Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - The Simple Lesson To Create POSITIVE CHANGE, With Damon West Keynote Speaker & WSJ Best Selling Author, Episode 299

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

In This Episode You Will Learn About:  How you can become an agent of CHANGE in your own life   The coffee bean analogy that will insight the true power inside of you    Discovering LIGHT in your life during the darkest moments  How to keep hope ALIVE during your lowest points  Resources: Website: damonwest.org  Read The Coffee Bean  Join The Coffee Bean Masterclass   LinkedIn & Facebook: @Damon West  Instagram & Twitter: @damonwest7 Youtube: @The Damon West Channel  Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Use promo code CONFIDENCE for 15% off sitewide at  https://justthrivehealth.com/discount/Confidence  Show Notes:  Did you know the power to radically change your life is ALREADY inside you? When Damon West was sentenced to 65 years in prison he didn’t know what he was going to do with his future, but he decided to become his own agent of change. Some days will be better than others, but you have to choose to keep moving forward no matter what is thrown your way! Tune in to discover the insights from Damon’s book The Coffee Bean, and learn how to channel your own inner strength.  About The Guest: Damon West was sentenced to 65 years in prison. Yep, you heard that right! He’s now a college professor, international keynote speaker, and WSJ best selling author of The Coffee Bean! He’s here to share how he transitioned his life into the one of his dreams, and became his OWN agent of change.   If You Liked This Episode You Might Also Like These Episodes: The Top Way To Stop Playing Small & Go For More! With Heather!  Tap Into Your FULL Potential, With Julia Boorstin Senior Media & Tech Correspondent at CNBC  Discover The Root Of Your Confidence, With Nicole Kalil Author & Host Of This Is Women’s Work Podcast  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let loose so with no sir Yo good yo good yo good yo good Let loose so with no sir No sir no sir no sir Yo good yo good yo good No sir yo good No sir no sir Let loose so with no sir

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So mark your calendars. Prime Day is coming July 11th and 12th. Learn more at amazon.com slash Prime Day. So he walks me through it. The carrot turns soft, goes in harbor and becomes soft. 1012 Learn more at amazon.com slash prime day. The coffee bean was the only thing that could change the water because the power was inside the coffee bean. That the coffee bean changes the water into a pot of coffee because the coffee bean is the change agent. Everything else in life is going to be changed by the water. Its last words to me, be a coffee bean. That's the last words that Man Never Said to me in 2009 before the prison bus came to

pick me up to go serve my life sentence in a Texas maximum security prison. I'm on this journey with me each week when you join me, you're going to chase down our goals. We've come at first aid and set you up for better tomorrow. After you're asleep, I'm ready for my close time. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to be with me this week.

You're not going to believe our guests. He was sentenced to 65, 65 years in a Texas prison. Damon West once had it all. He now is a college professor, internationally known keynote speaker, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Coffee Bean. I mean, this guy is, his book is everywhere. It's incredible.

His autobiography, The Change Agent, how a former college QB sentenced to life in prison, transformed his world vividly, tells how he transformed the pot of boiling water that is a Texas maximum security prison into a pot of coffee. Damon, thank you so much for being here today. Heather, thanks a lot for having me on the show.

It's so good. When you reached out to me the other day, you're like, hey, I'm a friend of Ed, and John, and Catherine. I'm like, I grew up in a way you are. I'm probably going to social media. I was already following you. So yeah, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for your time today.

This is great. Oh my gosh, it's so crazy. We have so many people in common. But I love your story. I love the coffee bean. As I mentioned to you, I use your coffee bean and so many speaking engagements. And I'm just so excited to get into the behind the scenes because we've had John Gordon on the show before.

Most of my listeners, I think everybody listening right now knows about the coffee bean, but to hear your story and where this all originated from is mind blowing. Will you take us back to back when you thought you had it all back in the QB days? Yeah, no, I was ahead at all. I mean, like I came from a great family, I raised in Southeast Texas. In Texas, football is a really big deal. And I was like one of these

star high school quarterbacks, scholarship play football and a university, the Division One College football, a university in North Texas. Got injured a couple years in the college, got into drugs, cocaine, XC pills, but I was very functional, I had it. Graduated college in 99, Heather, I moved off to Washington DC. I got a job working in the United States Congress, worked for a guy running for president.

Then in 2004, I moved back to Dallas to train to be a stockbroker for one of the biggest Wall Street banks in the world, UBS, United Bank of Switzerland. And it was at that to be a stockbroker for one of the biggest Wall Street banks the world UBS United Bank of Switzerland. And it was at that job as a stockbroker in 04 that my life and the lives of so many other innocent people would forever be changed. It was 2004 Heather. I was passed out of sleep at work.

This other broker comes up. He sees me sleepin' and he's visibly shaking and he wakes me up. He's like, Damon wake up. You can't sleep when it's job. The markets are open. You're messing with people's money. He said, they'll fire you if they catch you sleep in here. So he said, come on down to the parking garage. I've got something that'll pick you up.

So Heather, I'll follow this guy down to the parking garage. He's got the broker down there. We get to do this little sports car. And he hands me this glass pipe with these crystal rocks in it. And man, I've never seen a glass pipe before. I'm a man. What is that? He said, Damien, just relax? He said, Damon, just relax. He said, it's crystal meth.

He said, you're gonna love this stuff. And Heather, true or words never been spoken because I fell in love with crystal meth the day. Methos the most evil, most destructive, most addictive drug. I smoked it one time and I was instantly hooked, just like that. And I started giving everything away for that drug because Heather, that's what addicts do.

Addics give things away. People ask me all the time, like I work a program recovery today, I'm gonna 12 step program recovery. But people will ask me, what's the mindset of an addict? And here's the mindset of an addict. Here's addiction mode at one.

And when I'm talking about addiction here, it's not just drugs now called, it's anything you're addicted to. It takes you away from the most important days of life. It could be food, money, clothing, shopping, the internet, Instagram, whatever. Attics give up their goals to meet their behaviors. Attics give up goals to me behaviors. Focused and successful when driven people, they give up those behaviors to meet their goals. And I started giving them a thing away. I gave away my job, my home, my car, my savings account, my family, my tether, and a god.

I went from working on Wall Street to living on the streets of Dallas. And then I was home. There really is living on the streets. Oh, yeah, I've slipped into abandoned buildings. I've slipped into people's car. Heather, I've slipped and I've done it all. I mean, I lived on the street, slipped on pork benches. I mean, this is like less than zero kind of stuff.

Like, I'm destitute. I don't have a place. I don't have, but a, you know, a couple sets of clothes. I mean, I've lost everything at this point, Heather. I mean, everything. And so what happened is I started becoming a criminal once I was homeless because I lost everything, but I still had this addiction that's gotten worse.

And so I started breaking into cars. I started breaking into storage units, do some shoplifting here and there. And eventually it escalates to home burglaries. I started breaking into people's houses. And these burglaries that I committed, Heather, they were in the uptown neighborhood of Dallas. They called them the uptown burglaries.

Uptown is one of the nicest parts of Dallas. It's where I used to live when I was a stockbroker. And these burglaries went on for about three years and Heather, when I broke into people's houses, I didn't, this is a different kind of crime. I didn't just kill people's property. Burgwee is a very personal thing. I stole these people's sense of security, my victims.

I stole their sense of security and I, I don't even know if they can get that back. Wait, I mean, I need to stop you for a second because this is creeping me out in such a big way on so many levels. Okay, first of all, here's what I don't understand. And I'm gonna sound judgemental right now, and I apologize for that.

