The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - From Life in Prison To Purpose: How To Rise From Rock Bottom & Rewrite Your Story Ft. Damon West

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

#871: Join us as we sit down with Damon West – bestselling author, college professor, & one of America’s most sought-after motivational speakers, whose powerful story of transformation & resilience inspires audiences around the world. As a former college quarterback turned crime boss, Damon now uses his M.S. in Criminal Justice & his personal experience to motivate millions on leadership & the incredible power of positively changing the environment around you. In this episode, Damon gets real about how a life sentence in the Texas prison system became the catalyst for change – from embracing life like a coffee bean & holding onto hope, to teaching leadership & literacy, launching a foundation for children of incarcerated parents, & most importantly, creating positive change from within. Damon’s story is one of hope, redemption, grit & the resilience of the Human Spirit.    To Watch the Show click HERE   For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM   To connect with Damon West click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE   To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE   Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE   Head to our ShopMy page HERE and LTK page HERE to find all of the products mentioned in each episode.   Get your burning questions featured on the show! Leave the Him & Her Show a voicemail at [phone].   To learn more about Damon West, motivational speaking opportunities, & purchase his books visit https://damonwest.org.    To purchase Damon’s latest book “Six Dimes and a Nickel: Life Lessons To Empower Change” visit https://bit.ly/DamonWest-6D1N.    To donate to the Coffee Bean CARES Program created to help support children with incarcerated parents by providing scholarship opportunities visit https://beacoffeebeanfoundation.org/coffee-bean-cares.    This episode is sponsored by Just Thrive Visit https://justthrivehealth.com/discount/TSC and use code TSC for 20% off.    This episode is sponsored by SOAAK Visit http://soaak.com/skinny and use code SKINNY at checkout to get your first month free.   This episode is sponsored by Hero Bread Hero Bread is offering 10% off your order. Go to http://hero.co and use code SKINNY at checkout.   This episode is sponsored by Levity Get $50 off your first Levity order with code TSC50 at http://joinlevity.com.   This episode is sponsored by Astral Tequila House Marg Summer is here. Time to stock up! Go to http://astraltequila.com to find Astral near you - and don’t forget the limes! Please Enjoy Responsibly.    Visit http://c1p.org to donate to the Community First Project, a mission to make communities safer by ensuring the quality & integrity of our nation's law enforcement agencies.   Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her show. We have today an incredible episode, an incredible story. Today's guest has a real life redemption story. Damon West went from a Division 1 quarterback to meth addict, then became a white collar

crime boss in Dallas to a convicted felon serving a life sentence in prison. But that's not where the story ends. It's where it begins after a life altering conversation in prison. Damon became the coffee bean, a man who changes the water he's in instead of letting it change him. Now he's a bestselling author, a sought after speaker and living proof that your worst moment can become your greatest calling. With that, Damon West, welcome to the skinny confidential him and her show. This is the skinny, him and her show. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her.

When I first got out of prison, you know, look, I live, I'm 40 years old. I just got out of prison. I'm on parole for the rest of my life. I got a job and I'm making just above minimum wage and I live in my parents' spare bedroom, which way you swipe on that one, right? That's a tough dating profile, right? Swiping. No, I actually am profile, right? I'm swiping. No, I actually am swiping, right?

Because I want to hear the prison stories. Yeah, but it's a tough dating profile. You live with your parents. You're 40 years old living with your parents. But here's the deal. I'm not living in prison anymore, right? So I get out the first night I'm home, I'm putting my little room together.

I don't have a cell. I got a room, right? I'm putting my little room together. I don't have a prison cell anymore. And my mom screams at me from the living room. She's like, Damon, get in here and watch this on TV right now. She's screaming, right now, right? I'm putting my little room together. I don't have a prison cell anymore. And my mom screams at me from the living room. She's like, Damon, get in here and watch us on TV right now. She's screaming right now, right now. So I run in the living room and I get in from the TV and she's

watching this show called Locked Up. You remember Locked Up? Yeah, of course. And I'm like, mom, what are you watching? She said, Damon, I've been watching Locked Up since you got locked up. She says, sit down and tell me what's going on. She said, I can't ever follow what these guys are doing. So Lauren, every night for like the first two months,

I'm watching Locked Up, my mom, I'm narrating. These guys are doing, they're making shanks over there. They're doing, they're making hooch over there. My dad, my dad was a sports writer for 50 years, Michael. My dad, everything in his life was about sports. So the second night home from prison, we're on the couch, we're watching Sports Center. He hits mute, he leans into me.

He said, Damon, while you were locked up, I recorded every prison movie that's ever come on TV. What's the best one, dad? Well, this is what, this is the thing. He was like, man, he was so excited too. He said, let's watch them all. He said, just tell me who gets it right.

He said, we'll do one movie a night. You got time for that? And I'm like, dad, I'm on parole for the rest of my life. I got a lot of time, man. Let's go. So the first night we watched his favorite prison movie, Cool Hand Luke. And then we watched every movie that's ever been made about prison, Lauren. And I mean, I've seen them all.

So I can tell you who actually got it right. There's one movie above all the other movies that got it right. And that movie, the Shawshank Redemption. Oh, that's like the best movie of all time. Yes. And I'm going to tell you why, Michael, I'm convinced that whoever consulted on that movie had done a little time before, cause you know what they got right about prison, prison is a hopeless place. That's why prisons are so dangerous because when you have a void of hope

Negativity evil darkness fills the void and you don't have to be in a physical prison right to be in a world with no hope You interview people all the time to talk about how they bring hope to other people's light or how they were once in a seemingly hopeless world So the title of the movie the Shawshankank Redemption, the redemption part of the title, it's not about the redemption of Andy Dufresne. Remember Andy? He sends us to prison. He goes, the innocent guy goes to prison for 19 years,

tunnels through a wall, swims through sewer to get to his freedom. The redemption part of the title was about Red, Morgan Freeman's character, because Red had no hope. Andy represented hope in that movie. And like the movie goes on, and Andy is this guy that brings hope in there.. And, and like the movie goes on and Andy is this guy that brings hope in there. These other guys have no hope.

Like Brooks, remember Brooks, the old man? He gets out of prison. With the bird, he had the bird. Yeah, he had the bird, right. He did 50 years and he made parole and he lasted two weeks in the free world because he, he couldn't take it. The world caught up to him.

He hung himself. He wrote a letter back to the boys at Shawshank, told him what he did and why he did it. And as Andy read that letter out to the men in Shawshank prison, every man in Shawshank understood why Brooks did what he did because they had the same hopeless mindset. But it's Red, the narrator that explains it. He says, you know, Andy, I wouldn't make it out there either, Andy. I'm an institutional man now. Red even says the words out loud. He says, hope is a dangerous thing. But Andy told Red, get

busy living or get busy dying. And by the end of the movie, when Red finally gets out, 40 years later, we don't know if Red's going to make parole. You know, he walks by the pawn shop, the guns are in the window. He stays in the same halfway house room that Brooke stayed in, but he makes it. He makes it to the rock wall. Remember the rock wall Andy told him to go to? And he finds the letter that Andy left behind.

And in that letter were the words that Red needed to hear when Andy said, Red, hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies. If you go back and rewatch the end of Shawshank, just knowing what I told you now, you listen to the dialogue of the character named Red at the end of the movie versus the dialogue of the character in Red at the beginning of the movie. Every single sentence that Red says in the last piece of dialogue, the last minute of the show starts off with the same two words. He says, I hope for every sentence. I hope I make it across the border.

I hope I see my friend again so I can shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it was in my dreams. I hope. Y'all, it took me going to prison to understand what the movie Shawshank was about. The first time I saw it in 1994, I'm a freshman in college playing college football, punk, cocky quarterback. I didn't know what it was about.

But 30 years later on the couch with my dad watching it, I understood fully what Shawshank was about. I'm going to watch it again now that you've explained. I mean, I've seen it like eight times, but I'm going to watch it with this perspective. Obviously I don't have your experience.

Why is there no hope in prison? Well, prison is a place where hope goes to die. I mean, because there's a saying when you get into prison that you're never alone, but you're always lonely. And so what that means is that you're never going to be alone. It's a very communal type environment, but you're never around the people you want to be around and inside of a prison environment, I mean, it's the hardest place to live. I was sent to a level five maximum security

prison in the state of Texas. Level five is the highest security level. Texas prisons are tough. They're tough. Well, there's no air conditioning. From what I've heard, yeah. Yeah. So it's, and I was on the Gulf coast, so you

can imagine how hot it was. On humid. Humid summertime, 100 degrees, 100% humidity. And I know that the Mark Stiles unit in Bowman, I know it's one of the toughest prisons in America, because when I got out of prison in 2015, I wanted people to take me more serious, right? So I went back to school and got a master's in

criminal justice and became a professor at the university of Houston downtown. Get this teaching a class called prisons in America, like I'm the only professor on the planet to teach a prisons class who lived in prison. So I know a lot about prison. planet to teach a prisons class who lived in prison. So I know a lot of prison. I'm sure we've done that.

Oh man. Why didn't I get offered that course? I was a textbook. Like I am the textbook in that class, right? But I mean, prison is the hardest place to do anything in, but whenever my story, I guess the best place to start this place off is July 30th, 2008, because that's the day is July 30th, 2008, because

that's the day, July 30th, 2008, my whole world's going to change. There's these fork in the road days I think people have in life. You have four or five fork in the roads in life where life truly changes, right? For the better, for the worse, because of choices you made. So on July 30th, 2008, I'm sitting around this little rundown apartment in Dallas. I'm sitting on this little, ratty old couch, and I'm sitting right next to me on the couch today is my meth dealer, this guy named Tex. Now 2008, I'm not the guy you see in front of you today.

I'm a full-blown meth addict. I'm the head of an organized crime ring. I'm the crime boss. I'm the leader of the whole thing, the shot caller. What does that mean, though, to someone, like really explain that? A shot caller? Yeah, what does that mean though to someone like really explain that? Shotgaller? Yeah, what what does that mean? So you're I'm the head of the whole organized crime ring What happened was is that in 2004? I was a stockbroker in Dallas and this is after you know I played Division one college football in the 90s at North Texas played quarterback there. I got hurt against A&M

How did you get hurt because obviously we've done our research and yeah How did like and your dad dad now, it makes sense. He was a sports writer. You go to Texas. Sports are huge out here. Your dad was probably big fan, right? Like did he push you to get into athletics just from early age? Oh yeah.

And I was, you know, Mike, when I started out playing sports, I wasn't really a good athlete. It was when I was about 10 or 11 years old, this baseball coach named John Bass got a hold of me. And Coach Bass, he saw something in me that no one else did and started working with me and told my dad, Hey, look, we're going to work out harder. We're going to, we're going to do workouts in the mornings and the evenings. And, and I just became this incredible athlete

overnight. And then I picked up a football and found out I had a cannon for an arm. And I was a three year starting quarterback at a high school in Texas, five a school, biggest division we had back then. Scholarship to play division one college football at North Texas. And by the time I'm 20, I'm the starting quarterback on a division one team.

Like this is a big deal out here. This is Texas, man. This is like, my head is this big, man. I thought I had arrived, but again, fork in the roads. This July, it was September 21st, 96. This is the big fork in the road back then. We're playing Texas A&M. I'm 20.

I'm driving my team down to the field against the Aggies. Third play of the game, I go down with a career and an injury. Never played college football again. What, what, like where? Separated my shoulder. So I separate my shoulder that day.

