Geek Turned Black Belt | Work From Home Dad | Vance Crowe Podcast Episode 35

About this episode

Morgan Freed, a jiujitsu training partner recommended to Vance by "Coach" (Mike), tells his life story in three acts. Act one: a suburban Illinois teenager who got expelled from an all-white high school for smoking pot and was enrolled by his father — a longtime East St. Louis inner-city teacher and later principal — in an all-Black high school, becoming its first white graduate. He describes genuine warmth and dedicated teachers there, contrasted with his own subsequent year of heavy drinking, drug use, and near-homelessness before a self-described moment of clarity sent him into the Navy. Act two: in 2002, while stationed near DC, Morgan was randomly assaulted and hit in the head with debris, resulting in a multi-day coma, traumatic brain injury, and PTSD — an event so disruptive he says he can't remember who he was before it and considers himself "two different people." This incident drove him into fitness and martial arts as both coping mechanism and identity, eventually training under multiple coaches to a black belt over roughly 13-15 years, alongside chronic hypervigilance (weapons in his car, discomfort in crowds, a self-described inability to navigate without GPS). Act three: after building a personal-training career at two YMCAs, Morgan pivoted, following his wife's example paying off $300,000 in debt, into a home-based direct-sales wellness/DNA-testing business (ID Life) that let both spouses work from home and let him become a stay-at-home dad to his wife's three children. The conversation closes on marriage communication techniques (the "mirroring" method, love languages), faith and prayer with his kids, and reflections on suffering, fate, and identity discontinuity after trauma.

“I started with them and then there was a guy who became my first juujitsu coach who finally started training... I just trained and trained and trained two, three times a day as much as I could... I've been a black belt now for about a year and a half... 15 years.”

“My wife is rogue color smart... whatever my wife says, do it. Trust me, you'll be better off... if you know it, you'll have a better life. Learn the love language.”

“My father... an inner city school teacher in East St. Louis... taught there for 30 years entirely all black. Retired as a principal... I am the first kid to ever go or graduate from an entirely all black high school in East St. Louis.”

Notable quotes

“In 2002 I was stationed in DC and got hit in the head with a cinder block... I was in a coma for a few days... I can't remember two weeks... that's the day everything changed for me.”

“She goes, Morgan, I think I'm finally gonna get outta debt... she had $300,000 in debt when I met her... I realized, if she can do it, why can't I?”

“I am the first kid to ever go or graduate from an entirely all black high school in East St. Louis.”

“Somehow I have a belief that words are more powerful than anything else in the world... I think words have more power and can do more damage than anything else.”