And this is something I'm working on. But like, when I see a homeless person, and of course I live in Miami, I see homeless people every day, right? It's a major city. And my son, you know, gets very nervous around homeless people. And I always say to him,

that as a child of God, and he that's somebody's child right there, you know, let's look through the eyes of compassion. We don't know the story is always one of the things I want to remind him when we see, because I know that we really don't, but to know you now, to know how successful you are. And in my eyes, your quote unquote, normal, right to me, where were your parents when this was like, why couldn't you call someone? I don't understand how, I don't understand how you couldn't go back to a regular life. Yeah, and here's the answer to it

why you see all the homeless people, they don't, they don't go back to a regular life. And by the way, when I see homeless people, I always say just under my breath, there before the grace of God go out. Because I know what that's like. I've been in that world. And here's why you don't just pick up

and go back to normal life because if you could just do that, everybody would. When you're an addict, when you're in your addiction, addiction takes control of the way you think. It's a disease with the way you think. It's a disease of the mind. And you have to change the way you think to get over the other side of addiction.

That's what a program recovery comes in. That's what I didn't have at that time. But when I'm in my addiction, all I think about is getting high. The addiction is a very selfish thing. You'll do anything you can to get high and you'll hurt other people on the way. I tell people all the time, Heather,

addicts aren't necessarily bad people. They're sick people that do bad things. And that's what I was. I was a sick person. And I couldn't just get up and leave Dallas because the dope was in Dallas. My drug dealers were in Dallas. And my access to the dope was in Dallas. So I became a criminal. And my parents were six hours away in Polarthor, Texas where I grew up. You know, I'm a grown man at this point too. I'm 29

years old. I mean, they would have to come kid that me to pull me out of this world. And I wasn't leaving. They even sent somebody to do a family friend to do an intervention with me back and like, it's like 2006. They know something's wrong, but they don't know what's wrong. They call, I lie to them. What are you doing now for a job?

I lost my job as a stock broker, by the way. I couldn't pass a series seven. I couldn't even function anymore, because of the math. So I got fired as a broker. But after that, I would't pass a series seven. I couldn't even function anymore because of the math. So I got fired as a broker. But after that, I would just lie to my parents. I'd tell them I was, you know, working for a software company or a limousine company. I had all these different lies.

And when the lies weren't any good, I just quit taking their calls, Heather. I mean, I'm a grown man in another town six hours away. So they know something's wrong and they just can't do anything. There's nothing they can do. They have to literally kidnap me and they tried to have an intervention. But on July 30th, 2008, these burglaries that I've been committing, they went on for about three years.

And at this point, July 30th, 2008, I've got my own burglary crew. I've become the quarterback again. Only this time, it's a very bad scene. On the top criminal, on this criminal pyramid in the city very bad scene. I'm the top criminal in this criminal pyramid in the city of Dallas. The shot color is what they call it. I mean, I'm the guy at the very top. And I'm sitting on the couch that day,

July 30th, 2008, with my dope dealers, name is Tex. And I'm telling Texas we're passing the pipe back and forth. Tex, you don't want to be here right now. You need to get out of here. The cops are closing in on me. The end is near.

10 days before this, the guy that I was doing all these birdies with in Dallas is getting dust in, had been picked up by the Dallas police department and a stolen car. So they've got my partner in crime and custody. I know it's just a matter of time before they get to me. And just as I pass the pipe back to text, the window on my right blows out in shatters.

And then tell him when to cross my living room floor with this little canister going in over and it's smoking on one side. Heather, I've seen this movie before. I know what that canister's about to do. And I try to get out of the living room as fast as I could, too late. The flashbang grenade blew up right in my face,

bright white light, loud noise. I can't hear my ears are ringing. And when I came to, when I can see you and hear again, there's a cop standing over me in full-swat right here, voodoo my chest, the barrel of the salt rifle was digging in my eye socket, his fingers on the trigger and he is screaming at the top of his lungs, don't move, don't move.

And man, these cops come flood to my apartment and one of the cop screams out loud, we got him. We got the uptown burger. And that's the name I'll live with for the rest of my life, over there. These cops come flood into my apartment and one of the cops screams that out loud, we got it. We got the uptown burger. And that's the name I live with for the rest of my life, I'm the uptown burger. About a dozen other methodics in myself, young and old, male and female, black and white, and everything in between. Because drugs and addiction do not discriminate.

But we, indiscriminately, without reservation, broke into the homes of dozens and dozens of people, and the uptown neighborhood of Dallas to feed our insatiable meth habits, they took me to jail that day. They processed me in fingerprints, mugshot, threw me to hold and so, they sent my bond at $1.4 million.

1.4 million, Heather, there's 9,000 people in Dallas, kinda, it's one of the biggest jails in America. 9,000 people, no one, not child molesters, not murderers, not rapists, had a bond at high. But Dallas wasn't gonna let me get out on bond because they were gonna take me to a very public trial and it was either. I mean, it was when I walked into the courtroom 10 months later, there's cameras in the courtroom. It's on the news every night. May 18, 2009. 10 months after my arrest, I'm standing in front of a jury in Dallas, and

the jury listened to a six-day trial. Had their six days as a long criminal trial. These are crimes that were non-aggregated, meaning no one was ever home. I never saw my victims. They never saw me. No one got hurt. The weapons were used. These are property crimes around drugs.

But at the end of this six day trial, the jury hated my guts and they went to deliberate for 10 minutes on that sentence. Yeah, 10 minutes. And I gave them every reason to hate me, Heather. I was a bad guy. I mean, I was, look what I was doing. I was breaking into people's houses. I was a ringleader of all these other methodics. But 10 minutes, 10 minutes means they have their mind made up. When they brought me back in the courtroom from that little recess, my lawyer, Karen Lambert, she said, brace yourself, this is going to be bad. And I might have had Karen. She said, well, you were gone for the brief 10 minutes, the jury said,

I know to the judge, she said, they wanted to know if they could give you life without parole. Life without parole, that's a capital punishment for crimes where people were killed. I'm like Karen, this is crazy. No one was even home. She said, get ready. And the judge called the court back in and read the sentence out loud.

Damon Joseph West, you are here by sentence to 65 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Heather, 65 years in Texas is a life sentence. The jury gave me life that day. Yeah, it's crazy. It's absolutely wild. Obviously, I didn't do the entire life sentence instead of in instead of a prison because yeah I'm not on a work release program right now. I made it out. I did seven years and three months at a maximum security Pitted entry in Beaumont, Texas before I made parole. But the story of the coffee bean and where I heard it from for the first time three months at a maximum security pretty at entry in Beaumont, Texas, before I made parole.

But the story of the coffee bean, and where I heard it from for the first time, happened shortly after my trial was over. The day the trial was over, right after the trial, the sheriff and Bayliffe S. Corby out handcuffs, they put me in a little side room, there's a blue proof glass right there. They told me to wait. And a few minutes later, they escorted my mom and my dad into this room on the other side of the glass. They feel terrible. They feel bad for my parents because I just got life. I mean, no one saw that coming. The DA wanted it, but for a jury,

just to give a guy a life like that, his first felony offense and property crimes. So they give my parents one last visit with me. It's a little five minute visit. One of the most impactful conversations I've ever had. And my mom is telling me, she's like, Damon, listen, she said, debts in life demand to be paid and you just got hit with one hell of a bill from the state of Texas. She said, but you did the things they said you did. So you have to pay that debt to society. She said, but you owe your father and I debt to Damon. We gave you all the opportunities, love and support to be anything you want to be in life. She said, but you owe your father and I debt to Damon, we gave you all the opportunities,

love and support to be anything you want to be in life. She said, that's how you just repaid us, what we saw in that courtroom, that's not going to work. And she's reminded me, you know, we raised you in Port Arthur, Texas, a giant multi-potemacy, he gave you a great moral compass, what you chose or not you, she said, so here's the debt you're going to pay to us. When you go to prison, you will not get in one of these white hate groups, one of these Aryan brotherhood type of gangs because you're scared because you're the minority there. She said it's not going to work. You were never raised to be racist.