It's a distal clavicle removal. So they got to go in and cut the collarbone out. I come back in the spring and I try to get my job back and then I cut my Achilles in half half and accident at my house, at my apartment. So now I'm done. What does that do to you mentally? Cause I imagine that's a bad question. I imagine like that is so devastating for somebody that works so hard to get to

that position, they think it's going to be their whole life. I imagine you had dreams of, you know, going pro and doing all that. And then when that happens, what does that do to you mentally? That's a great question, Michael. So my entire identity was wrapped up in being a college football player. And so when that injury happened in 1996, football wasn't just gone, my identity was gone and I couldn't get it back on track. And I had been, I'd been drinking a lot throughout my life. The first time I ever got a drink in my system, I was 10. So I've been dabbling in alcohol for a long time. And I get up toabbling in alcohol for a long time.

And I get up to this fork in the road in life and the football is gone, my identity is gone. And that's when I get into drugs. This is where the hardcore drugs come in, the cocaine, ecstasy, I start popping pills. But I was a pretty functional addict back then, you know, but I couldn't live life on life's terms. That's the hallmark of being an addict, right?

And here's what I know about addiction. Addicts give up their goals to meet their behaviors. That's the definition of addiction, by the way. When you give up goals to meet a behavior, you're an addict. And it doesn't have to be drugs or alcohol, right? It can be food, money, clothing, shopping, sex, pornography. The list goes on and on. So I started giving up my goals, but I'm functional. I graduate college. I move off to Washington, D.C. I work in the United States Congress. Then I worked for a guy running for president in 2004. Moved back to Dallas.

And it was at that job as a stockbroker in Dallas in 04. I was, I was working for UBS, one of the biggest banks in the world. And another broker sees me sleeping at work one day. Passed out of sleep at work. He wakes me up. He's like, Hey man, listen, you can't sleep on a job like this. They'll fire you. Come on down the parking garage.

I got something that'll pick you up. And that's when I go that day in his sports car in the parking garage and have my first hit of meth, smoke meth for the first time. Instantly hook just like that. I mean, it grabs you. It's the most evil, most destructive, most addictive drug.

It does have a really weird frequency. That drug specifically, meth. There's something about it. It's's, I don't know why. It's a completely unnatural. It's made in the lab. Yeah. Yeah. Why is it so it's like frenetic?

Well, cause if you think about it, like not that, you know, like heroin's an opium and then you have, you know, poppy and you have a cocaine, Coca plant, then you have, like you have these things, but this is like a completely manmade lab chemical product, right? Yeah, this is, this is completely manmade stuff. So what did it feel like the first time you did it? Like, like every hair on my body stood up and I was into cocaine at the time. The last time I ever did cocaine was the time before I did meth for the first time.

Cause you were like, I'm done with that. This is the thing. You could have put me in a room with a mountain of the stuff. I never would have touched it again. I never have touched it again because meth was the ultimate high. It was a cleaner high. You're up for days at a time. You feel like it's the wonder drug at first, right?

You get all this stuff done, but what goes up must come down. And like I'm up for three or four days at a time. I'm down and I'm missing work and I get fired. I lose my job at UBS and 18 months later, I'm living on the street to Dallas. Like I'm homeless. I've smoked all the everything. That's how I did fired. I lose my job at UBS and 18 months later, I'm living on the streets of Dallas. Like I'm homeless. I've smoked everything. That's how I did it. I smoked meth.

Smoked it all up. I'm living in dope houses. I'm sleeping in cars. I become a criminal. It was petty crimes at first. Shoplifting, breaking into cars, breaking into storage units. Then it escalates to the very serious crime of home burglary. You're doing this just to feed the habit just to feed the habit

Man, I'm a dope fiend and you know, there's no girlfriend involved. There's nothing no nothing involved nothing. I mean, I'm Some of this I'm homeless, right? But you know once I start doing the burglary stuff I start bringing in enough money to like get into this little crappy apartment This is gonna be the crappy apartment the cops get me in years later but here's what I want to say too, is that when I broke into people's homes, I didn't just steal property when I broke into my victims homes. My victims, I stole something way more valuable from the victims. I stole their sense of security. Oh, and that's something I can't give back. I can't change what I did to them. I can't fix what I did to my victims.

The state of Texas has a law. You cannot apologize to the victim of your crimes in Texas. They will send you back to prison if you reach out to make an apology. If you reach out to apologize on a podcast or anything like that, they'll send you back to prison in Texas. Well, it's wild even when you think, I mean, listen, we live in Texas now.

We grew up in California, we live in Texas. Like, that's a ballsy maneuver to go into people's homes in Texas. Oh, yeah, man. Yeah, because people have guns. And it's the dope, it's a dope, it's a, you're a debt, you're an addict. You'll, you'll do it anything, anything you have to do to get your high. Or even like a thought or inclination like, Hey, I could get blown away in here. You're just like, it's, you're so in it that you don't even think about that.

So here's the deal. None of my victims were ever home. And this is what we're going to find out when I go to trial and I go to prison. My crimes are considered non-aggravated crimes in Texas. Non-aggravated means that there's not a physical victim of my crime. This is a big point because if you have an aggravated crime in Texas, you have to do a lot more time

than a non-aggravated, non-violent offender. I'm a non-violent criminal. How would you choose these homes and how did you know they weren't home? Okay, one of the first burgers, and this is something I've never shared on a podcast the size of yours, right? So one of the first burgers I ever did, because listen, you have a survival instinct in your

body, a preservation of life instinct. It's pretty strong, right? You can't choke yourself out and kill yourself, right? There's things your body does to preserve itself. And so even though I'm whacked out on meth and I started doing these burgers, I don't want to get caught. I don't want to go down. So one of the first burgers I ever do,

I break into a US post office. I steal a mailman uniform, mailman bag, mailman hat. Now I'm a mailman. I go around neighborhoods with impunity, right? Does everybody know what their mailman looks like? Oh my God. No. Wait, can't you just buy a costume on Amazon

that's a mailman or is it not the same? I wouldn't think about it. I don't think Amazon was what it is. Got it, okay. This is 2005, 2006. Okay. So you had to get an official post. Stop trying to optimize this for the criminals. I'm like, what's the hack?

Okay, go ahead. No, she's like, can we sell mailman outfits? She's like, this is good. Can we sell it? No. So I break into a post office. I steal a mailman uniform, and that's my first cover when I go into neighborhoods. I'm the mailman, right?

I can break, I can go anywhere. I would sit outside some of these condos in Uptown. These burglaries really take place for the most part in Uptown Dining. I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would

sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside, I would sit outside right? I can break, I can go anywhere. I would sit outside some of these condos in uptown. These burglaries really take place for the most part in uptown Dallas. You ever been to uptown Dallas? Yep. Real nice part of Dallas, right? That's where I was living when I was a stockbroker, uptown, before I became homeless. And so I'd sit outside of some of these condos and I'd wait for the real mailman to leave. And after he would leave, I'd grab my mailman outfit, my mailman bag, and I'd go into the

building and people are getting the gate for you, man. You're the mailman. You got a bag full of goodies for everybody, right? And inside a lot of these buildings, they have a kiosk that the mailman has the key to go inside. On the outside, you got your key to your one little box. You know how you live in a condo, you got keys to your little box.

But in the inside of that room, it's all these boxes are wide open. And some of those boxes have stacks of mail. Somebody's probably not home. Even in some of those boxes there'd be a note that says out of town from this date to this date hold our mail. So once I was inside the mail room I was in the mothership and I would find out my victims like that. Now there were other ways of finding out victims. Once you get inside these condo buildings and you get access to them anything above the first

floor if you saw a bunch of flyers and packages and newspapers in front of someone's door, they're not home because they're back doors to a patio that's at second floor up, right? So you specifically targeted people who were not home? 100%. I didn't ever want to run into anybody. Lauren, I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I'm a dope fiend. And that's when people are on drugs. Here's what I believe. I believe for the most part, addicts are sick people that do bad things. Not the other way around. I don't think they're bad people that do sick things.

For the most part, you got some bad people out there. I was a sick person doing bad things. I was in my addiction and I would do anything to get high. Now look, I look at it now, you know, I've got a wife, I've got a stepdaughter, I've got a house. I just built my mom a house on my property. She lives with me now. I can't imagine somebody doing to me what I did to all these other people, right?

And so I know what I did to my victims was terrible. But I can't change that now. And like I said, Texas, you can't apologize to your victims. Later on in this podcast, we're going to get around to a victim that reached out to me. It's actually a story in my new book, but we'll save that for later on. We're going to work up to that. But these burglaries are going on. It starts off with me with the mailman outfit, finding my victims. And I got a crew of other meth addicts. There's about a dozen of us. There's men, there's women. Some of us are younger, some of us

are older. There's black, there's white, because addiction doesn't discriminate, right? Addiction doesn't care who you are, where you come from. When it got, it's got you, y'all know addicts, right? Sure. And we've interviewed many on this show and our, in our personal lives, we've have, you know, here's what I say. I said this yesterday on the phone with a friend of mine who's in recovery. Is it like whether you're personally in it or not, you're likely touched by somebody close to you that's in it or is going through it or has, it is in the pro, it's such a wide, vast issue that, you know, human beings face. 100%. Michael, I tell people, some similar, I tell people addiction touches

everybody in this country, whether you're the addict, the victim of an addict, the friend of an addict, the family member of an addict, the taxpayer. You're just paying into an overburdened criminal justice system that has no idea how to handle addiction. Addiction touches us all. It's all of our problem at this point. But we start breaking into these condo buildings

and we start breaking into houses. The burglaries go on for almost three years in the uptown neighborhood of Dallas and beyond. I mean, it's pretty much, and I'm taking stolen property. Some of these condos we're breaking into, people that go out of town like that, they leave their car behind in the parking garage. And when I'm in there, the breaking in,

I'll find the key fob for the car that's left behind, go in the parking garage, find that car, that BMW, that Mercedes, that Land Rover, and I'll load it up with things you don't wanna keep from a Berkeley. Checkbook, credit card, laptops. Have my partner in crime, Dustin, follow me out to these neighborhoods I'd rather the police be looking in.

Drop that car off with the engine running at a car wash that's real busy on the weekend. Window blaring, I mean window rolled down, music blaring. Those cars didn't sit out there for five minutes probably in those neighborhoods. Somebody hopped in the wheel and said, hey man, white boy left his car behind, look in the back seat, there's credit card. Let's go buy some beer, let's go buy some cigarettes at that store right there. So you almost made it look like it was someone else that stole. 100%. I wanted to throw the trail off away from me.

There's a lot of strategy that went into what you did. I mean, this is not like someone just like stealing something and walking away. No, I mean, remember I don't wanna get caught. I mean, I have a preservation of life instinct that's pretty strong and I'm not a dumb guy. I mean, I had a fifth grade teacher told me, you're a leader, Damon, you'll always be a leader.

You're either gonna lead people the right way or the wrong way. And she was, Ms. Greenberg was right on both, you know? Because I was a good leader at one point when I was the quarterback of a football team in college. So when you're stealing all these credit cards and checkbooks, et cetera, and the car, what

are you getting out of it before you leave it for someone else to pretend like it looked like it was them? Nothing. I don't want anything to do with that car. I don't. But what, what did you get? The break in.

