“We not only want to be a feeder for the players we find across the country into MLB organizations, but we also want to be a feeder organization for future MLB scouts, baseball operations interns, social media interns, writers, and analytics personnel.”. – Justin Volman
A Red Sox fan born in the heart of Yankeeville, Justin Volman is the CEO of the Collegiate Baseball Scouting Network. He is the oldest of two boys (brother Adam) to David and Melissa Volman from Fairfield County, CT just outside of NYC.
A recent graduate of the University of Alabama this young, ambitious entrepreneur took his award-winning 2017 Aldag Business Plan concept into the real world to help high school and college baseball players get the recognition and exposure he feels a lot of them lack in the sport.
Justin took the plan, some start-up capital, recruited a team of like-minded baseball enthusiasts and hit the ground running. He hired over 120 regional scouts in the first year. He has a full-time staff of managers in the scouting, analytics, content writing and social media divisions within the company. His plan to grow as the “go-to” scouting service for MLB teams, college coaches, and sports agents domestically will eventually expand internationally into Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin American countries.
His five to ten-year plan involves creating future jobs for young budding scouts, baseball ops interns, analytical interns, writers and social media personnel for Minor and Major League organizations worldwide. Eventually, his vision is to branch off using the same model into soccer and basketball providing equally important information and analytics to those sports.
All this! Annnd…
Are you ready for this? He is only 22 years old.
You can connect with Justin here:
Website: cbscout.net
Justin shares with us in this episode:
- How he took an idea to solve a problem and turned it into a business.
- How sad he was the day Shea Hillenbrand was traded.
- His love for baseball analytics and helping others succeed.
- What his recipe for success has been so far.
- And much, much more!
How We Met
I have to credit a friend of mine Damon Mitchell for this one. Damon is a writer living in Mexico and stumbled upon a podcast that interviewed Justin about his company College Baseball Scouting Network. Now Damon is not a “baseball guy,” but he is a passionate listener and thoughtful human being, so he thought of me when he saw the opportunity for writing about baseball and passed on the info.
I immediately listened to the interview on Fan Graphs‘ podcast Effectively Wild with Justin and Michael Bowman. I was so taken back by this 22 yr old young man that I couldn’t turn it off. I listened to his vision for his company and his desire to help other young aspiring baseball enthusiasts break into a challenging and highly competitive industry and was blown away.
He was inspiring to say the least. Motivating and confident in every way.
Ah, to be 22 again!
I had to meet this guy. I went straight to the website got his contact info and immediately sent him an email. I wasn’t quite sure what I had in mind, but I knew that this was one of those life opportunities knocking and I had to open the door to see who it was. I have made a habit of doing this over the years and quite honestly credit all my success and much of my failures to this practice.
We spoke for a bit and agreed that I would come on board as a part-time scout here in BC, Canada and contributing writer under my new literary hero Editor in Chief, Lance Brozdowski. So far this has been a great relationship as I look forward to working more in-depth with Justin and his team on the expansion of the international scouting market and continuing to write articles for the opinion section of the site.
Wake up aspiring baseball junkies! If you are looking to break into the biz, stop wasting time waiting for them to come to you. Get a hold of Justin NOW; they are hiring all across the board in every department for this season and next. Hopefully, someday our paths will cross, and I will see you at the yard!
Enjoy!
Love the Game. Live the Dream