You're not going to start now. She said, you will not get any tattoos while you're inside that prison. Heather, I show people my sleeves a little time. I was in a maximum security level five, level five pinnet entries with the highest level there is, that's where the lifers go. And that's where I had to go with the lifers, like Alcatraz. May these guys wanna tattoo every inch of your body

in the joint, Heather, they'd hit me up all the time. Wes, let me put a tattoo on you, man. I tell them the same thing, Heather, I can't do it, dude, my mom said no. You know, because that's what she did, she said, she said, Damon, no gangs, no tattoos. She said, you come back as the man we raised or don't come back to us at all. I mean, yeah, you're a mother. Imagine saying that to your son. Well, thank God she did say that to you, though. I mean, I don't know where she got that strength in that moment, but something, you know, that was powerful, but she did for you.

Good news. I've found out where she got that from, because that's what I wanted. When I got out of prison, we started, and when I pulled out of prison, I lived with my parents for the first two years, and so I'm sitting down with my mom when I asked her, it's like, mom, when you told me that, where did that come from? So my mother is a nurse, and she said, Damon, as a nurse, I see things always like that as a nurse. My brain is trained for that. And she said, what I saw is my son is laying on a gurney and he's dying, he's bleeding out. And that was triage. Triage is where they get in there and they just try

to save your life. It's a mess, it's ugly, it doesn't look great, but they stemmed the flow of blood. She said, all I was doing was triage at that point because I'm looking at my son that I'm about to lose. I've gotta do something. And she said, that's what the Holy Spirit gave her to say and that's what she said.

And she even backed it up right after she said it, she said, do you understand this debt you're gonna pay to us? No gangs, no tattoos. I was like, yeah, I'm on my got it. But Heather, I don't know. I don't know if it's been a person. I don't know how to do this. I have no tattoos. I was like, yeah, I'm on my got it. But Heather, I don't know. I don't know if it's been a prison. I don't know how I'm gonna do this.

I have no clue. And I'm in county jail for two more months before the prison bus comes to get me. And while I'm in county, I'm asking every guy it's been a prison before. How long have you survived? What am I gonna do? And every guy I talk to, black, white, Asian, Hispanic,

they all say the same thing. You have to get into a gang because you can't survive when you're going without a gang. Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, they all say the same thing. You have to get into a game, because you can't survive when you're going without a game. But there was this one guy that was so different, this older black man named Mr. Jackson. And Mr. Jackson, Heather, he's what you call

a career criminal, the dude's been in and out of prison all of his life. But he's the most positive guy I've ever met in my life. And so it comes up to me one day, and he's always walk around the smile on his face and he says, hey, West, I've been watching how you're dealing with those knuckleheads, those dummies talking about you're gonna get into a gang.

He said, man, no, it's these fools. You wanna keep the promise you made to your mom and your dad and let me tell you what prison's gonna be like. And so he walks me through it, Heather. He's telling me that prison is all about race and he's telling me all the inmates in there wanted to be about race. That when I walk in the door,

the white gangs get the first dibs on me because I'm white. Then I have to fight all the white gangs off if I wanted to be independent of the white gangs. If I survive that, they gotta fight the black gangs. And the white gangs will send the black gangs after me. And the black gangs will come after me and and jump me and beat me.

But he said, you've got it. If you survive this and you can survive this, you'll earn the right to walk alone. He said, the strongest man and person always walks along. West, he told me the truth about fighting, Heather. He said, you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights. It means that some days you're going to win and some days you're going to lose. And he said, it's okay to lose. Get back up. And he's telling me, get back up. But when he's telling me this back in 2009, I'm looking back at the sky, I get deer and headlights. All those violence and terror I'm about to walk into. That's when he's like, West, let me break it

down for you a different way. He said, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of warm water. And he said anything we put to the pot of warm water is going to be changed by the heat and the pressure inside that pot. He said, I'm going to put three things in that pot of warm water is going to be changed by the heat and the pressure inside that pot. He said, I'm going to put three things in that pot of warm water and watch how they change. A carrot, an egg, and a coffee bean. Heather here is where I first heard the story of the coffee bean. The summer of 2009 in Dallas County, jail, exactly 10 years before John and I write the book, The Coffee Bean in the summer of 2019.

So he walked me through it. The carrot turns soft, goes in harbor, becomes soft. The egg goes in with the soft liquid inside. It's hard, but the heart becomes hardened. And he's telling me, man, if your heart becomes hard in that place, your institutionalized. And you won't come back as someone your parents recognized.

And he tells me, The Coffee Bean, The Coffee Bean was the only thing that could change the water because the he tells me the coffee bean. The coffee bean was the only thing that could change the water because the power was inside the coffee bean. That the coffee bean changes the water into a pot of coffee because the coffee bean is the change agent. And he's telling me,

he's like, everything else in life is gonna be changed by the water. His last words to me, be a coffee bean. That's the last words that Man Never Said to me in 2009 before the prison bus came to pick me up to go serve my life sentence in a Texas maximum security prison. But Heather, it was it was the four words that changed my life because I mean that this guy was shooting me straight that put the power inside me and the power was inside me then it couldn't be the hands of the criminal justice system the guards or even the other

inmates it was in me and I go around telling people the story of the coffee bean Heather because the power's inside everybody else. It's inside you. And if you can keep the power inside you, then it doesn't matter what you're possible on water is, you can change it to a pot of coffee too because you are the change agent in your own life, Heather. So tell everybody you get on the spot,

you're literally going to life in prison and how you became the copy being for that prison. You know what I've never talked about in a podcast, because you may even think about it when you said get on that bus, the bus ride. And my book, The Change Agent, I talk about the bus ride, these bus rides are crazy. I mean, you go, first of all, when you get on a bus,

you're shackled up to another human being. I mean, and Jackson's tell me how to get shackled up to, he told me when I was in county, he said, we're gonna take you all out in the middle of the night one night, everybody's gonna get on those one bus, they take you out in the middle of the night, they strip you down and they give you this jumpsuit to put on, and he said they're gonna give you a sack lunch.

He said now, what you wanna do is you wanna pair yourself up, because everybody's gonna get paired off and get handcuffed to somebody. He said, you wanna pair yourself off with someone that's smaller than you, someone that's weaker than you, you want to find someone smaller than you, and you want to find their dominant hand and you want to make sure that, so if it's a right-handed person, that's what you want to get chained up to.

If I'm a right-handed person, I need another right-handed person because I'm gonna lock my left-hand, handcuffed my left-hand to their left-hand too. They handcuffed you to other people. You walk around, you just chained up to another human being. So we said, the way you figure this out, when they're eating that last meal, it's like a last supper. You're eating that last little sac lunch,

look around, find a guy smaller than you, and find a guy that's eating with his right hand. Watch how he eats his food. Go over there and offer him some of your food and befriend him and then get him to chain up with you. Tell me, hey, you want one of my sandwiches, you can have one of my sandwiches. Get to talk and do it. And say, hey, man, you want to chain up together? Yeah, yeah, I'll chain up with you. He said, and then when you lock yourself up to that guy and you get on this bus ride and the chaos starts breaking out, let him know that he's first to go. If he does anything stupid,

you're coming after him first because you've locked up his dominant hand. All in these bus rides, it's chaos. People are fighting, there's stuff breaking out. If you got to use the bathroom on one of those buses, you're chained up to another person. This guy you're chained up to, he does number one and number two, you're going to stand in with him

the whole time. This is, I mean, this is like third world, into the world type stuff, Heather. Why do you think this man was such a blessing in your, like, this is not what jail is like, most people are not there be friending somebody else. Heather, the answer to that question is, it's a, it's a God thing. And I'm going to, I'll get to that at the end, that Dr. Phammy found this guy, which is a very recent thing. And I found out who he really was.

And my life, God has never just reached his hand out on my head and said, Damien, you're healed. What God's done is put people in my life. And when I was younger, these people were like my parents. They were coaches, they were teachers. As I got older in life and went down different roads, there were guides along those roads. No matter if I took a good path or a bad path,

there were always guides there to help me out along the way. There were different messengers. One of them is this black Muslim man and Dallas County Gel named Mr. Jackson. But the idea in life is to be receptive to all of God's messengers. And if you're not receptive to all of God's messengers, then you miss the messages along the way.