Did you get something off the credit card? Yeah. What are you getting? Yeah. We would take stuff from people. We stole people's property, property like jewelry, property like appliances even. I mean, they're out of town,

you take their appliances sometimes. It depends on what the dope man wants, whatever dope man you're dealing with. So these theft and meth go together like rats and trash. That's an axiom. You can take that to the bank, by the way. Theft and meth go together like rats and trash. That's an axiom. You can take that to the bank, by the way. Theft and meth go together like rats and trash. So once these dope dealers understand

that Damon's got this burglary game going pretty well and he's got a crew, they're giving me like list of things they want. And the more I can hit things on that list, the better dope I get. That's all it's about. I don't have anything to show for this. July 30th, 2008,

that day that I'm sitting on the couch smoking meth with my meth dealer, Tex, I'm telling Tex that day, Tex, you don't want to be here, man. The cops are closing in on me. The end is near. Ten days before this, they picked up my partner in crime, Dustin. Dustin knew everything about our operation. My right-hand man, he knew it all. And he's in the custody of the Dallas Police Department.

So they've got my partner in crime in custody, which means it's only a matter of time before they're gonna have me in custody and Just as I pass that pipe back to text that day the window on my right blows out and shatters and Tom went across the living room floors a little canister going in over in smoking on one side And I like guys of this thing and I try to get out of there as fast I can but it The flashbang and they blew up in my face. I mean, it was a bright white light, loud noise blew me back on the couch. What is that from?

No. Flashbang. Flashbang is, go ahead, Mike. No, it's like, it's like almost like a, like, you know what a grenade is, right? Yeah. You throw this object and it has this big loud bang and flash and it disorients the person. But is it from the cops?

Yeah. It's Dallas Swat. It's a non-lethal way to disorient somebody in the room. Yeah, it's Dallas SWAT. Dallas SWAT. I'm having a conversation, smoking meth with this guy and SWAT knows where I am.

They've been watching me and that flash banger in it breaks the window. I know what it is. I've never been in a raid before, but I've heard. I've seen it on TV, right? You ever played Call of Duty? I know the flash. I've never played Call of Duty.

But so, you know, it's like Michael said, it's very disorienting. Your ears are ringing. You can't see anything because the light was, it's such a bright light. It flashes super bright. So you can't see, imagine like, you know, when you get in the night and you turn the light on

and all of a sudden you can't see in the dark. Like what you do to me. You literally flash bang me every morning with the fucking closet light. I'm just saying flashbang. Flashbang me. Your dad woke you up with a flashbang for the fucking closet light. I'm gonna start saying flashbang. Flashbang. Your dad woke you up with a flashbang for the last 21 years. Well yeah, but I mean, if anyone wants to experience it,

you just wake up in the dark in the middle of the night, turn the lights on and off real quick. That's like a flashbang. But it's like a hundred times brighter because it's a phosphorus glow, right? So when I could see again and I could hear again, man, there's a cop standing, he's got his boot on my chest.

He's got a gun in my eye, assault rifles in my eye socket, his fingers on the trigger and he's screaming, don't move, don't move. And I'm like, don't worry, don't worry, right? You got me. And I'm telling him, it's over, it's over, it's done, you got me. And one of the cops comes in and he screams out loud, we got him. We got the uptown burglar. That's what they called me. I was the uptown burglar. That's what they called me.

I was the uptown burglar. This is before they had a face to put with it. And they finally realized that they got the mastermind of the entire thing. And so they figured that out by all your like kind of people that they caught just flipping on you and saying like, that's the guy they wanted to plead out. I mean, yeah, we made a lot of mistakes. Everybody makes a lot of mistakes. Like what?

All right. So about six months before this goes down, my partner in crime, Dustin, he's got, he kept one of the stolen cars from the burglaries, right? Mazda RX-8 calls me up. This is February. I could tell you the date, February 27th, 2008. Calls me up panicked about 4 30 PM. Dude, man, they're over here. They got my car. I was like who's over there He said the police I guess they're out there towing my car. Well, he lives out by DFW Airport And I'm like what police department he said, I don't know. It's it's a guy and a cowboy hat a sports coat

He's got boots on and jeans. I was like What police department is that? He said I don't know it So we'll get the number of the tow truck placed on the side man that they're they're towing This is a stolen car from a burglary, right? And I'm like, what's in the car? He said man My burglary bag he carried a gun. He said my guns in there and that my fingerprints on the dashboard I didn't carry a gun. I wasn't I'm not a gun guy

I've never had been a gun guy so guns weren't a thing for me But he has a gun in this car burglary bag. My fingerprints are in there and I'm like Dustin man We got to get that bag out of that car, find out what, find out what tow yard is going to. So he gets the number off the tow yard. 30 minutes later, he calls me up. He's more panicked. He said, dude, I called the tow yard and the

Texas Rangers answered the phone. They said, that's our car now. We're coming to get you next. Hung up on him. I'm like, shit. So, um, this is late in the day. I'm like, all right. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm trying to like wire myself down. I get high as a kite smoking meth that evening.

I go to Dustin's place and I'm like, give me the key to the vehicle. He said, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to go to the police impound and I'm going to get that bag out of that car. He said, man, that's nuts. That's crazy. I said, we don't have a choice. I said, they go in that car in the morning. It's late. When they got the cars later in the day. So I'm betting on the fact they didn't go through it, right? You put a car in the police impound, you lock it up, it's going to be there tomorrow, right? So I was like, give me the key. I'm going to go there and I'm going to try to get this bag out. And so I go to this impound yard where the Texas Rangers put that car and I drive around it. I can't see in it. Part of it's got some woods back there, but I got night vision goggles.

So I'm like, all right. So I cross the street from the impound yard. There's a neighborhood. I find a house that's vacant. You know, I can see there's no furniture in there. So I break into that house and I open the garage up. And that's where I'm going to run back to when I get this bag out of this car. So all I take with me that night is a screwdriver, set of night vision goggles, and the key fob

for his car. So I go into the woods on the back side of this this impound lot I'm trying to find this car night vision won't work because there's too many lights coming from over there, right? Let's say it's like a baseball diamond this impound yard All right The gate that opens up where they bring the cars in that's home plate now if you go down the first baseline there's gonna be a guard shack right there and Imagine inside that baseball diamond. There's cars all over the infield, there's

cars all over the outfield, and you have a track, this first base, second base, you have baselines that the tow trucks drive the cars around. This place is huge. So let's say it's center field. There's a tree out there on the other side of the fence for the impound yard. So I climb up this tree, real high tree, I get up there and I start looking around the impound yard. And right underneath me in center field is the Mazda RX-8 backed into the spot. I'm like, man, there it is. So I drop in, it's about a 20 foot drop and I drop in, get in the car, I look inside the car, burglary bag is in there, it's still there, the cops hadn't gotten yet. And then the idea hits me, I'm gonna steal the whole car. Why not just take the whole car while I'm here, right? Start the engine up, I drive it around between second and third, then I turn the base corner between third and home and I shut the car down and I'm waiting for the next tow truck to come in with

a vehicle. And when that tow truck comes in, I'm hitting the gas and I'm going out that gate. And so here I hear the gate, the gates turning up, you know, I see the front of the tow truck coming in. And as soon as I see the front of the vehicle, it's towing in, I punch it. And I know we're not far away. I can still see the driver, the tow truck's eyes. His eyes are wide, he hits the gas. And man, I go in right behind him and I hang a hard right and I spin out and I look up, I'm in the parking lot, man. I stole the whole car back from the cops. So I drove this car out to this neighborhood, back into that garage and I cleaned the car up

and that was the biggest mistake. You ask what mistakes. Why? Because what happened? Because I kicked a hornet's nest. I mean, once you steal- You got their attention. Once, yeah, once you steal a big crucial piece of evidence like that back, there's no way they're going to let you go off of this thing.

The clock was ticking backwards at that point. And is it because you're on meth or is it because you haven't slept that you make this decision or is it just because, like, it was a million things? It was a million things. Criminals are stupid. For the most part, criminals are stupid. We always make mistakes. What about Tony Soprano? Don't talk about him like that. Well, look, here's the thing about Tony Soprano that I would tell you that you're gonna find in this story.

Tony Soprano was morally ambiguous, right? We love Tony Soprano, right? He had a family, he took his daughter to soccer practice. No, we did love him. But Tony was a dangerous guy too, wasn't he? He's my celebrity crush. People could die around Tony, but Tony is a good guy. But we still loved him.

There was an endearing side. Exactly, he's morally ambiguous. I think I'm obsessed with that though. There's something to me that's like, he's a criminal and he's like, you could die around him, but he's endearing. I like that. You're going to love this story today, then. You're going to love this story. All right. Am I going to change my crush to you? No, no, no, no, Michael. Don't worry about it. No, no, no. But this story about Damon West, you know, we're in the weeds right now about the bad stuff,

but there's going to be a corner that I turn, and when I turn that corner and the things start happening, it's about how I've been able to transform the world because of what happened in my life. I was a morally ambiguous guy too, Lauren. I'm not ready for you to turn the corner because I still am going to go back to my question. What is a shot caller? We got, well, the shot caller is the leader of the whole group. He was basically calling the shots of where, what they would do. Tony Soprano is a shot caller. How about that?

Okay. Okay. I can, I can deal with that. Okay. So Tony's a shot caller. So when they went after you, they knew you were the shot caller Here's how they figured that out So they've got a lineup with about a dozen other methodics that are involved in this thing and Everybody for the most part's got the same backstory same look But then there's this guy in there right this middle-class white guy from a great two-parent home College quarterback worked in Congress worked on Wall Street.

This is our guy. This is the leader, right? Remember Miss Greenberg told me in fifth grade, you were born to be a leader? That's the guy. In my trial, when I go to trial, we'll get to that in a little bit, there's a pyramid of with everybody's pictures.

My picture is at the top of the pyramid. That's how you know you're the shot caller when you're at the top of the pyramid like that. Do you like being the shot caller at the time? Or are you like, I'm at the top of the pyramid like that. Is it, do you like being the shot caller at the time? Or are you like, I'm at the top of the pyramid? No, no, Lauren. And like, here's the thing. This wasn't like organized crime.

Like you're thinking about like a New Jersey mob, right? This is, this is a bunch of dope fiends breaking into houses to steal for dope. Are they able to build a stronger case though, if they position it this kind of way? Great question, Michael. Yes. Organized crime. When you, when you attach organized crime, a crime, when you make it a RICO case, because that's what I went down for is RICO.

When you make it RICO, man, first of all, it enhances your degree of felony by one degree. It's an enhancer statute. So it went from being a burglary case, which is a two to 20 in Texas, to a first degree felony, which is five to life. So that's what I'm looking at. They take me that day, July 30th, 2008. They arrest me. They booked me into Dallas County jail.

My bond is set at 1.4 million. Well, it's the biggest, there's 9,000 people in Dallas County jail. This is one County in Texas, by the way, 9,000 people is one of the biggest jails in America. It's like a city inside this place. Think about a place where 9,000 people live, right?

No one else at the time,000 people live, right? No one else at the time, not murderers, not child molesters, not rapists had a bond that high. And my crimes are not like those crimes, y'all. My crimes are property crimes. Why is it so high? Why is it higher than a child molester? I don't understand that.

Lauren, you'd have to ask the people involved with that to understand it. Here's what I think. So when I get arrested, I've got one organized crime indictment hanging over me and the bond was set at a quarter of a million dollars. That night I get on the phone, talk about mistakes. Here's another mistake I made.

I think I can raise, because you have to get 10% of your bond raised to get out. I think I can raise 25,000. So I start calling people from the dope world, people from the crime world. Hey man, you owe me money for this job man come get me out Cops are listening my calls and they're going and picking up other people and they're turning states evidence against me because I let the cops of them

Oh my god, Lauren criminals are stupid. That's a big one. That's a big one. You didn't realize they were listening I knew they were listening, but I wanted out. I was scared to death. I was in jail I wanted I want to get high again. You didn't want to call your mom and dad. Oh, I did call my mom and dad. And they were like, you're on your own. That's a serious phone call. Like you want to talk about that? Sure.

