this kind of like real time and it there's 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

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 you know that's one That's one of the

Speaker 6 things that I've thought about more and more is

Speaker 6 it's easy to be optimistic in my mind, I think, because of where I came from. I never struggled for a meal.
I never thought I might not have a roof over my head.

Speaker 6 So it's hard for me to put in perspective what they are truly going through.

Speaker 6 But then

Speaker 6 something I've been kind of tinkering with a little bit is everybody's reality is their reality.

Speaker 6 So my worst day

Speaker 6 is maybe

Speaker 6 not getting a meal at the end of the day. Okay, that might be my ultimate worst day.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Whose is worse from whose perspective? Like, that's this hard thing. I'm trying to found, like, the thing I always try to do is put myself in their shoes.
I need to know how they're feeling.

Speaker 6 If they're trying to, like, for a cop situation,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 they possibly could lose their life. But then somebody gets the cop walks off and they throw an attitude.
It's like, well, that cop might have lost his friend the week before.

Speaker 6 You've got to try and see their side side of it.

Speaker 6 The trust part is the biggest thing. And I think that's one of the first modules we're going to start with is because in order for you to try and

Speaker 6 get better at life or take that next step or be optimistic, you've got to trust something.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And, you know, they're living in a house with five other siblings and they're fighting for one meal a day. And

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 I trust God

Speaker 6 with

Speaker 6 whatever I'm doing. If it goes south, it goes south because it was supposed to go south.
It's, I trust that he's going to lead me on the path. And I mean, for me, that's everything.

Speaker 6 I think that's the hard part that we're going to have to find is because we don't want to base it.

Speaker 6 all off of faith because 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.

Speaker 6 Like, no, that's you have your belief, but I want to get on the same side of the table with you.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 it's going to be a tough road.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I love that perspective.

Speaker 4 I live a very similar way.

Speaker 4 I

Speaker 4 am a believer, have been my entire life. I was raised Catholic and kind of Methodist, I guess.
So very confusing. You couldn't get two more opposite Sunday experiences.

Speaker 4 But then similar to you as well. I played sports my entire life.
And

Speaker 4 Sundays are, there's games on Sundays. And you, you know, and I've heard people say, well, you know, you should go to church instead of play the game.
And I always said to my, you know, in my mind,

Speaker 4 if if God wanted me to go to church, he wouldn't have made me a baseball player.

Speaker 4 And I know that sounds trite. And

Speaker 4 there's smoke coming out of the ears of all the purists listening to this right now.

Speaker 4 But my point is, like,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 if you believe that God puts you on the path and it's your job to walk that path, and this is where I'm at.

Speaker 4 And there's a baseball game on the Sunday, you're telling me he's omnipotent, but he didn't realize that East Greenbush Little League was going to have a game game at 10 a.m.

Speaker 4 on Sunday morning in 1993. You know, I just couldn't, you know, like, so to me, it's always kind of like, as long as I'm doing my work and my connection, and I have a point to this.

Speaker 4 So, my point is, the reason that I love your perspective on this particular topic is I do believe spirituality is vital. I think especially

Speaker 4 in today's day and age where you see women cutting their hair off and refusing to have sex because Donald Trump won the presidency, which to me is religious fervor, right?

Speaker 4 My belief is all this crazy, you know, take the super right-wing and super left-wing.

Speaker 4 These are people with a God-sized hole in their heart that are dying for a relationship with a higher power and they grab onto these causes because they have nothing else to grab onto, right?

Speaker 4 If you're an atheist or a nihilist, you have nothing to grab onto. So you grab onto these causes.
Okay.

Speaker 4 So my point saying, I've said this three times now, but I'm trying to wrap my head around how I want to finish.

Speaker 4 Um, is I think it is our job as believers to believe

Speaker 4 and then accept everyone else for exactly the way they come. And the thing that drives me nuts about

Speaker 4 specifically Christians is their

Speaker 4 this desire to put their faith on other people, right? Like, like your faith is yours, mine is mine.

Speaker 4 I don't even care if you're not a believer, right? It doesn't matter to me because I believe, and that should be, that's supposed to be enough.

Speaker 4 And I think that when we can, when we can bring people in to faith in general, right?

Speaker 4 Maybe they're introduced to Christianity, but then they want to become a Jew, or maybe Islam is the right player, wherever they want to go, right?