And he just happened to be one of those messengers at the right time in my life. When we get to the story about later on about me finding him, you're going to see how crazy the story is because literally he's given me something. He had the coffee being message in his life the whole time, but he couldn't become the coffee being in his own life. Because he was an addict just like me, but he never got into a program recovery. But literally he passed it on to this other person that he saw a light. And he would tell me, he told me in County Jail, he said, you've got this light about

you West, but people are going to want to extinguish that when you get in there. You're going to the darkest place in the world. They're going to try to extinguish you. They're going to try to kill you, but you have to let your eyes shine. Yeah, it's really, it's really kind of wild, very on a spiritual level. National security experts are warning. Our aging power grid is more vulnerable than ever. January marked a third time a power station in North Carolina was damaged by gunfire.

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All right, so you get into the prison and then how do you go from not just being a scared person to saying I wanna make a difference? It took two months of constant fighting. The first two months I was there. And I mean, when I say constant fighting, Heather, I probably got three dozen vitals first two months and I lost 75% of my fights.

I mean, I got my butt kicked all over that prison, but I won all of my fights because I showed up to my fights. And that's what Jackson said. You don't have to win those fights. You just gotta fight those fights. And in prison, no one cares about whether you win or lose. They just wanna see if you're gonna defend yourself, when you defend your honor and get out there and fight.

But really it's the same thing in life. No one counts your wins and loss. You do, you count your wins and losses, but no one else is counting them. But everybody's watching to see if you get back up. And that's what they were waiting to see in prison. Would he get back up and could we break him? Finally what happened, what finally broke it open for me, is I got out of the wreck yard. The wreck yard was a very intimidating place

in the life of a innocent building. Everything was segregated by the color of your skin on the wreck yard. Every sport, depending on what sport was, depending on certain races could do this and do that. But I ended up playing basketball because it was during the period where I was fighting the black gangs.

I went out there and got in the basketball court because I was a great athlete. God blessed me to be a tremendous athlete. And it took about a week of playing basketball. Those guys out there, most brutal basketball have ever played. But I learned two things about adversity that we can the wreck yard. I learned that adversity is never as bad as you think it's going to be. And you're always capable of way more than you think you are. Because so many times in life, we can allow overthinking to get in the way of overcoming. After spending a week on the wreck yard,

or earning my respect out there like that, the violence was finally over and the threat to my physical safety was gone. But two months in the prison, I've got a bigger threat on my hands than my physical safety. My problem is internal, Heather, I'm becoming the egg. I don't want to be the egg, but I don't even know how to be a coffee bean. I don't know how to do it. Meaning you were getting hardened. Yeah I was getting hardened. My heart was becoming hardened. One of the hallmarks of being an egg is your

angering, your irritable at the time and you're never happy and that was happening to me. I was getting sucked into this world of prison but I know I can't get sucked into this world because I want to go home one day and I have hope. Hope,, Heather. I mean, hope is the thing that everybody has to have. And in prison, it's the one thing that's in short supply. People just don't have hope in that place. That's why it's such a dark place because it's seemingly hopeless. And one of the last conversations I have with Jackson in County jail, before I left for prison, I asked him, I said, what am I going to find more of when I get to prison?

And he fired back without hesitation. He was a very intelligent man. His answer was profound. He said, you're going to find more eggs, West. And he said, here's why you're going to find more eggs. He said, the egg is a natural evolution of any human being inside of any difficult situation. They said, you're about to walk in. One of the most difficult there is, he said, the truth is, you're going to probably become the egg too. And he was right, he was right about everything. And I was having a conversation from my first cellmate in prison, Carlos, man.

Carl, I talked to Carlos on the phone, I was going to be in prison for a long time. Good do the, but about five foot four, a little Hispanic guy, a little bank robber. He was serving 99 years for a bunch of bank jobs. He did a real good guy though. And I mean, Heather, when you're... It's so surreal to be having this conversation with you.

Like, it's so matter of fact, Carlos 99 years in prison. Okay, go ahead, back to you. Yeah, but it's like, but it doesn't have the thing. I mean, like, when I say that, people, I go to corporations all over the world, masterminds and talk to them. I'm telling about Carlos and their laugh. And because I'm like, Carlos is a good guy. But he was. When you live with a lifers,

you've got to change your mind about who the good guys and bad guys are. You have to make friends in this place somewhere and Carlos was one of the good guys. I was very fortunate to have him in myself. So one night I'm having a conversation with Carlos. I've got the bottom buck, he's got the top buck, little Tim by 12, so.

And I'm telling him the story of the coffee bean, just like Jackson told it to me, because I'm like Carlos, I can't figure this coffee bean thing out. And man, Carlos comes flying down the top buck. He's a real animated little guy. He's like, oh my God, West, he said, I love the story of the coffee bean.

He said, but you're no coffee bean. And you'll never be a coffee bean. And I got in Carlos's face. I'm like, what do you mean I can be a coffee bean? I mean, who are you, the coffee bean man? Why can't I be a coffee bean. And I got in Carl's face. I'm like, what do you mean I can be a coffee bean? I mean, who are you, the coffee bean man? Why can't I be a coffee bean?" And he said, because you have stinking thinking. He said, you're thinking as awful. Here we are, Heather. We're back to thinking. You're thinking is everything. You're, he said, he said, your thoughts control your actions, but your actions come from your thoughts. He

said, your problem is right now, you think prison is a punishment when you need to be thinking about prison as an opportunity. First time anybody has ever said that this experiment that I'm in, this prison, this punishment, I'm in, is an opportunity.

I think it's a punishment. And I'm like, Carlos, I don't understand what you're saying. And he said, he said, this is your opportunity, West. Your opportunity to work on yourself 24 hours a day, seven days a week, become the best version of yourself possible. And it lights out that night, Heather. When the guard got down counting our cell, he peeks his head down from the top bunk. He said, pssst, West, what are you prepared to do tomorrow with your opportunity?

This little dude refused to call prison a punishment, and he's in my cell, he's my cellmate. I love this guy. Yeah, no correlations, and like I take care of correlations. There's like four guys in prison that were really good to me. They don't have any family out there to really take care of them. And every month, Heather, I'll put $100 in their books. They want, if they want me to send them books,

I send them books at newspapers, whatever. I've got as long as I'm out here, I got them in there. So the next morning, I did this conversation with Carlos, I wake up, my feet hit the cold concrete floor that prison cell, and I look up at the ceiling, and I'm like, all right, God, thanks for our opportunity. And I didn't believe it, Heather. I said it out loud, but I didn't believe it.

But you know what I did? That it's so necessary life to change the situation I was in. I took one small step of action into this life I have today. And that's what's required of everybody in life. If you want to change your circumstances, you have hopes and goals and dreams, you have to take action in your own life. Because here's the deal.

No one can take your action for you. No one is going to come save you. No one's going to wake you up. The Calvary isn't coming because you are the Calvary in your own life. Either I got up every day in that lunch, days became weeks, weeks became months and months became years, but I finally became a coffee bean. And it was just from that conversation

was the pivotal moment when you decided I'm gonna start seeing everything differently. Pivotal, I've got someone in my cell, he's a positive influence, the people around us matter, these are all things you can take anywhere you are in life. You surround yourself with positive people, but then you become the energy that you wanna see in the world.

You become the change that you wanna see. So I started gradually just working to myself and I developed these rules about being a coffee bean. Rules I had to live by every day, like smiling everywhere I went no matter what was happened. Smile because man, you're smile is powerful. When people see you smile, they smile back and change the energy in the whole prison. You know, working out every day on myself in three areas.