Yeah. We love to hear that. So I call my mom and dad and. You did it the way before, but did they know you were struggling up at this point or no? They knew something was wrong, but they live in, they live in Southeast Texas. I'm up in Dallas.

So South there's six hours away from me. You know, outside of coming and kidnap me, they can't stop what's going on in Southeast Texas. I'm up in Dallas. So South there's six hours away from me. You know, outside of coming and kidnapped me, they can't stop what's going on in my life. So the first time I call home from Dallas County jail, my dad answers the phone. Now my mom and my dad, my dad died two years ago. They were married for 55. Oh, sorry. I appreciate that man, but he got to see me turning around. That's part of the good story.

That's the other part we're going to talk about later. But my mom, my dad had been married for 55 years. I came from a great family. I got an older brother, younger brother, big Catholic family home. My dad answers the phone. He's screaming and crying. I've never heard my dad cry. How did we go so wrong?

What did we do wrong with you? How did we mess up so bad? My mom gets on the phone. My mom's a nurse and my mom can compartmentalize the pain. She gets on the phone and she's like, baby, listen, your dad can't talk right now. I've never seen him like this before. We need to have a serious conversation. We need to talk.

She said, you need to understand that we love you unconditionally. There's nothing you could do to make us not love you, Damon. She said, that was the deal we made with God when he loaned you to us. She said, do you understand what I'm saying to you? I'm like, yeah. And she said, good, because we just gave you back to God. She said, there's nothing we can do for you anymore, Damon. You're now a captive audience to God and you better start listening to him.

And she asked me a question. She said, do you, do you remember the prayer plaque that I had on your walls? A kid growing up now? Y'all, my mom is one of those moms that has prayer plaques across us all over the house, man. You can't escape God. My mom's house is everywhere, man. But she wants to know about the prayer plaque that was above my bed on

Ronald street, where I grew up in Port Arthur, Texas. And I'm on this dope, man. I can't think straight. I'm like, Mom, what are you talking about? And she said, baby, it was footprints in the sand. She said, do you remember the story of footprints in the sand? I said, Mom, I don't know what you're talking about. So my mom that night on the jailhouse phone, she patiently and lovingly retold me the story

of footprints in the sand. About a guy walking on the beach with God. She said they're walking on the beach, they're watching a video of his life play on the sky. And every time something good in that man's life happened, there was two sets of footprints walking side by side. Things are going well. But when the bad stuff in life happened,

there was pain, there's hurt, there's suffering, there's loss when he loses his football career, he saw one set of footprints. And finally, he couldn't take it. So he calls God out. Hey God, what's up, man? Every time something good in my life happens, there's two sets of footprints walking side by side.

But when the bad stuff happens, you abandoned me. Why did you abandon me? Why do I see one set of footprints? And that's when she said, Damon, every time you saw one set of footprints, God didn't abandon you. He carried you. She said, get on God's back. Then she said, there's only one set of footprints in a jail cell.

There's not yours. She said, get on God's back, David. She said, there's only one set of footprints in a jail cell. There's not yours. She said, get on God's back. I don't want to lose my son. And man, I'm not in the mind frame to listen to my mom. I mean, I start praying, but I'm praying to get out of jail so I get high again. The addict's prayer, right? All I care about is getting high again, y'all.

I'm facing a life sentence in a Texas prison for an organized crime charge. The evidence is so overwhelming against me. I'm guilty of everything they said. I got a $1.4 million bond at this point, and all I'm hoping to do is get probation so I can get out and get high again. May 18th, 2009, 10 months after that arrest by SWAT team, it's the sixth and final day

of my trial. And y'all, a six-day trial for crimes where no one got physically hurt It means the evidence of my guilt is overwhelming and they got me y'all and there was no opportunity to avoid trial or take a plea There was they made me a plea bargain offer of is either 40 years or 50 years Oh, there's no meth in jail at this point. So you're still there wasn't anything I could find I was looking for it left and right. I was detoxing. I tell people all the time, I'm sober. I'm in recovery. I work a 12-step program recovery.

Been working since I was in prison. I still go to two to three meetings every week. But at that point, I hadn't even hit rock bottom yet, y'all. And I'm in jail and all I care about is getting high. But rock bottom, what happened for me on May 18th, 2009, is the sixth and final day of that trial. So the jury gets the case and the jury goes to deliberate for 10 minutes.

Oh, not a good sign. Was that bad? How long do you want them to deliberate for? You want them to deliberate for hours, days if possible. That means everyone's a guilty dog. Let's get out of here, man. This guy's guilty. Let's just send him to prison.

I get back, Lauren, check this out. I'll tell you how bad it was. I get back in the court. Maybe it was 15 minutes, right? I get back in the courtroom and one of my lawyers looked at me. She said, brace yourself. This is gonna be bad.

And I'm like, how bad? She said, well, that while the jury is gone for that brief 10, 15 minutes, they sent a note into the judge from the jury room. They wanted to know if they could give you life without parole. Y'all. Why, why is it so intense?

I mean, listen, I'm not saying like what you didn't do. I just think like, I mean, Lauren, Texas is not the most lenient state. But there's people that have done like crazy things to other people that I've never even heard this. No doubt. Is this crazy? No. And, and I mean, like you're going to hear on the other end of the story about the course correction that that sentence got.

But I asked her that day, I said, what did the judge say? The judge said you can give him life, but you can't give him life without parole. Now, y'all, life without parole is capital punishment. That's the mindset of this jury. How do we get rid of this guy forever? And the judge calls the court back in and he reads my sentence out loud. He said, Damon Joseph West, by the way, your name's Joseph too. I know that from listening to your show.

I'm a big fan. So he said, strong Catholic name. Yeah. Strong Catholic name. Yeah. Yeah. It was from the Rick Caruso conversation I was listening to. Yeah.

But Judge Snipes reads my sentence out loud. He said, Damon Joseph West, you are hereby sentenced to 65 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Lauren, 65 years in Texas is a life sentence. They stop calculating time in Texas at 60 years. 60 and above is life. Anytime you hear a jury say life or 85 or 65, they mean 60.

That sounds like a personal vendetta. There's something like weird with that though. So here's what I understand now. I understand now that juries will, I went back to school and got that master's in criminal justice. I learned a lot about juries when I got my master's degree. There's one or two reasons why juries sentence people to a lot of time or both. One is that they're afraid of the person and they want to get rid of them because they're

fearful of that person in society again. Two is that they're angry at that person or both, right? The jury was mad at me. I wasn't, they weren't afraid of me. I wasn't a physical violent, I wasn't violent. I never hurt anybody before, right? But how are they not mad like that at, and I don't know if this is ignorant, how are they not mad at like the child molester or the murderer? I don't understand that. That's what that's. I think it's case by case. Yeah, I think it's case by case. I don't think we want to blankly say that every jury's not mad at.

But here's the deal. I want to say this for everybody here. I deserve to go to prison. I did the crimes and I got the time. Whenever you break the social contract like that, Lauren, you put yourself in a position where you give the power to a jury, you give the power to a judge. And if I don't do all those things, I don't end up in Judge Snipes' courtroom to get that verdict that day.

So I did the things. They said, did I get too much time? Yeah. I mean, you could probably look at it and say 65 years for property crimes. It's a lot. And again, you'll hear on the back end that that got... There was people that noticed that, we'll put it that way. But look, I earned my sentence, I got my time.

65 years is the life sentence check, or like the book, Six Dimes and a Nickel. That's what they call it in prison terms. Every 10 years is a dime, five years is a nickel. Six dimes and a nickel, that's what that means in prison terms. That's what that means in prison terms, 65 years. So do you go in to all the boys and say, I got six dimes and a nickel? I didn't have to. They saw it on TV.

It was a high profile case. So right after the trial was over, they rushed me out of the courtroom. Wait, pause real quick. What is going, what goes through your mind when you hear that sentence? Man, the first thing that went through my head, my parents heard that.

That's the first thing. Like my parents are in the front row. They were there for the whole six days of trial, man, they listened to all the overwhelming evidence. Can't heard that. That's the first thing I like. My parents are in the front row. They were, they were there for the whole six days of trial, man. They listened to all the overwhelming evidence. Yeah, man. But everything starts happening fast. Like, you know, just like in the movies, man, they get you out of there fast.

They handcuffed me, they dragged me out of there. Is it like, almost like you can't believe it? I'm in stunned disbelief that I just got life. Right. I mean, cause I figured I was going to get, I knew I was going to prison. I figured I'd get 40 years maybe, you know, that was one of the offers, right?

So 40, 50 years, but get, I knew I was going to prison. I figured I'd get 40 years maybe, you know? That was one of the offers, right? So 40, 50 years, but 65, I got the max. In Texas, the maximum sentence they can give you is 60. And the maximum amount of fine they can give you is 10,000. The jury gave me 65, which is really 60, and they gave me a $10,000 fine. They maxed me out, man. Threw me away. So, they get me out of the courtroom,

they put me in this little side room, it's got a bulletproof glass, they told me to wait. A few minutes later, my mom and my dad are escorted in on the other side of the glass. They feel sorry for my parents. My parents just watched their son get life. And I came from a great family, right? So they're giving me one last visit with them.

And I have this critical conversation, this very crucial conversation with my mom. My dad can't talk, so my mom talks. And she's telling me, she's like, baby, debts in life demand to be paid, and you just got hit with one hell of a bill from the state of Texas, but you did everything that said you did.

So you're gonna go and pay the debt to society. She said, you owe Texas that debt, but now you owe your father and I debt too, because we gave you all the opportunity, love and support to be anything in life. So here's the debt you're gonna 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 gangs because your scare creatures are a minority in there she said

you were never raised to be a racist she's not starting that stuff now she said you will not get any tattoos while you're inside that prison that's why you see no ink on my skin I spent almost 10 years in a level five maximum security. No ink, no tattoos. Is that a big deal for people that don't understand? Lauren, they want to tattoo every inch of your body in the joint. These guys were relentless when I was in there. They're like, man, West, let me put a tattoo on you.

You got to get a tattoo. You're in prison, man. I tell them the same thing every time. I'm like, dude, I can't do it, man. My mom said no. That's a good excuse though. Like if I'm like, dude, I can't do it, man. My mom said no. That's a good excuse though. Like if I'm like a big gang member in prison, that's maybe the only excuse that I would let slide. Since I know how much you love prison,

I brought some good prison stories for you. I have a lot of prison questions. Here's a little caveat about prison that you're gonna really love. All those guys in prison gave me a pass on the tattoo thing because it came from my mother. There's the endearing side. I'll put the professor hat on now.

The busiest visitation day of the year in prisons all over America. Mother's day. Yeah. Because let me tell you something. Moms love their boys. No matter what. I would be like waiting outside with like posters that's like, go towns. The line.

Let's hope we don't get there ever. I hope you don't ever get there. Right. I hope that, but the line outside the gate on the prison, every, I mean, so here's mothers lined up outside of every prison in America on Mother's Day. And my mom and my dad, when I go to prison, they live about 10 miles away from the prison where I'm at. So they come see me all the time.

But the only time I never saw my parents in prison was Mother's Day weekend. My mom would always say, we're not going to come visit you that weekend because we're going to leave that table for some other mother and her son. So the guys all gave me a pass on the tattoo thing because it came from my mom. What else did your mom say that she were going to pay debt onto her? Here's the rest of the conversation today. She said, Damon, no gangs, no tattoos. She said, you come back as the man that we raised

or don't come back at all. Good for her. And I'm like, and she's like, do you understand the debt you're about to pay to us? And I'm stunned. I'm like, yeah, mom, I got it. But what do I know about prison? I've never been to prison.