Speaker 4 But I think bringing them in in a way where you accept them, you are open about who you are and what you believe, but completely accepting them in the state in which you receive them is how we bring people back to the faith versus this finger pointing, if you don't do it the way I do it, then you're wrong or you don't understand.

Speaker 4 And like, no one wants that shit. That just turns everybody off and is in my way, in my belief structure, not how God intended us to spread the faith.
So I love that.

Speaker 4 I love your take, especially getting in front of kids that probably, you know, a lot of kids that come from either inner cities or there's a lot of rural, a lot of white rural downtrin communities where I'm from.

Speaker 4 So it's a really weird area. We have these very old, dense

Speaker 4 urban areas, small city urban areas that are a lot of African-American and Latino

Speaker 4 poor. And then 15 miles down the road, you have the same experience, but in a trailer park or in, you know, some sort of mountain community or whatever happening as well.

Speaker 4 And it's like, how do you speak to these groups? Oftentimes,

Speaker 4 like you said,

Speaker 4 they're so caught up in like, I don't want to get beat by my dad

Speaker 4 or in a fight with the gang that's running through my street or my

Speaker 4 trailer park or whatever, right? Like the idea of...

Speaker 4 Some sort of peace and even giving the idea of God a second thought is like, you know, I'm trying trying to survive.

Speaker 6 You don't even have time for it. Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's a wonderful thing what you're doing, man.

Speaker 4 I'm so happy that you're out there doing it.

Speaker 6 I think it's grace, kindness, and confidence. I think that's the biggest thing is you can go and talk to people.
Don't throw it in anybody's face.

Speaker 6 That's not going to do anything. They don't want it thrown in their face.
Give them grace.

Speaker 6 Be kind to them. Talk to them as if you wanted to be how you would want to be talked to.
And be confident in your faith. And let them wonder,

Speaker 6 why does he look like that? Why does he have his chest so far out? His head so far high?

Speaker 6 What is that aura that is coming? And I'm a big believer in energy.

Speaker 6 Have them wonder. The only way they're going to convert or want to start down that path is if they wonder.
You can't force somebody

Speaker 6 to be helped if they don't want to be helped. And that's, again, getting back to the trusting.
It's not like what these kids were going to be like, hey, let's go delete the fear of failure.

Speaker 6 I'm going to teach you how to be resilient. Well, if they don't trust themselves, how can they trust that they are being resilient?

Speaker 6 They can't. So be kind to the people.
Make them wonder, okay, what is it that

Speaker 6 dude has or that girl has? What is it? Let them start questioning. That's a great spot.
That is the foundation of everything. They're brainstorming.
What is this? What is this feeling?

Speaker 6 Why haven't I not seen that? Can I get that? What do I have to do to get that? All these are questions that are perfect. Those are the questions that I want to start popping up in their heads.

Speaker 6 Because like you said, they probably weren't even thinking of that stuff before. They're trying to just fight for their next meal or not get shot here or do this and that.

Speaker 6 I want them to start brainstorming. I want them to start dreaming.
Some of these kids haven't even dreamt. I dreamt my whole life because I had a roof over my head.

Speaker 6 I got the greatest parents in the world. I never had to worry about a thing besides dreaming.
Very easy for me. Not for them.
I want them to feel that.

Speaker 6 I want them to think of stuff they never even remotely thought of. And we're going to get there.
I promise you that.

Speaker 4 Dude, I believe it. And I love that you're starting.
The idea of starting with trust, not just in you as a facilitator, but in themselves, I think is where you have to be.

Speaker 4 I grew up with, I had a buddy growing up, and his dad used to beat the living shit out of him. And, you know, you look at the way his life

Speaker 4 played out.

Speaker 4 He's got himself straightened out now, but man, he was just trying to survive.

Speaker 4 And survival oftentimes was not being in his house and hanging out with kids that are five years older than him because they got a flop house and are selling drugs. And he's, you know, he just does.