I had it routine every day, myself in three areas. I had it in routine every day spiritually, mentally, and physically. I had to work out my mind, my body, and my soul every day. No days off and this kind of thing. That's what you have to do in life. Every day your mind, your body, and your soul requires work. People ask me all the time, what my spiritual work on is. I mean, I'll tell you, I mean, I get up every day and I ask God for two things. I'm like, hey, God, put in front of me what you need me to do today for you. And let me recognize that when I see it because I don't want to miss whatever that is. Amen. That's it. That's what I pray for. Just a chance to be useful again. And with your mental workout,

that's important. It's every book you read, the videos you watch, the websites you go to. It's your social media, it's your television that you watch. You are what you eat, not just about food. It's everything you put up here. Another rule of bibina coffee bean was the secret to life. The secret to life I learned inside that prison, the secret to life is serving leadership, serving other people, helping other people reach their goals of life, helping to raise other people. I've learned this from guys that would come in, and they come in these church retreats in prison. These guys would come in,

whether they'd spend four days with us, the curse, the wicked, the sinners, the incarcerated, they'd give up their lives, their jobs, their families for four days, and they loved on us, and they taught me what it was like to be a servant leader, because servant leadership, you look for ways to help other people that don't necessarily have any means to help you out

because it's about, it's about helping someone else reach their goals alive. I know the thing was learning what I did and did not have control over. You know, there's only four things I found that you can control in life. You can control what you think. You can control what you say. You can control what you say.

You can control what you feel and what I mean is what do you do with your feelings? Do you talk about your feelings? Do you get that out? And the last thing that I found that you can control is what you do. But you think what you say, what you feel, and what you do. And everything else, I just stopped trying to control that. I just worked on those four things because that's the stuff I can affect change on. And that's kind of when my life started taking off. The parole board came to see me. It was 2015. I was working in the chapel. That's a chapel.

I was a chapel court and the chaplain came in that day in 2015. He said, Wes, the parole board's here to see you. Parole is a deal they can do to let you out of prison early. It doesn't mean you're done with your sentence. You're just done inside of a prison. You get out and get a parole officer. And Heather, I know I'm up for parole,

but I don't think I can make parole. Not my first time in a while. Not seven years. I figure I probably have to do about 10 or 15 years before I get out of there. Because it's very rare for someone to get out that early on such a long sentence. Oh yeah, it's something, I mean, very rare.

I mean, hardly ever have. At that point, I had never heard of it happening at anybody else, or not your first time on life. And the reason why I can get out early, you're like, I've got this life sentence, but I don't have an aggravated life sentence. Aggravated means that someone is a physical victim in your crime, you know, a child, a luster, a murderer,

a rapist, someone that beats somebody, and someone that's salted somebody, those are physical victims. I don't have any physical victims, I stole people's property. I stole their sense of security, but I didn't physically affect them because they weren't ever home.

So, Texas looks at that, like that kind of crime, you're not a violent offender, we'll give you a chance to get out earlier, but it doesn't mean you're gonna get out. I go down the pro office. I'm standing online waiting. There's a few other guys in front of me. I got a smile on my face because you know coffee beans we smile and the lady for parole calls me and she's smiling a little bit too and she says sit down. She's got my criminal file open in front of her

Heather. It's about this thick. It's everything I've ever done. They've got a bunch of stuff on me. And she's flipping through the pages ever for about 20 seconds. She slammed the file, she pushed it away. She said, Mr. West, I came here today to ask you one question for this parole here. One question to us, Heather. She said, the answer to my question is not the file about the guy that are reading about that committed those crimes. She said, we don't see a lot of Damon West come through our state prison system. She said, you had it all. You had every advantage, every privilege, every opportunity.

She said, you are the definition of a privileged person, but you've somehow blew through all your privilege. You became a drug addict, you became a criminal, you became a thief. And a jury in Dallas gave you life in prison for the things you did. She said, but instead of letting the life sense define you, she said, you changed yourself inside this prison. She said, but when got our attention, as you didn't just change yourself, she said, you changed an entire prison around you. One man was able to change this prison. So she said, here's my question. She said, if you could be remembered for being anything in life, anything at all, she said, I want you to tell me what that would be in just one word. Go. I mean, Heather, I breathed out in her last. That's an easy question for a coffee bean. Man, I fire her answer back. Her

was like, man, I just want to be useful. I mean, everybody wants to be useful, Heather. Everybody wants to feel like they have value and worth in this life. And that's why I tell her, I said, I just want to be useful and I can be useful inside this prison, or I can be useful out in the free world again, finding more coffee beans. November 16, 2015, they all never forget. I walked out of that prison. Now, I'm not necessarily free because I'm definitely not a free man in this world.

I'm on parole in the state of Texas until the year 2000 and 73. What does that mean that you could go back to jail on any point in time? They told me if you come back in handcuffs, anywhere in America, you violate the rules in any city in America, you will come back to prison and you will finish your life sentence. There is no third chance.

So are you nervous every day when you get up? No, the answer to that is honestly, it's no because I'm a coffee bean. And as long as I live as a coffee bean, the only way I'm going to prison is when I go to prisons all over America. And I do, I go to prisons all over the place. And I go and speak and share the story

with the men and women there to bring them hope on their journey. Because now I get to smuggle hope back into the place where there's no hope. I'm a smugwarp hope. But that's the only way I go to prisons. When I go in there voluntarily, and I walk back out the front gate of all my prisons.

But I mean, speaking about prisons, I'm very passionate about prison stuff because it's a world I lived in. And I've got this unique life where I have my feet in all these different worlds. One of them is corporate America. One of them is prison America. One of them is prison because I've been there the worst part of the prison system. When I got out of prison, I went back to school and got a master's in criminal justice and I became a professor at the

University of Houston downtown. I've been teaching a class called prisons in America. Prison's in America. I'm the only professor on earth that teaches a prison's class that lived in the prison. Yeah, so it's like, I've tried to find everything I can in life that's a negative and turn into a positive. How do I turn my liabilities into assets? Because that's what life is all about. Find the things that are a negative and turn it into a positive. It's like Ed, our friend Ed says, life doesn't so much happen to you as it's happening for you.

Everything is happening for you, but that's a mindset. And I've shifted my mindset long ago to say, Hey, you know what? Even this thing of being a formerly incarcerated person, Xcon, I can use that to help other people. There's value in that. But I just have to have other people believe at me. And that's the thing about about growth. Growth is a very young, credible thing. Growth always follows belief.

And no one is gonna believe in you until you believe in yourself, Heather. And that's what I know to be a fat. It's so true. When I got out of prison, I had been out of prison for about 14 months. And I'm working at this law firm. And Heather, I've got this great job at a law firm.

I did my own legal work when trying to get myself out of prison. These lawyers in Beaumont, Texas, they take notice of it, and they told me, you did great legal work for a guy that's never been to law school. If you ever get out of prison, come see us. We get a job for you.

Day two getting out of prison on parole for the rest of my life. I get a job at the most prestigious firm in Southeast Texas. Unheard of. I mean, instant validation for a guy that needs validation. But I've got dreams in life. I don't have a lot of hopes and goals and dreams like anybody else. I work at a law firm.

I'm a paralegal, but I can never become a lawyer. I've hit the ceiling just from the word go because of the choices I've made in life. There's a lot of jobs I can never get. But I have. Because you had a felony on your record, you are not able to be a lawyer. Absolutely. In state of Texas. I think it's Texas.

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Now is the time to turn your business idea into a reality by listening to the millionaire university podcast. New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday. Find the millionaire university on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, man, I'll tell you the thing that I noticed just since since you met Mr. Jackson I do want to get the story who he really is but since you met him the Concentred that I'm seeing from you is adapting change, adapting change you notice you pay attention to the people around you

And then you are adapting and changing what did that process look like for you from the time you got out of jail until now? At first when I got out of prison, I thought my purpose was to go around talking to kids and be a warning about the dangers of drugs, the consequence of that decision. But I couldn't even get into a school and talk to a school. I mean, I just got out of prison. You can't just go knocking on the door of a school and say, I just got out of the joint. I want to talk to your kids. Right. I wouldn't be welcoming you at my son's school when you first got out. No, and it's a thing.