I'm a white middle-class guy in America. I don't know why it's been to prison at this point. It's terrifying. I mean, yeah. So I get back to my pot in Dallas County jail. I've got two months before the prison bus comes to get me. And I'm frantically asking every guy that's been to prison at this point. It's terrifying. I mean, yeah, so I get back to my pot in Dallas County jail. I've got two months before the prison bus comes to get me and I'm frantically asking every guy that's been to prison before, how am I gonna survive?

What am I gonna do? And every guy I'm talking to, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, they all say the same thing. You have to get into a gang. You said you can't survive without a gang. They said the gang is your family now. But there was this one guy that was so different, y'all. This older black man named Muhammad.

Now Muhammad's what you call a career criminal in and out of prison his entire life but he's the most positive guy I've ever met in my life. Has a smile on his face everywhere he goes. You couldn't knock the smile off Muhammad's face and every morning he comes to my cell to my bunk and he and he picks me up like a ray of sunshine that dark place with this positive energy. So one morning Muhammad comes up to my bunk he's got a cup of coffee in his hands, had a smile on his face. He said, West, I've been watching you. I've been watching how you're dealing with these knuckleheads

and these dummies talking about you gotta get into a gang. He said, don't listen to these fools. He said, you wanna keep the promise you made to your mom and your dad? Let me tell you what prison's really gonna be like. So he tells me, the first thing you need to understand about prison, prison's all about race. He said, race runs the whole institution inside of a prison.

He said that's the way all the races want it. Everybody splits in their own racial group. That's how you avoid a racial war. He said now when you walk in the door, the white gangs get the first dibs on you because you're white. And he starts naming them off. The Aryan Brotherhood, the Aryan Circle, the White Knights, the Woods.

He said you fight all the white gangs first. If you survive the white gangs, now you're fighting black gangs. Wait, like you have to go in and fight them? For your life. You have to fight. How are you one person supposed to fight a huge gang of men? You do it one at a time. Well, most of the fights are one-on-one.

But I mean, when I found out when I got there, not every fight was going on. How do you know how to fight a gang member? You just fight. It's just, it's just a normal fight. I mean, you just fight for your life. Is it just like a fight? Like, are they looking for people that won't fight? Yes. What they're looking for is for you to join the gang because you're

a gang recruit, I'm a gang recruiting age. I'm 33 when I go to prison, right? So I'm still in that gang recruiting age. I mean, had I been 40 years old going to prison, no one's going to mess with me. If I was, I would just mind my own business. You're too old to be in a gang. But at 33, you're still gang recruiting age and that's what Muhammad's telling me, man. He said, man, you're about to walk into the worst environment in the world and everybody's gonna come after you.

You made a promise to your mom and if you want to keep the promise, you're gonna have to fight your way out of this. That's the only way out. So he's telling me you fight the white gangs first. You survived the white gangs, now you're fighting black gangs. And the white gangs send the white gangs after you. The Crips, the Bloods, the Gangster Disciples. He said, they're all going to tee off on you because they all want this white guy to get with his own race and his own kind where he belongs.

He said, everybody will work in concert to get you back to the white gangs where you're supposed to be. But he told me, he said, if you survive all that, and you can survive all that, he said, you'll earn the right to walk alone. He said, the strongest man in prison always walks alone. He told me the truth about fighting.

He said, you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights. And he said, some days you're going to win, West, and some days you're going to lose. He said, it's okay if you lose, just get up. Just get up and keep fighting Quick break to talk about one of our favorite long-term partners just thrive Remember when you were a kid and you had an iron stomach you could eat anything you wanted pizza ice cream peanut butter and jelly Nothing fazed you you were unstoppable But these days if you're like most people you feel like your stomach's a bear trap one wrong bite and you're done. You. Here's the thing, years ago our ancestors ate lots of bitter plants, daily that

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Herobrite is offering 10% off your order. Go to hero.co and use code skinny at checkout. That's skinny at h-e-r-o dot c-o. How severe are these fights? Is this like fistfights? You get knocked down, you're done. Is it like, they're really like- They're probably all different.

Are they really trying to like- We're going to get to prison fights. Yeah. I guess what I'm asking is like, is this like. We're going to get to prison fight. Yeah, I got you. I mean, like, I guess what I'm asking is like, is this like a high school fight where you fight and it's like, okay, walk away. Is this like a more aggressive fight, like really trying to hurt someone? Or is this like, Hey, there's weapons and they're trying to kill you type of fight. No, thankfully no one ever came in with a weapon.

There's a lot of weapons in prison, but no one ever came at me with a weapon. It was all, it was all fighting with your fist, but there's rules in prison fighting. Right. The main rule in a prison fight is when a man's on the ground, you can't beat a man while he's on the ground. You have to let him get back. Yeah. There's rules about that.

So some of these street fights that happen out here actually in the streets where you see people getting kicked in the head, that's like a no-no there. That's a no-no in prison. No-no. You have to let the guy get up and fight. And if you beat a guy when he's on the ground, you could have the whole pod jump on you then, man, because you're not fighting by the rules.

Like hockey. Hockey's the only rule in hockey fight. You gotta take your gloves off, right? I think it's interesting for people to hear because like in street fights, You could have the whole pod jump on you then, man, because you're not fighting by the rules. Like hockey, hockey's the only rule in hockey fight. You gotta take your gloves off, right? Well, I think it's interesting for people to hear because like in street fights, a lot of times you see these videos of people like, even by mistake, they kick somebody on the ground, the pilot dies.

Or like, it sounds like there's like some real parameters that they've set up. There are parameters in prison fight. Yeah, you have to let a man fight. And whenever you're done in a prison fight, you gotta show up. That's what Muhammad's telling me, man. You don't have to win these fights, man. Just go fight.

People want to see that you're going to defend yourself. And when you get tired of fighting, just say, man, I'm done. When you're on the ground, say, I'm done. It's over. So they just want to see that you're not a pussy. That's it. That's all they want to see. And you don't want them to see that you are.

Because if that happened, we'll talk about that. I know you want to hear some prison stories. I got them. How do you know I like prison so much? Well, I listen to your show. I've been a fan of yours since 2023 when no 2022. Thank you. I've been listening to your show for a long time I told you I wanted to be here y'all like this is like this is like the pinnacle man

This is like Ed Mylet and people like so no, I'm shout out to Ed Mylet. I mean he made this happen I'm so grateful. I can't believe I've talked about prison so much on the show that that's. But I wanted a long form podcast to come on and tell the story. This is the place to do it. I've never done it before. I've never been on a long form podcast to tell the whole story.

So this is it. This is the first time. Carson, this is different for us, right? Like we like. Carson's like, this is a good one. I mean, we've had some people that have been in, we've had stories similar to this, but we love this kind of stuff.

It's different for us, but also, and I know we're going to get into the stuff you're doing, which is, I've followed you and it's inspiring, but keep going. No, let's keep telling stories. People love- No, keep going. Y'all, in my life today, I'm a storyteller. I'm a speaker. I go around sharing my story.

Thank you. And that's what, people love story. And a good storyteller is going to make you feel something. Right? It's like the Maya Angelou quote, right? People don't always remember what you say. They don't always remember what you do, but they always remember how you make them feel and it's my job to make people feel something Because if I can make you feel something that can create a memory and that's what I'm trying to do man When I go into rooms and inspire people to be the best version themselves

I want them to create I want them to walk away saying man I remember that story man That guy's story was so intense when but he was so good at telling it. And so thank you for letting me come in a long form podcast. So Muhammad, he's telling me, man, you're going to fight the white gangs, you're going to fight the black gangs, but all you got to do is get up and keep fighting. He's telling me, you don't have to win all your fights. Got to fight all your fights. But y'all, when he's telling me it's back 2009, I'm looking back at this guy

like a deer in headlights, you know, all this violence and terror much walk into That's when he's like West. He said let me break it down for you a different way. He said I want you to imagine prison It's a pot of boiling water He said anything we put into a pot of boiling water will be changed by the heat and the pressure inside that pot he said I'm gonna put three things in this pot of boiling water and watch how they change a carrot an egg and a coffee bean. So y'all, Lauren, Michael, this is where I first hear the story of the coffee bean.

The summer of 2009 in a jail cell in Dallas County jail. 10 years before John Gordon, I would write a best-selling book in 2019 called The Coffee Bean. So he said, first things first, if I put a carrot in a pot of boiling water, he said, what happened to the carrot? Now, Mike, the carrot's going to turn soft. He said, that's right.

But the carrot goes in the water hard and firm, but the water, the prison turns a hard carrot soft and mushy and weak. You see, you don't want to be a carrot. He said, what about the egg? What happened to the egg in the pot of boiling water? Mike, the egg is going to turn hard, like a hard boiled egg. He said, that's right. He said, the egg has a shell that can protect it physically on the outside. But inside that shell, that soft liquid core, that yolk, that heart becomes hardened.

He said, now, if your heart becomes hardened, you become incapable of giving or receiving love. He said, if you're incapable of giving or receiving love, you've become institutionalized and you do not come back as someone your parents recognized. That's what happened to Shot Collar. He said, your eggshell. And the movie. He said, your eggshell will have slostocos all over it. Yeah, she's talking about, you know that movie Shot Collar.

Yeah, she shot the movie Shot Collar. Yeah, I've seen the movie. Yeah. How accurate was that one? Very accurate of how the guy gets in. This is, and you're about to hear in my story, like how this guy goes in, the white gangs come after him and remember, he goes in. He doesn't fight it off.

So this will give you a great bookend to how that can go the other way. So he's telling me, you can't be the egg. You promised your parents you wouldn't be the egg. You promised you wouldn't be the carrot either, really. And then he asked me, he said, what about the coffee bean? He said, what happened to the coffee bean in the pot of boiling water? And y'all, I didn't have a clue. I didn said, what happened to the coffee bean in the pot of boiling water? And y'all, I didn't have a clue. I didn't know what happened to a coffee bean

in a pot of boiling water. And that is when Muhammad, this man who looks nothing like me, this man who doesn't come from the same America that I come from, this man who doesn't believe the same things I believe in my life, this is a black Muslim man from the streets of Dallas, Texas.

I'm this white middle-class Catholic from a little town called Port Arthur. But this man who's so different than me, he's going to share with me one of the most important and transformational messages I've ever received in my entire life. And I really think the moral to that is this. If you ever shut yourself off to other people because of their differences, different race, gender, ethnicity, religion, opinions, political views. If you close yourself off to people because of the differences, you may miss some of the most important messages and some of the best friendships in this life.

Welcome to our podcast. Yeah. We agree. I think that's a very important message. I mean, listen, I think that's a very important message, especially at a time when people intentionally try to shut out as many voices as possible if they're counter to their own thoughts or opinions. Michael, one of the things I love about coming to your show today is I think this is the

message America needs right now. What I'm about to share with y'all, this story of the coffee bean. So he told me, he said, if I put a coffee bean in that same pot of boiling water we call prison, he said, now you got to change the name of the water to coffee. Because he said the coffee bean, the smallest of the three things, he said small like you, has the power to change the entire atmosphere inside that pot because the power is inside the coffee bean. He said, just like the power is inside of you.

He said, everything else in life is changed by the water in life. Carrots are changed by the water, eggs are changed by the water, but not a coffee bean. He said the coffee bean is the only thing that changes the water because it's the change agent. If you want to come back as someone your parents recognized, you've got to be like that coffee bean too. He told me what the first day of prison was like, Michael, this is getting to some of your answers now.