Speaker 4 And all he knows is if I go there and deal with their bullshit, I don't get beat by my dad at home. Right.
And like,

Speaker 4 you know, that kind of, that kind of scenario,

Speaker 4 you know, and he had a lot of, he had to deal with a lot of nonsense um in his life that you know some of which he brought on himself but like when you're when you're coming from that place of like i just i just needed something to eat or i don't want to get the crap beat out of me or i don't want to watch my mom get the crap beat out of me or whatever um

Speaker 4 you can't like you said you can't you don't have time for dreams you don't have time to slow down and and and i've watched buddies go through it growing up where i grew up i grew up in a I grew up in a town in 900 in the middle of nowhere where we used to say you could leave your doors open because the criminals lived in our town they didn't rob in our town so like the whole banks took like the launch pad to go rob people and then they come back um

Speaker 4 no that's a joke but uh but it was a shitty little town um

Speaker 4 but my point in saying all that is i think i think where you're coming from this idea of starting with trust not just in you or your organization or the facilitator that you've paired them up with but in helping them start to trust themselves and their own ability to make decisions because um and you know you can see it even in sports.

Speaker 4 Obviously, this is a more

Speaker 4 shallow example, but

Speaker 4 if you're coaching a team,

Speaker 4 they can trust you and that's great and they'll work hard for you, but they don't become elite until they believe that they can do it themselves.

Speaker 4 And that's what every coach is trying to get to: how do I turn this kid from trusting the process to trusting him or herself? And that's where the real change happens. So

Speaker 4 where do you see, like, okay, so you're building it out? It sounds like

Speaker 4 West Coast, Southwest, Louisiana, some deep south. Like I heard you mention Scottsdale.
Like if someone's listening to this and

Speaker 4 they're like, I'm interested in this program, either as a supporter or maybe a partnership or something, like where do you see this growing and in what areas of the country are you able to do these type of programs today?

Speaker 6 So we're really,

Speaker 6 as of today, really nowhere because we haven't filmed the actual filming part. The curriculum is fully finished.
We should be shooting the curriculum around mid-January, it's looking like.

Speaker 6 It's obviously tough getting eight different speakers, excuse me, eight different speakers all lined up for two days, you know, to just go in fully.

Speaker 6 But once the curriculum is filmed and finished, we're going to start it in Lafayette, Louisiana. We'll do that whole thing.
And we've already got confirmation.

Speaker 6 Sorry again.

Speaker 6 We've already got confirmation from the Boys and Girls Club that if everything goes as planned as well, they'll take this to the Boys and Girls Club of USA, which is a nationwide thing.

Speaker 6 So obviously, hopefully, we're hoping that.

Speaker 6 And then we'll, like I said, we're in conversations with LSU right now on getting the student athletes down or the student athletes going through it as well.

Speaker 6 Paul Moneri, who is my coach at LSU, who's signed with South Carolina now with coaching over there, he's on our board and they're a big believer in mental health over there at South Carolina as well.

Speaker 6 So as soon as we can

Speaker 6 finish up the red tape with the IRB and ARB side of LSU, we'll see if we can get them in a joint study as well.

Speaker 6 But yeah, really, I mean, once we get the filming and everything done and this actual curriculum done,

Speaker 6 the way people are going to be able to access the full curriculum is actually going to be ran through our for-profit side as well on our clothing brand.

Speaker 6 We're actually going to do something really new. I'm super stoked about it.
I think it's going to be a massive game changer, but it's called some NFC tech, the same stuff that's in your credit cards.

Speaker 6 We're going to actually intertwine it into our clothing so where that kids will be able to tap in and get full access to the curriculum so that they can start working through helping their mental side.

Speaker 6 We'll obviously give them other community things that drive more community-based events and stuff through that.

Speaker 6 So, if you've got a shirt, you've got the curriculum, you can get access to it.

Speaker 6 But if you want to get involved in stuff, you can just go to hearthasnolimitfoundation.com.

Speaker 6 And then we've got our full website there.

Speaker 6 And then we've got our donor link that's got a very good description of a summary of what we're actually doing, who's all involved, and then other ways you can get involved as well.

Speaker 4 Guys, I'll have the link to hearthasnolimitfoundation.com in show notes and descriptions. So whatever you're listening or watching, and you can just scroll down and find that.

Speaker 4 Cole, I appreciate you, man. I appreciate your approach.
I love that you're helping kids.

Speaker 4 I think that the way you view the world is incredible. And thank you for your time.

Speaker 6 No, thank you, Ryan. I appreciate it.
It was some fun.

Speaker 6 Let's go.

Speaker 4 Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look easy.

Speaker 3 Thank you for listening to the Ryan Hanley show.

Speaker 3 Be sure to subscribe and leave us a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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