Freeman grew up on a dairy farm operation in South Central Indiana performing duties that included cleaning stalls, milking cows, tending to crops, delivering new born calves, mending fences to mixing and grinding feed for the dairy herds. He also worked at a feed mill during the mid-1970’s as a teenager where he became Manager at the young age of 15. His duties there included ordering & stocking
animal feeds and supplements, customer sales & service plus, grinding and mixing custom feed orders for local farmers. Freeman began working at a local grocery chain, mainly in the pet food aisle, ordering and stocking shelves. He worked his way up to Head of Stock before moving on to a job within the plastics division of a medical device manufacturing company in 1981, where he quickly advanced through the ranks from a Quality Control Inspector to Lab Technician to Draftsman to Product Manager to Manager of R&D. Freeman’s duties included overseeing the Drafting & Engineering Departments plus several Project Leaders, working closely with Physicians & Surgeons on new product development plus department managers on tooling and process engineering. He spent the majority of his time researching polymers in order to enhance the needs of his customers and was also responsible for all product pricing. Freeman left the medical device industry and began raising exotic birds in the early 1990’s, providing hand-fed baby Macaws, Cockatoos and the like to pet stores throughout the Midwest. He also chartered a No-Kill animal shelter, rescuing several Greyhounds from dog racing tracks and saving local, homeless animals. Freeman then began researching pet foods and their nutritional values, due to several pet food recalls in the early 1990’s. He ending up developing super premium formulae, arranged for laboratory testing in order to meet or exceed AAFCO nutritional standards and located a contract manufacturer. With a finished product in hand, Freeman hit the road and the fax machine, drumming up sales within the Natural Foods Industry. His product landed on the shelves or in the hands of customers in nearly twenty states in a short two-year period of time. Freeman also attended the Natural Products Expo East, as a vendor and picked up several natural food stores on the east coast of the United States as new customers. Freeman is a member of Burgoon Church, where he enjoys playing drums and singing. He has played in several local bands, opening for artists such as Koko Taylor and Sawyer Brown. Freeman is a former member of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE), Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), the Natural Foods Manufacturers (NFM) and the Natural Products Association (NPA). Freeman is also a past member of the Sons of American Legion, past Commander of Squadron 2000 of the Sons of AMVETS, where he became the first Squadron Commander in the United States to reach over 500 members.