He said, Wes, when they get you to prison, they're going to separate you out from everybody else. In Texas, they got a law. If you get a life sentence in the state of Texas, you have to live on a level five maximum security, first of all. It's a high-security level there is. And if you get a life sentence, you can't live with the general population of a prison. You have to live with other lifers. It's a building called the life sentence building, the most dangerous and hopeless place you can imagine. Think about a world where 432 men live on a building together, 98% are never

going to leave that building. It's the most hopeless place on the planet. I'm one of the few guys that gets to make parole. So he said, when you walk in the door the first day, they're going to let you into the life sentence building. Do not run to your bunk if the guys are scared. He said, man, you walk in the door of that day room, you put your bag down, put your back against the wall and just let it happen.

And I'm like, let what happen? He said, your heart check. The heart check is the most important fight of prison, y'all. It's the first day. It's going to happen on day one. The heart check is they want to see what your heart's pumping. They want to see what you're made of. They want to see what your heart is pumping.

He said, you're going to be approached first by a white guy because you're white. He said, the first guy that approached you, he's not a threat to you. He's an information guy. He's a scout. He'll ask you one relevant question in this first conversation. What gang are you going to be a part of? He reminds me of the eunuch in Game of Thrones. I've never seen the Game of Thrones.

I read two of those books in prison, Lauren. That series pissed me off. So I would get so attached to a character and they kill them. And so like book two, I'm like, man, I'm done with this, man. They kill all my favorite characters. There's like seven books. I think it was like those guys passed around prison. Reading is really big in prison.

Two things I learned about books in prison. I never saw a guy reading a book, get into a fight and I never saw a fight over a book. Books are pretty safe. So, but the game of throne. Yeah. So, so he said, um, you'll be approached first by a white guy. He said, the first guy's not a threat. He's a, he's an information gather scout.

He'll ask you one relevant question. His first conversation, what gang are you going to be a part of? And he said, man, get him out of your face as fast as you can. And then get your head on a swivel and get ready. Cause the second guy coming up to you, he's not coming to talk to you. He's coming to hurt you. He said, the second guy is the enforcer. He said, now when the second guy gets within range of you, put your fist in his mouth. He said hit

him as hard as you can. Hit him in the face as hard as you can. Hit whatever you can and swing like crazy. He said get the jump on the first fight. And y'all just about that time the summer of 2009, he makes bond. So he's going to leave Dallas County Jail. The prison bus is getting ready to come pick me up to serve that life sentence on a Texas maximum security prison He has four words for me on the way out the door. He said hey West Be a coffee bean Y'all those are the four words that changed my life because those four words put the power back inside me And if the power was inside me, it's not the world around me, right?

The criminal justice system the guards the other inmates it's inside me and if I keep the power was inside me, it's not in the world around me, right? The criminal justice system, the guards, the other inmates, it's inside me. And if I keep the power inside me, I don't survive prison, I thrive in that prison. And I want everybody listening to this to know that the power is inside you too. It's not what goes on around you in the cities you live in, the state you come from, not even in the crazy politics and social problems

this country has right now. It's not in social media, it's in you. But you've got to keep the power inside you. And if you keep the power inside you, you don't survive your adversity, you thrive in your adversity. Y'all, I know this for a fact, because I took the coffee bean message to the biggest pot of boring water there is. A level five maximum security prison in the state of Texas. Y'all ready for prison stories?

Let's do it. I'm on the edge of my seat. People love prison stories, man. And I got a lot to tell. So Lauren, first day of prison, man, they get me to prison, the prison bus ride, these prison bus rides are long, they're hot, they're sweaty, you're chained up to another human being the whole ride, I mean, you're handcuffed to another person. The bus is a, just a bus, it's a cage on wheels, man.

The windows are covered up with cages, it's a cage on the inside. You get to prison, they unshackle you, they hose you down. And they took me to the life sentence building. Seven Building, on Stiles Unit. Seven Building has 432 men. Every man's got life. I walk into Seven Building and I'm scared to death. I don't want to go in.

The guards are coming to get in. So I take a step into the day room and the big door closed behind me. Boom! And I look up and there's a giant room with three levels of sales, inmates are hanging on the railings, it's loud. Prison is a loud place. But as soon as that door closed behind me, the volume drops to zero. You could hear a pin drop and everybody's staring at the new guy that just walked in.

It's like the worst first day of school ever, right? Is it just you as the new guys or a crop of new guys? One guy, one guy walking in, I got a mattress in the one arm, a couple of bags of property. And man, the thought going through my head, run for it. Forget what Muhammad said, get to your cell and run and hide. What do they allow you to bring in there besides a mattress? When we say property, like what do you use it? You can bring a Bible with you.

You can bring a religious book with you. That's it. I mean, I say property, like I had some commissary because you don't hit the big units like that. You don't hit them first. You go to a transfer facility, but that transfer facility where I'm, I got a life sentence. They segregate me out from everybody. I live in a cage, the transfer facility, because they don't want life.

Transfer facilities aren't maximum security. You can, you know, there's guys that try to escape from those things. Life sentence people like me, once you hit the transfer facility, you're in a little cage, man, like a dog in the kennel. So I lived the first couple of weeks in a transfer facility in a little kennel. And then I got released from my kennel and I go to prison, to real prison,

that's the maximum security. And I got a little commissary with me because I bought some snacks and stuff off the commissary. Commissary is like a store in prison. It's like a place you can go to and buy. So does the messenger come up to you, the eunuch? So yeah, so that's funny. That's pretty good. I had to stop and laugh. So I started looking around for my cell because I'm going to make a run for it. I'm like,

forget what Muhammad, Muhammad's not here with me. I'm here with me. I'm the only one here with me. Forget Muhammad, man. This guy's that old man's crazy anyway, right? I started looking from, my cell was 45 cell, 45 cells up on the third tier by the showers. It was a further cell from the door. I'm like, man, I'll never make it. They'll get me. So I put my mattress down, put my bags down, I put my back against the wall and I waited.

Doesn't take five minutes. Here he comes, the Unique. I got to, Lauren. You're making this fun. I like this. That's never happened on the show. So little bitty ball hit a white dude. Just like Muhammad said, he's tatted up from head to toe.

Even his eyelids are tatted up. He gets in my face. Hey white boy What family you riding with they call gangs families a gang is not a family y'all He said what family riding with white boy? And my man get out of my face little dude. I'm ride with God. Please just leave me alone, man I'm just here with God. He laughed at me. He said God isn't here white boy He said we kick God out of this place a long time ago. He said, God's been gone from here. He said, but we're here, white boy, and we're gonna come get you.

Get ready, white boy. He runs up the stairwell on the right side. I'm ready to pee in my pants, but I don't have time for that because coming down the third tier, biggest corn-fed white dude I've ever seen in my life. This guy's an ogre, man. He's massive.

He points at me from the third run. He's coming, man, and I know it. I'm watching him walk down the stairs. Lauren, huge muscled-up white dude, muscles popping through his shirt, Ogre man, he's massive. He pointed me from the third run. He's coming, man. And I know it. I'm watching him walk down the stairs. Lauren, huge muscled up white dude, muscles popping through his shirt, bald head with a swastika all around the top of his skull. Man, all I see is a swastika, two beady

eyeballs and muscles coming at me. But man, I did everything Muhammad said. He got within range, hit him in the mouth. I gave him everything I had, Michael. 20 seconds later, he's beating my ass across that day room and he's mopping the floor. The hit didn't even faze him, man. This guy beats me from one side of the day room to the other.

First fight in prison, I'm 0-1-1, took 20 seconds, man. Beat my butt that day. Where's the guards? In the picket. They don't care. Here's the thing about prison fighting. Guards, the experience that I had in there is this. If you're not in the pod with a guard in there with you,

when the guard's in the pod, you don't do anything illegal activity. The guys are like, hey man, look, the guards are here to do their job. We're here to do our time. So all the tattooing and stuff like that, the fighting that goes on, when the guards leave the pod, that's when all that stuff happens. For the most part, if they don't see anything, they don't write up anything. A write-up takes a little bit more effort, right? And so, everybody in prison knows there's gonna be fighting. Here's what I learned about prison. Violence, or the threat of violence, is the glue that holds prison together.

That's the thing that holds all together because if you live in a world where there's a threat of violence for everything you say or everything you do or everything you touch, it happens to be a different world, right? Think about it. If you could apply it out here with social media, right? All the trolls out there that say stuff behind their keyboard wouldn't have it in prison.

You get your head taken off, man. So the threat of violence is the glue that holds it all together. So in a weird way, this is going to maybe sound like a strange question. Do you find that there's a certain etiquette in there and a certain way of like, you know, we're all here living in this space.

Get on the prison break. No, no, no, but of course there's etiquette. But maybe like, maybe I'm going to say something strange, maybe in some cases more etiquette than there would be outside of it. Oh, in my book, I talk about that. Like you have a world in there, a thief. You don't have thieves in prison.

I remember one time they caught a thief, they almost killed him and beat him up against the fence and the guards let it go on because you can't have a thief in a communal environment like that. You got 48 men, you live around this little section. If a thief runs around in there and everybody's pointing their fingers at each other, you could start a war. Thieves are the worst person you could have inside of a prison. So, when you get to prison and you establish yourself, you could leave property out there in the day room for a week if you wanted to and no one would touch it. That's the way prison works,

but you gotta establish yourself. If you're weak or considered to be weak or someone can roll over, people are always testing you when you first get there because they wanna see if they can extort you, they wanna see if they can rape you. There's a lot of things that go on inside of a prison that you have to establish yourself.

That's what Muhammad was getting me ready for, right? You gotta establish yourself. He said, don't even worry about the winds, just keep fighting. That's what Muhammad was getting me ready for, right? You got to establish yourself. He said, don't even worry about the wins, just keep fighting. That's what I did. So it took me two weeks to get through the white gangs. And this is fighting every day, y'all. In the first two months of prison,

I get in three dozen fights. Think about how many fights it is in two months. Two months, three dozen fights. No drugs. No drugs. No, the last time I did drugs was a SWAT team day. So July 30th was the last time. That's it, July 30th, 2008, my sobriety day.

So I thought you were going to say that there's drugs in the prison. There's a ton of drugs in prison. You just didn't tell me. Oh, for me? No, no. There's drugs everywhere. Second day I'm in prison, a guy comes to my cell. Good question.

Second day I'm in prison, man. The day after that first fight, I'm in my cell. Guy comes to the door, he bangs on the door. Hey, Wes,, I got what you need man. I go up to the cell door. This guy's got meth and ice This is the stuff that drove me to this place, right? I like that man, man I'm not interested in that because man come on. I read all about you online They got cell phones in prison when you walk in and they find out who you are They start googling who you are They run your TDC J number your prison number through. And man, they find out everything about your case. They read your

whole case file. Every news article has been written about you. This guy's telling me, man, man, I know about you all in that Berkeley stuff. You love this math, meth drove you to do all those things. I got it for you right here, man. It's in my face on day two. And you didn't want it. No, man. That's what put me in the place. I was, I was done with it. Rock bottom for me was the day I got sentenced to life in prison. I knew that something had to change and that's what put me in the place. I was done with it. Rock bottom for me was the day I got sentenced to life in prison. I knew that something had to change and that something was me. I just didn't know how to make that change.

And so that's what I was working on when I got to prison. How do I change me? But first I had to survive. Like the first two months, I'm just surviving. And it's interesting because a former guard that used to work in the prison, I live in the area when I went to prison. I live in a little town right outside of Beaumont, Texas.