That's a mindset. Chances happen to a lot of people that didn't want me in at first, but they changed their minds too, because they're like, OK, wait, this is something valuable. We can use this because now my son and my daughter can hear from someone that's not a cop, not a teacher, not a parent, someone that's been down the road, they've been down and made some mistakes.

But when I first got out, there was nowhere for me to go talk, no one would allow me in. And I was working the 12 steps in my sponsor. It was like one month out of prison, and my sponsor, we'll call him Ray, for his anonymity. He walks into the sponsor meeting with me. He says, hey, Damien, you're about to go back to prison. And man, that got my attention, Heather.

I'm like, dude, Ray, I just got out of prison. Man, I don't want to go back to prison. He said, you're going back to prison because you're stuck inside yourself. No one that's stuck inside themselves is working a program recovery because recovery is all about serving other people's service work.

And I might, I say, Ray, what do you want me to do, man? No one will let me in. I'm an ex-con. He said, man, you're really in trouble now. Now it's self-pity. Now you're feeling sorry for yourself. You're going back to prison. And I'm like, what do you want me to do, Ray?

How do I- I'm getting nervous for you listening to this story. Yeah, I'm like, what do you want me to do, Ray? He said, listen, man. He said, you got to find some way to serve other people. You got to find some to do with your time. I had a lot of time in my hands. He said, go to a senior citizen center, anywhere down here in Southeast Texas, go to the front desk. They don't care that you're a fellow and you're not the kind of fellow they're worried about. Go to the front desk on a Saturday

and the Sunday, ask them for a list of people that never get visitors. They're going to give you a list of mile long because a lot of these people have been dropped off while their families and never heard from again. He said, go spend your week in this week and visiting with people that had had visitors in years and then you come back and tell me about your problems in life. He said, you know what it's like to live an institution

and be lonely, go spend some time with some lonely old people and tell me about your problems. So I did it Heather because I promised him I'd go to any lengths to say sober. I spent that Saturday and Sunday and the senior citizen center. I visited with people, some of these people I hadn't had a visitor in 10 years. I hadn't had anybody to know one to listen to them. Just to listen. That's one of the most fundamental parts of communication is listening. And everyone wants to feel like they've been heard. And when you feel like you've been heard, you feel like you're part of something bigger than you.

But if you never feel like you're heard, when you feel like you're invisible, you feel like you're hopeless. Is that hopeless thing again? So I got to go into the senior system, bring hope, listen to people, just hang out with placement dominoes with some of them. I started doing it every weekend because I didn't have

anything going on in my life. So I would go in there and spend time doing that and serve other people. And that's how I got the foundation for who I am because I had to go out and be willing to serve to be great. That's the thing about life. And we're all called to be servant leaders.

But it's when we get stuck inside of ourselves that we forget about that, when we think it's about us and not about other people. And that was one of the big things. Whenever I was working at law firm, you know, I really, like I said, I had aspirations to do other things, I just didn't know how I was gonna do it.

And I follow all these other speakers like John Gordon and all these other speakers online on Twitter and stuff like that. I follow them on social media. And I'm like, I know I can do that. I know I can speak to these schools. And my thing was like, I wanted to go talk to college football programs because I played college football and I can relate to these student athletes, but I don't know any college football

coaches. It's been 20 years since I've taken a snap. The last snap I took in college is 1996. It's text saying, no. A buddy of mine, I can tell the date that it happened. It was January 12, 2017, a little over six years from recording this. But he might be used to 90 miles from where I live in Belmont.

He calls me up. He says, Damon, tonight is the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year award. They're gonna name the best college football coach in America. He said, the best coaches in the country are gonna be in this room, eight of the best coaches. He said, someone didn't show up for work tonight, I've got an extra press pass. He works for a media company in Houston.

He said, do you wanna go? Man, you better wanna go. I mean, but I have to leave work earlier. I told my boss, I said, you know, Chris Cartman, my boss, man, he's so supportive. I said, Chris, this could be my shot. He said, man, get out of here and go. First thing I did, I went to my parents' house

because that's where I live when I first get out of prison. I live with my parents. I had two hand-be-down suits at the time. I got the better the two hand-be-down suits on. I took a bath in the sink real quick and I took off. Hour and a half, I'm driving to Houston and I practice in this elevator pitch that I'm gonna give these guys.

This pitch I've been waiting to give for a long time. He sticks me in the Toyota center. I hit the ground running and all the best coaches in there that night. I mean, USC, Wisconsin, Penn State, they're all there. And I get to go up and meet all these coaches and shake their hand. And every single coach I met that night slammed the door in my face. Everyone of them told me no, no, no, don't call us.

We'll call you. In one hour, I've been told no seven times. Seven of the eight coaches have rejected me that night. And you're just asking to come in to speak positivity into their teams. 30, I got 30 second, a 30 second elevator pitch of why didn't you bring me in? I mean, but I mean, I'm, my pitch is terrible. I mean, it's just like I've never practicing before in front of real people. And these are coaches. I'm a little nervous. My hands are sweaty. One of the coaches when I told him I just got out of prison, he took off running.

He couldn't get away from me fast enough. So in one hour, I've been told no seven times. I'm in the corner of the Toyota Center and I'm licking my wounds. I'm feeling sorry for myself and the voice in my head says, go home. It's over. It was a dream too big. Get going. The last coach is going to tell you know like all the other coaches did.

And Heather, the last coach is the hardest guy to get to in the room. Because his team had just beat Alabama two nights before for the National Championship. Everybody's trying to get in front of this guy. But you know what I quit doing a long time ago, Heather? Listening to myself. I don't listen to myself. Man, I talk to myself. And I'm telling myself in the corner,

I'm like, dude, you're not going anywhere. That coach is going to tell you no to your face and then you go home. And I'm applying perspective. I'm telling myself, you survive prison day. I mean, you survive something way worse than this. We all have perspective in life, Heather. We have this perspective of what a bad day looks like.

We forget to apply it sometimes. Sometimes have this perspective of what a bad day looks like. We forget to apply it sometimes. Sometimes we think we're having a bad day, but if you'll stop and take a step back and say, wait a second, did a loved one die today? Did a relationship fall apart today? Did I lose a career today? Did I get fired from a job? These are bad days.

Most of our days aren't those. In my life, every day that I wake up and my feet don't hit the cold concrete floor of the prison cell, I'm having a good day. And that's what I'm telling myself in the corner. I'm like, you're not going anywhere. He's going to tell you no to your face and then you go home. So Heather, I stalked Davos Winnie around this room.

They had coachy Clemson. And I'm following this guy. I'm like, I'm nut, man, I'm hiding behind fake plants. Every conversation he has, I'm there. I plants, every conversation he has I'm there. I think security is going to come taking me away, but I finally get in front of dabble. I give dabble my best stuff and after a minute of talking to him, he's like, man, you got a card on you or something dude. So I gave him a card, he snatched it, he said he would check me out, he took off run, he couldn't get away from me fast up Heather. I'm going to have to consume this guy for a whole minute.

And that's a no. I mean, but you know what? I felt great about that last no because I left it all in the field. And that's what we'd learn where we're younger in life. You give it all you got, you try your hardest. And if you come up short, that's okay. Jackson said, you don't have to win all your fights,

but you do have to fight all your fights. I fought all my fights at night. Or in sales. In sales, man, you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights. I fought all my fights at night. Or in sales, in sales, man, you knock on every door, you make every call. And then your day is over. So I drove home when I slept like a baby. I forgot all about that night. Four months later, I'm sitting in my desk at work

at the law firm. I get an email from the director of football operations at Clemson University, got him Mike Dooley. Mike Dooley says, hey, Damon, Coach Swinney met you to award show in Houston. He'd love to have you come talk to the team. Dude, you have August 1st open. Heather, I got every first open.