That's where I was in prison. Back down four miles from my, the house I just built's four miles from the prison. I jogged by my old prison. I waved to the guys in the rec yard, they waved back, stuff like that. That's how close I lived to prison. What?

It's insane, isn't it? Do you do that as like a reminder? You know, well, yeah, kind of. I go into prisons a lot too. I go into, I try to make it a point to go into a prison somewhere in America every month. Can I go with you? Absolutely. Whenever you're ready to go in. Is it like, would you take me to a female prison or a male prison?

I would take you to both. So, I would choose, and I'll take you out. But here's why I would say this, because every four months. What's going on with you over there? I like, I'm, no, I just am intrigued by it. I just think it's like. Well, absolutely. I've like, ever since I was little, we would drive by jail, like in San Diego. And I would ask my dad a hundred questions. My grandma used to do this weird thing to me.

I don't know. And I've never thought about it until this moment in time where like outside of the prison that was insane. She would like take me when I was a kid and we'd like sit outside and it was a weird thing that I don't know why she was doing. She may be trying to teach me something. You know, I think that if you want to check the temperature of the country and see how well or unwell a country is go inside of a prison. That'll tell you what the status of the patient is. That makes total sense. Yeah. Yeah. I just, there's

something I find it interesting. I don't know another word to use. In my new life, you know, we'll get to all the stuff I'm doing in my new life because that's where the story, we wanted to go, that's where the change happens. The parole board in Texas who owns me until I get off parole, we'll hear about that in a second, but I have a curriculum in the Texas prison system. Every four months I graduated class from the change agent prison curriculum. Remember Muhammad said the coffee bean was the change agent. So the class is called the change agent prison curriculum

And it's about the lessons and principles in my life because the parole board solved what happened in my life They're like, can you teach the men and women in prison? I think like you So every four months I graduated class and every four months I have a graduation ceremony caps and gowns a big meals, sir I pay I pay for all this stuff right because I want them to experience that but I always bring in speakers and I want to bring in people from the free world that somebody they will recognize because I want these guys to see the belief that others have in me. And then if other people believe in me, somebody could believe in them if they change the way they think and you change the way you think, you change the way you

act. Right. The last speaker I had was, you know, you football fan, Dallas Cowboys. Sure. So Dak Prescott, good friend of mine. He's the deal. He's my partner in the movie deal for Six Times a Nickel. Dak's wife is Sarah Jane Prescott. Sarah Jane, SJ, I call her SJ. She's really fat. She's like you. She's really fat. She just had a baby actually two weeks ago. SJ just had her

baby two weeks ago, but she came into the prison in March. She was my graduation. We came in with Dak. They both came in together and she came in eight months pregnant into a Texas prison, a maximum security prison and spoke to all these guys And really held their attention to learn because remember how mothers are a big deal in prison Yeah, here's this eight month pregnant woman and they're telling them about life and tell them how they can be better and and you know I believe in you and things like that, you know, like just pumping into them. There's this belief in them. They loved her Yeah, I think that would be really interesting to go into a prison and- I can make it happen.

And we always do a prison tour. So you get to tour the maximum security prison, women's prisons. And someone told me it's like one of the safest places, like, I don't know if it's the safest place you can go, but it seems like there is an etiquette there. There's an etiquette there. They're gonna do a thing to you in there.

Because, I mean, plus you're gonna be around the inmates that are really trying hard to get better. And I think you would be incredible, especially in a women's prison talking to these women. I partnered up, you know what Elf on the Shelf is, right? Yeah, Elf on the Shelf. The lady that started Elf on the Shelf is a woman named Shanda Bell.

I ran into Shanda Bell a couple of years ago. I met her at an event and man, I didn't know if I wanted to shake her hand or run from her, right? Because how many nights, I got a little stepdaughter who's 13. But when Clara was a little girl, she had a little elf named Trixie, I can't tell you how many nights my wife and I would wake up like,

did you move the elf? Did you move the elf? You can't fuck around with the elf. And I know, so it's like when I meet Shanda, I'm like, listen, I got to tell you, man, many sleepless nights around your elf, but we loved it. Clara loved her elf. Our elf is like skydiving off the rooftop by the last night. Oh, we had all kinds of crazy stuff going on.

So when I met Shanda, this was in 2024, I met Shanda in 2024 and she said, Damon, I love your story. She said, your book, The Coffee Bean, got our company through the pandemic. She said in 2020, during the pandemic, think about it, supply chain, you know about it, supply chain issues, no one's in stores, no one's shopping.

They're based out of Atlanta, the Elf on the Shelf group, it's called Lumistella, is the name of the company. And she said, we read your book, The Coffee Bean, and it got us through. She said, I really am grateful for it. I love you. Come talk to my company out there. So she brings me in to speak and I said, Shanda, here's what I would love from you. I've got a foundation to be a Coffee Bean Foundation. My foundation, all I do, my wife and I's foundation, we take care of children who have incarcerated parents all over America. We provide money for extracurricular scholarships.

Really cool. Yeah, cause you wanna keep them busy and involved. And you know, this program that we have for the kids for extracurricular scholarships, it really works best whenever the parent that's in prison nominates their kid on the outside. So now the parent in prison gets to tell the kid on the outside, I got you that karate scholarship or I got you that swimming, that dancing, that music

lesson, that select sports. And so you kind of repair the parent child bond. But I told Shanda, I said, Hey, listen, can you donate 200 elves to my foundation? We'll take it as a donation and I'll go in throughout October in the Texas prison system, we'll do elf on the shelf, we'll do Christmas in October and all the parents that. I won't do Elf on the Shelf. We'll do Christmas in October. And all the parents that are in prison that want to give their kid an elf, we had special days on Saturdays and Sundays in the Texas prison system. Men's prisons, women's prisons.

It was one of the most amazing times I've ever spent in prison. I spent a lot of time in prison, but man, this event, it was so cool because these parents in prison are reading the book about the elf to their kid. And I'm getting emotional talking about it. You know, at the end of the book, when reading the book about the elf to their kid. And we get emotional talking about it. You know at the end of the book, when you get to name the elf, and they do that together and it's in the handwriting of the parents of the prison.

So that kid that his mom or dad's in prison, they get to go home and they have this elf. And this past Christmas, the conversations they were having in prison were, where was your elf hiding? What was your elf doing? You know, Christmas is a hard time in prison. The holidays are hard.

I'm sure. But it was just like a little piece to make it a little bit better for some of these families in prison. We're going to do it every year. So I'm saying all that to tell you that I've got access to the text of prison. If y'all ever really want to go in, I will make

that happen. 100%. I would, I would love, I mean, I would love to. Okay. I, I think Michael and I would have a blast. And then the way you just described, like I, I love the angle that you're taking with it. I mean, I think like, I think like the biggest thing that we've learned doing, one of the biggest things, I don't want to speak for you, doing this show is that

it's so important to hear people's stories. It's very rare that we've met anyone where we've left, like that person is a bad person. You figure out like what happens to people because of some of the decisions they make in their life. And I think it's one of the, the reason we like the long form is you get to really understand like why somebody thinks the way they do, why they make the decisions they make.

It's certainly, you know, people don't set out to have this happen in their life, right? There's just, you know, it's like that fork in the road methodology is like you make one wrong decision in your whole life changes. No one ever, no one ever, I didn't grow up saying I want to be a drunk. I want to be a drug addict. I want to be a thief. I want to be a criminal.

I want to go to prison. Man, I wanted to be, uh, I wanted to be a pro sports player. I wanted to be a sports agent. I want to be Jerry Maguire before there's Jerry Maguire. I don't think most people grow up wanting to be all those things player. I wanted to be a sports agent. I wanted to be Jerry Maguire before there's Jerry Maguire. I don't think most people grow up wanting to be all those things, but I became all those things, right? And anybody, everybody in life deserves redemption.

And if you go out there and you want redemption, I think you should have a path towards redemption. I think everybody is deserving of redemption that comes in with a heart that says, hey, look, I'm wrong, I'm sorry, I did this. I wanna fix the pieces of this puzzle and put it back together. And that's hard, man.

How long were you in prison for? Okay, we're getting back to prison now. See how she did that? She heard us back to prison. Love me. Oh my God, my clipboard, I was trying to ask questions. So yeah, so prison, so two weeks of fighting the white gangs, then I'm fighting black gangs, just like Muhammad said.

So six weeks into prison, y'all, it's a Monday morning, I get up. I'm this close to being the broken man from Shawshank. The hope is almost gone. The violence, the terror is too much. I'm still fighting the black gangs at this point. So I made a decision that Monday morning, six

weeks in. You winning any fights? I'm winning some. I'm losing 75% of these things. Okay. And so, I mean, you think about three dozen fights, 75% of you lose. You're getting beat up. Yeah, I'm beating up. You're six weeks in. You winning any fights? I'm winning some. I'm losing 75% of these things. Okay. And so, I mean, you think about three dozen fights, 75% of you lose.

You're tired. There's some days I don't leave my cell. Like I don't even go to the child hall. I just don't eat because I don't want to fight that day. That happened, man. I mean, it just, there's some days you just got to retreat, you know? My cellmate, Carlos, he teaches me how to make a mouthpiece in there. So a mouthpiece is made out of a bunch of toilet paper.

You get wet, you put it up in your teeth, you get it molded and you set it out overnight on the desk, on the countertop, and it'll become hard like wood. And that mouthpiece is good for one fight. So you get up every morning, you put your mouthpiece in your pocket and you go. And when someone calls you out to fight, in prison terms, they say, you want to, let's go catch a square. Catching a square, like a boxing ring is a square.

So catch a corner, that's also fighting terms. You're just trying to get a coffee and some oatmeal. Yeah, so it's like, yeah, or someone says, I want to look at you in the shower. Nothing gay about that. Look at you in the shower, they say, well, they want to look at your boxing game in the shower. Showers back there, there's no cameras,

the guards can't see you, all the blood you spill. It's easy to clean up in a shower. So that's the terms they use for fighting. So it's stuff you're hearing all the blood you spill is easy to clean up in a shower. So that's the terms they use for fighting. So it's this stuff you're, you're hearing all the time. So six weeks in still fighting the black gangs. I make a decision that Monday morning to use the only thing I haven't used to earn respect, my athletic ability. Now y'all God bless me to be a tremendous athlete.

I was a division one starting quarterback at 20, man. That's hard to do. And I don't care what, what area you come from 20 years old, starting a D1 team, I'm a baller. But the rec yard where you play sports, it's the most intimidating place I've ever seen because it's the most segregated place I've ever seen. Every sport on the rec yard and that maximum security prison where I was

and the life sentence building, every sport was segregated by the color of your skin. It's like walking back in time in America. I'm gonna walk everybody through the rec yard real quick. So you go out to the rec yard, Lauren, sand volleyball. Sand volleyball is for the whites and Hispanics only. Handball, those big concrete handball walls, all races can play handball,

but if you want to play doubles in a game of handball, your doubles partner has to be the same skin color. Can Michael play basketball? I'm gonna get to that. Good question. You're like, no. Good question. No, but I'm gonna get to that. Good question. You're like no. Good question. No. But I'm gonna get to that. But so the weight stack just like you see in prison movies man everybody wants to push that iron in prison and all races can lift weights in prison but if

you wanted someone to spot you someone work out with you your partner your spotter has to be the same race you the movie Shot College you watched remember? Yeah. All the guys lifting weights were all the same race all the time. Okay. So the chow hall was the same way, y'all. The chow hall, you go to the chow hall, you can't grab your tray and go sit down at a table with people from a different race. Man, you got to sit with your own race.