I got nothing going on in my life this time. So man, August 1st, 2017, I'm speaking to the Clemson Tigers, the defendant and national champs of college football. And when I got down my presentation I thought Davos was up in my face this time and Davos a very high energy guy and man He's like damon. He said I've never heard a story like that before He said I've never seen my players respond like that to a speaker that we brought in he said if you've been to Alabama yet

I'm like no Davo. I've been to Clemson dude. I had been anywhere He said why just text Nick Sabin from the back I'm like, no, Davo, I've been to Clemson, dude. I hadn't been anywhere. He said, why just text Nick Sabin from the back of the room? Hey, he said just text Nick Sabin from the back of the room. We'll see what he says. I landed in Houston the next morning from a trip to Clemson, turned on my phone.

I've got a voicemail and a text message from the director of football operations at University of Alabama. And this director of football operations of Alabama says, hey, we'll see you in Tuscaloosa in three weeks. August 21st is your date, you are on. I mean, just like that, now Kirby smarts calling, Lincoln Riley's calling.

Davos giving my number to every coach in America. They're calling my cell phone. But the real magic in my life happened, it was one year after that presentation of Clemson. It was August of 2018. I was working at the law firm. Now, now, Heather, I don't work at the law firm anymore. I've become an entrepreneur. I've got several businesses now. But August of 2018, I'm still working at the law firm and my cell phone rings,

only other than my cell phone is just got named John Gordon. John Gordon, the energy bus guys, on my phone. I follow John on Twitter. He's my inspiration every morning. And man, I get up and I was like, John, I know who you are. How do you know who I am? He said, dabbo, Swinney. He said, I was just talking to Clemson's football team. dabbo brings me in the office to tell me your story.

dabbo brought me in there to tell me the story of the coffee bean and how it impact your life. And John said this in 2018, Heather. He said, the world needs the coffee bean and how it impact your life. And John said this in 2018, Heather, he said, the world needs the coffee bean message. Let's deliver the world. Will you write a book with me? We'll call it the coffee bean. And Heather, my my response to John was so shocked. Did he ask me that? My response to John was like, no, John, you go write the book yourself. You don't need me. You're John Gordon. I'm Damon West. You don't need me. Thankfully, John is one of the most unbelievable men I've ever met. John said, no, Damon, he You don't need me. Thankfully, John is one of the most unbelievable men

I've ever met. John said, no, Damon, he said, God has already showed me what to cover the book. Looks like your name is on it. Let's write this book. He said, he said, I'll share the advance that Wiley has given me for the book. He has a book to a Wiley.

He saw split the advance with you 50, 50. Just for everyone listening right now, this is so incredible. I mean, this is drop a gift right from God. I mean, this is incredible. But the one thing I want to mention for everyone listening is that you were showing up and putting the reps in. You were knocking on the doors.

You were making the pitches. You were grinding at the law firm. You were spending time serving population. You didn't even know on the weekends. You were putting the reps in for years for this to happen. All right, back to you. No, that's exactly what you hit know on the weekends. You were putting the reps in for years for this to happen. All right, back to you. No, that's exactly what you hit now on the head. And that's what it's about putting in the reps

when I got out of prison. And there wasn't anywhere for me to go speak. There was a mirror in my parents' spare bedroom where I live. And I mean, have you think about this? I am living with my parents in their spare bedroom. I'm on parole for the rest of my life. I mean, I'm working in a job

that I'm making about $30,000 a year. I mean, if I would have had a tender profile, it would have sucked, man. But I didn't. And oddly enough, my wife, my married to today, she met me in the middle of all that when I was living with my parents. This woman fell in love with me.

That guy, she fell in love with that. He really loves you. Oh man, yeah, that's what God, another God thing, right? But whenever I was living with my parents and I had nowhere to go speak, I knew that I had to get in the reps and there was a mirror in my parents' spare bedroom. And every night that I wasn't speaking somewhere,

which was most nights in those first two years, I'd practiced my presentation every, I never missed a night. I'd get in front of that mirror, I'd time it, I'd have my laptop out and I'd practice it, I had a PowerPoint at first and I'd follow it, I got in my reps. Even though I wasn't publicly speaking anywhere, I was speaking, I was speaking.

And when my time came, when my moment came to talking in front of a dabble-sweeney scene, I was polished and ready to go. That's what it's about, bidding in your reds. Back to John Gordon. John Gordon, he says, Damon, I'll split the advance on the book. It's $100,000. I'll split the advance on the book with you. 50, 50. Let's write this book. Let's deliver the coffee, be messaged the world. Heather, $50,000 is more than anything I've ever seen. I've never, I haven't seen $50,000. I mean, when I was a broker, I saw $50,000,

but that was before I got on drugs and became a criminal. My God, $50,000 was all in the world, but that money, when I was arrested, my parents love me, Heather. My parents, this summer, my parents will celebrate 55 years of being married. I mean, they've been married. I didn't come for a broken home, or even split home. My parents took some of their retirement out. They don't make a ton of money.

They took up $50,000 of their retirement to give me two lawyers to represent me a trial. So whenever I got the money from John, the $50,000, I called my parents up. They live about 10 minutes away from me. And at the this point, I'm living with my wife. And it's 2019. And I say, hey, you're going to be at home? Yeah, yeah, we're at home. Come on. I said, I've got to bring some over to you. I've got to drop something off. So I'll go over there and see my parents.

And they're, you know, I don't have anything in my hands and hug go my everything. And my mom's like, I thought you should bring something dropping it off. I showed them the check. I said, here's your money back for all of it. For all of you. I mean, $50,000, they loaned me $50,000.

I kept telling them I was going to pay them back. I'm making little payments of a couple hundred dollars a month to them. And my parents are in tears. My dad even says the words. He's like, Damon, I didn't think I'd be alive and ever see this money. I just didn't expect it to ever happen while I was alive. And I'm like, Dad, man, it's integrity. You have to do what you say you're gonna do in life.

Integrity is important. So John and I write the book, The Coffee Bean. It becomes the best seller. It launches me to a different level of speakers, right? I mean, I'm still, you know, having to put in the work to get the gigs, but John gives me some of the best advice. And for anybody out there that's, you're building a brand, this is your message right here. John tells me, he said, Damon, you've been out there sharing this message.

Be a coffee bean is your brand. You're talking about this. He said, do not change it ever. He said, don't stop saying that. He said, because eventually you'll be known as, if you keep, if you keep on message, you'll be known as the coffee bean guy. And he said, and one day, that's gonna be a pretty cool thing to be.

But if you change your message because you're not seeing the results, you're gonna confuse people. And no one will know what you are. He said, so many people in life, they don't see the results of the timeframe, they think it should be there. And they change course.

They go different, they quit. Some of the best advice I ever got at because I stuck with that message. And I tell people all the time, the story about, you know, that everything that's happened in my life because of John and Davo, it goes back to that one night in Houston, Texas, January 12, 2017. I'm in the corner of the Toyota Center and I'm looking at my wounds. I've been told no seven times in one hour.

I'm about to walk out the door, Heather. I mean, I'm this close to leaving that place at night. I'm about to walk out of that last know, which ends up being the biggest yes I've ever gotten my life. And I tell people that all the time, you can't give up before the miracle happens in your life because you're literally, you're one yes away from your entire life changing.

That person that believes in you gets behind you, gets their role of Dex out and turns it over to you because they believe in you and what you're doing. You can't give up. You can't quit. You got to put in the word. You got to make all your calls. You got to ask every question. The only question you know the answer to is the one you don't ask, Heather.

That's a no. Every time. Let loose with no. So you could go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go You need to get back to your point around integrity and doing the right thing and the fact that you weren't going to just let Mr. Jackson disappear, but you wanted him to know the difference he had made. And you wanted to give him the credit. Can you tell us how you eventually found him? I love how you just set that up. This is like the icing on the cake to the whole story.

So Heather, his real name is not Mr. Jackson. Matter of fact, I didn't ever know his real name. The only name I knew him by in Dallas County, Jail, was Muhammad. Because when the guys go to prison and they convert to Islam, they give up their government name, their real name. My government name is Damon West, your Heather Monham, right? I don't know what his real name was. It's like Caches Quay. Cash's Quay goes to prison in the 1960s and he comes out of prison as Muhammad Ali. This guy was Muhammad. So they say, when they'm not knowing him,

I get out of prison integrity. I owe a $10,000 fine to Dallas County for my trial. 2016, 2017, I'm trying to pay my fine off. I go up to Dallas County and I'm paying my money to him and I'm like, hey, I'm trying to find my friend Muhammad. And they're like, well, we need his real name because we can't find him by his Muslim name. We need a barter or something. So I couldn't find him.

And now I'm back telling the story of the coffee bean in the south. And I just don't think Heather, I can run around rooms in the south saying, Muhammad told me this and Muhammad told me that when I was in prison. I think they're going to throw me out of the room if I say that. So I gave them, I gave them the name Mr. Jackson because everybody loves the name Mr. Jackson. But I keep on looking for him and I hope he's going to find me at this point because the only way I can look for him is to do news stories in Dallas, do news interviews. And I talk about him and I'm thinking, man, this guy sees it, he'll find me in March of

this past year. I became business partners with Dak Prescott, the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys. His production company is gonna help produce this story you've heard today into a limited series for television. So, man, I'm teamed up with the Dallas Cowboy quarterback. This guy I met in County is from the streets of Dallas, but here's how it happened.

Here's how I found Mr. Jackson. I got a letter this past summer from an inmate in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. I get a lot of inmate mail by 100 letters of mine. Love it. So this letter was unique. No return address. One sentence written down. It said, find James Lynn Baker and you find Mr. Jackson. There's the name, right? So I go to Dallas, it's six hours away. I get with my attorney and we get a private investigator. Let's go find James Lane Baker. First thing we find is criminal record.

It matched up everything he said, Heather, and then a person all of his life. Had him in Dallas County, jail in 2009 on a parole violation, which is what he told me he was in there for. Had him born in 1950. Uh-oh, he's told the story that this guy was in his early 60s. So when I'm met him in 2009, he was 59 years old. This is my guy, and Heather, I'm so excited. I get, I'm getting ready to like, I'm, I'm rehearsable. I'm gonna say to him when I first seen, never got to meet him again. James Lynn Baker, the second, Mr. Jackson died on May 9th, 2017, of an opioid overdose. He was a drug addict just like me, but he never got help. Like all those

people we talk about, they're in their addiction that never get help, and the homeless and all these other people you see that they just don't get help because their addiction will eventually kill them. And that's what killed him and opioid overdose in 2017. Integrity. I know who this man is now. His message saved my life. Change my life. Put me on a whole different course of life. I've got to do something on this guy.

So I told the private investigator, let's go find his family. Here's where it got crazy, Heather. In 1972, the Dallas Cowboy cheerleader started out their first cheerleading squad with seven ladies. His little sister, Vaughn Seale Baker, is the first Dallas Cowboy cheerleader ever, the first woman to wear the uniform.

A few years later, his other little sister, Vanessa, she's a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. But the real history maker in their family wasn't the sisters, as amazing as those two ladies are. It was his mother, Bertha Baker. Let me tell you about his mama. In 1949, Bertha Baker, his mom, became the first license black daycare owner in the city of Dallas.

The first daycare license to a black resident went to his mother who started the first black daycare out of the home he grew up in. In fact, the home he grew up in, Heather, is a city landmark in the city of Dallas. It's a protective structure. I'm floored at what God's throwing at me. I mean, this is crazy, man, but it's where it's going. So I told the PI, set up a call, please, between the decisions of not. So I get to talk to the three living sisters, Visha, Vaughanseel, and Vanessa Baker. And I told them the story. And I told them what their brother in 2009

and Dallas County jail. And I ended it by saying, listen, I don't know what your feelings are about your brother and the choices that he made in life. But I want you to understand that he impacted at least one life on this planet. And that one life is trying to impact the entire planet with the message he gave me, the B.A. coffee bean message.

And I said, I want to do something on your brother. I said, what high school did y'all go to? You know, because he told me Dallas County Jellies from a very inner city, very black part of Dallas, and they confirmed that Dallas Lincoln high school. Dallas Lincoln is as inner city and black as you can get Dallas. I said, great, here's what I want to do. I'm going to put $10,000 every year into a trust. For the James Lynn Baker II, be a coffee bean scholarship.

Available to one kid at Lincoln High School every May, a boy or a girl that grows up in his neighborhood and goes to his high school is going to get a better chance at life through education because these two guys had this chance encounter in Dallas County, jail in 2009. The families on board, they're super excited, they're gonna get to pick, the first, they're gonna get to pick the scholarship recipient every year. I'm just gonna keep the money in the account

every single year in perpetuity. Next week, two weeks from now, I get to go to Dallas Lincoln High School, go speak to the seniors for a senior assembly, tell them the story and then announce the scholarship. The first, James Lane Baker, the second B., the second beer coffee bean scholarship at their school. One of those kids in an audience heather is going to get a $10,000 scholarship in May. It's so cool.

So I finally found Mr. Jackson. It's such an incredible story. I'm so proud of you. I'm so happy for their family that you circled back and that everything came full circle. And now you have your new book, How to Be a Coffee Bean, your new version. That new version. One hundred of you will have them try to get the there's no shine on it. How do you be a coffee? So one hundred of your different principles of being a coffee. What John and I did, the coffee bean came out four years ago, took off like a rocket ship, best selling book in America,

global publishing deal in touch. It's in every language in the world. But what we saw is that different companies, different teams, different organizations, they applied the coffee bean message a different way. You know, I had my five ways of being a coffee bean, my five principles that got me through prison, but other groups were having all these other principles.

And we started collecting all these things and asking people, how are you applying the coffee bean message? That's what this book is. That's the maturing of the coffee bean message as it spread all over the world for the last four years. It's in one book now. It's really cool.

It's gonna, it's way more in depth than the original coffee bean book. Where can everybody find the book and where can everyone find you? Yeah, anywhere books are sold. Amazon, you? Yeah, anywhere books are sold Amazon Barnes and Noble's anywhere books are sold you can find me at Damon West dot or G the AMON WST dot or G That's where people find me for speaking engagements social media at Damon West 7 Instagram and Twitter Instagram and Twitter. Damon, I'm so proud of you. I love the work you're doing.

Thank you for being the coffee bean. Thank you for being here with us today. It's shinier like and spreading. Mr. Jackson's message everywhere in this world. Thank you, Heather. Thank you, saw you. Look, honestly, I'm so grateful that you asked me to be on the show. I'm like, yes, thank you so much, Heather. Well, pick up this book, people.

It's going to be linked in the show notes below. You need to have the coffee bean in your life. You need to be the coffee bean. Go get the coffee bean. Until next week, keep creating your confidence. You know I will be. I'll go right away. Go over here.

I decided to change that tiny amount. I thought I'd fill out. I couldn't be more excited for what you you're going to hear and start learning and growing. And inevitably, some people happen. No one succeeds alone. You don't stop and look around once in a while. You can miss it. I'm on this journey with me.

I hope you're enjoying this episode so far. I'm Jennifer Cohen, host the top ranking business and entrepreneur podcast, Habits and Hustle, apart the YAP media network, the number one business and self improvement podcast network. So, most people live the life they get and not the life they want, and I'm here to change all that. My goal with each episode is to give you the habits and hustle tips you need to show up to your life better, bigger, and bolder. Tune in now, and I'll not only help you answer the questions like, what do you want most in life and why don't you have it, but we'll also help you make it a reality. I also picked the brains of top thought leaders on how

they've gotten to the top and the advice they have to help you get there too. Head over to Happets and Hussle once you've done listening to this episode and get one step closer to boldness, one episode at a time.