And what happens if you do do that? Man, you can get your, you can get your ass kicked, I mean, unless you've established yourself in a different way, which is where this story's going. And let me tell you something, it wasn't just like one race wanted that way. And, and, and this, Muhammad told me the blacks have the numbers in there. He said, you're going

to a world where being white's not the advantage anymore. You know, the color of your skin is a disadvantage to this place, right? Blacks have the numbers, Hispanics are the second most populated in there, and the whites are the lowest number in there. So he said, you're on the lowest end of the totem pole in this place. But every race wants it that way. Every race wants the division of races. Everybody wants a way. Here's what I've learned too. Prison is a microcosm of what the world out here looks like if you take the guardrails off society. You take the brakes off, you start telling people

you don't have to mix it up with anybody else that look like you. You don't want to be associated with people that don't have the same ideas about sex that you do. If you take all the guard rails off, human beings are tribal people. Human beings have always been tribal. 8,000 years of recorded history,

most of that time, everybody was off in packs. That's how human beings survived. This whole experiment we have in humankind of everybody mixing it up, this is a few hundred years old. This isn't like something that's been going on. Human beings are tribal. And I believe that if you take all the guard rails off society, everybody would break off

when people that look like them. Not everybody, most people, because I wouldn't do it. Y'all wouldn't do it. I hear you show, you love diversity. I think diversity is a strength. So that Monday morning, six weeks in, I get up, I face all my fears, I go out to the red card, I pass up all those other sports I just told you about.

And I went straight to the basketball court court where the blacks own the basketball court. No white boys are allowed the basketball court, Lauren. But here's what I'm thinking as I go out there. I'm going to play sports. Sports is the great uniter in this country. Sports is the one thing that brings us Americans together like nothing else can. Not even religion brings people together like sports because we can, we can self segregate religions in America and we do, but sports, because we can self-segregate religions in America, and we do.

But sports, you can't segregate a sport. That's a melting pot, man. We all come together to root for our team. Here's what I'm thinking, too, as I go to the rec yard. Before there was Martin Luther King, Jr., there was Jackie Robinson, baseball player, right? Before you integrated lunch counters in the South, down here, you integrated locker rooms.

I knew sports would do it for me, y'all. So I go out there, I get myself in a game of basketball. I get in the South down here, you integrated locker rooms. I knew sports would do it for me. So I go out there, I get myself in a game of basketball. I get in way over my head too. They let me play some basketball and then I'm fighting the blacks at this point. They're like, get out of here, white boy, let's go. So it's nine on one basketball for about six days out there. But I keep showing up.

I get a little bit better, a little stronger. I get a little more confident. You know, Ed has this saying, he says, you build confidence by keeping the promises you make to yourself. I love when he says that. And that's true. Every day after the rec yard was over,

I'd be banged up, I got a black eye, busted lip, but I'm like, you know what, I'm coming back out tomorrow. And at some point midway through the week, I'm telling those guys, I'll be back tomorrow. I'm making them hold me to it. And after six days of playing basketball, those guys, they circled up around me in the basketball court the last day. They said, West, you're good to go, man.

You don't have to worry about the blacks rest time, man. You've earned your right to exist. You took everything we had. You gave it back when you could. That took a lot of guts. Go live your life, man. So two months into prison, Lauren, the violence is finally over. The threat to my physical safety is gone.

And that's what I got to get started working on becoming that coffee bean. And it was hard. Prison was this giant pot of boiling water. So do people stop? Everybody stops fucking with you at the end of the day. The threat to my physical safety is gone. And that's what I got to get started working on becoming that coffee bean. And it was hard. Prison was this giant pot of boiling water. So do people stop, everybody stops fucking with you at that point. They move on to somebody else. Man, you're about, you asked the question.

All right. So I told myself, I'm not going to tell this story unless I get prodded for the story, but you asked it, so I'm going to tell you. So two weeks after the basketball court. Right. And at this point, Michael, I'm in, man, the guys, the black guys, they come by my cell every day. They bang on my door. Well, Wes, let's go play some basketball, man.

I belong, man. The whites hate it, man. They're like, man, this guy survived it all and he's not, you know, I've earned my right to be independent in there, which is a hard thing to do. So two weeks after that's over, I've come off the rec yard that day, my cellmate's a little guy named Carlos.

Not his real name, but his picture's actually in the book. So I tell a lot of stories about Carlos in the book. I come off the rec yard, Carlos is waiting for me in the pod, day room. He said, man, get over here. He's agitated. I can tell he's agitated. He said, get over here, man. So we go under the stairwell.

There's no cameras under there. People can't see you. They can't hear you. He said, man, when you go to the shower today, Black Jack's going to be in the shower waiting to rape you. Now, Black Jack is the biggest rapist in prison, y'all. This is death in a lot of ways, y'all. He's about 6'4", 260, big black guy, loves to rape white guys.

He's HIV positive. Got a knife. He does it with a knife. Biggest rapist in prison, Michael. He said, Black Jack's in the pod today. He's waiting for you to go to the shower. And I'm like, well, then I'm not gonna shower, man. I'm just gonna stink tonight. I'm sorry, man. This still is gonna stink. He said,

you're an idiot, man. You have to go to the shower. He said, if you don't go to the shower today, he raped someone else. Now you got two problems to deal with. That's on you too. He said, you're on the track and the train is coming west. What are you prepared to do? And I'm like, man, this guy's got a knife, man. I don't have a knife. Man, Carlos whips out a knife out of his pants about this long. I don't even know if this little guy's hiding this thing, man. He's about five foot four. You see his picture in the book.

He whips out that knife, he puts it in my hand. Now, a knife in prison is just like you see in the movies. It's a piece of steel. It's been sharpened to a razor's edge. It's got duct tape around the handle, man. Just like a shank you see in a movie. And why does he want to help you? Everybody wants Black Jack dead.

He's the biggest rapist in prison. He's an animal, man. So they're trying to use you. They're using me. That's a good question though. It's very, not anybody, that's good. In the book I talk about, in The Change Agent, my first book, I talk about this scene very vividly,

and that's what I gather from Carlos. So like, they want him dead. Okay. And so that's what he's telling me. He's giving me a knife. And I'm like, man, I'm holding this thing. And I'm like, man, I give it back to him. I mean, I've never want him dead. Okay. And so that's what he's telling me. He's giving me a knife. And I'm like, man, I'm holding this thing. And I'm like, man, I give it back to him.

I mean, I've never fought with a knife before. I mean, this guy, he's been fighting for a knife for 20 years, sliced me to pieces. There's gotta be another weapon, another way. He said, there is another weapon, there is another way. He said, go to the cell, I'll meet you in a second. So I go up to my cell, I'm up in 45 cell, and I'm pacing around like an animal in a cage, man.

I don't know what I'm going to do. Carlos comes in about five minutes later. He's got some tools in his hand. Now remember Texas prisons have no air conditioning. We have these little bitty fans that are supposed to keep us cool. This is March of 2010. So he takes apart my fan.

I don't really need the fan that bad in March. He takes apart my fan and cuts out the fan motor in the middle of it. The fan motor is about five pounds of just metal and wire. Put it in the sock or something. Put it motor is about five pounds of just metal and wire. Put it in the sock or something? Put it in a bag. Good thinking, Mike.

You do well in prison. Let's hope not. Yeah. Let's hope not. I don't know, Michael. You know what, Wes, I might have aged out now because I'm almost 40, 38, so maybe they might just say, hey, this guy's a little too old. I'm 50 now, so I'm good.

I'm aged out too. He puts it in this mesh bag. It's a little too old. I'm 50 now. So I mean, I'm good. I'm aged out too. So he puts it in this mesh bag. It's a commissary bag. It's also the bag you take your shower stuff to the shower. He starts swinging around. He said, this is your weapon today. It's a ball and chain flail, a medieval weapon. So he said, listen to everything I'm telling you, Wes.

He said, go to the shower. It's a one man shower. He said, you go in, they got a little change area on the right, showers in the back. He said, turn the shower water on real hot, get a steam in there. Wait in the change area, wait for him to come in. He said, as soon as he peeks his head through that door, hit him in the head with his fan motor.

He said, now your first hit's not going to kill him. You're just going to stun him on the first hit. But when you stun him, hop on him and swing this fan motor at him. He said, hit him in the head as hard as you can until you see his brains coming out of his skull. He said, do not quit swing until you see the gray matter come out. Hold on, but here, pause. This is where I get confused.

If you do that, don't you go into prison longer? Here's what he tells me. Good questions. This is good, Lauren, we're here. He said, West, he said, one of the two things gonna happen today. He said, he's either gonna do something to you that you're gonna wish you were dead

or you're gonna kill him today. But either way, you're never leaving prison alive. You understand that? Your sentence just changed today. This is a life sentence for real. You're never gonna leave prison alive. Because what could he do to, like, what is he gonna do to you?

He's gonna give you HIV? Rape me. I mean, I'll be HIV positive. I'll die in prison. Got it. Okay. Or I kill him and they give me another life sentence or give me the lethal inject. If they can prove that I'm laying a weight for him, they can give you a lethal injection.

They can kill you that you can get premeditated, premeditated your weight. Yeah. So not much of a choice right. I said, give me the bag. I'm going in, man. And so I take the bag, I go to the shower and I'm freaked out. Y'all I'm not much of a choice, right? I said, give me the bag. I'm going in, man. And so I take the bag, I go to the shower, and I'm freaked out, y'all. I'm about to, I'm thinking about killing this guy, and I don't know if I can do it, right? I'm scared to death.

I mean, taking another life? I've never been a violent guy. So I get in the prison, I do everything, I get in the shower, do everything, he says. I wait in the change area. I don't know if it's a minute and a half or two minutes, man, or five minutes, man. My heart is stomped through my chest chest and he opens up the shower door Do they have little saloon doors back in the shower back then? And I remember he put on that door and I saw his face and he had this grin on his face

Laura like a dude that's about to get laid at 2 in the morning. Oh fuck. He's like that man that grand changed it for me Man, I went from just 0 to 100 on rage I swung that phone fan motor up. Boom, I hit him as hard as I could. And he raises up at the last second, hit him in the chest. Loud sickening thud, shoots him out of the like a cartoon character getting shot out of a cannon. Drops the knife on the ground and I am on this dude, man. I'm swinging this fan motor at him. I can't get to his head. He's got the head covered up, man, trying to protect his head. I'm hearing ribs breaking this thing, man. So two of his gang brothers are watching this man. He's again. He's a Mandingo warrior. They're flying up the stairs

I'm on the third tier man. I think I might kill this guy I'm there get him off and man his gang brothers fly up and they're like these are guys who play basketball with now By the way, they're like West don't lay another hand on he's on the ground. Don't lay another hand on him, man I'm like dude. Listen, man. He just tried to rape me. He said man. He to he tried to get me man. He said look man. He had a weapon you had a weapon It's over. We're gonna let you make it man. Just grab your weapon go beat your feet so man, I run off to my cell I throw my weapon down to the ground and I remember crawling up a ball in that cell, man I started crying like a baby man. The adrenaline is burning off and I passed out

And I woke up you ever been so hungry, it feels like your stomach and your back are touching each other? That's how I woke up, man. I'm like starving. Like the adrenaline burned, just burned off. I'm like, man, I heard the cell doors roll and I'm like, oh good, it's chow time.

I'll go to chow. But it wasn't chow, it wasn't last chow. It was breakfast the next day. I was out for 12 hours, y'all. Because you were so much cortisol that it just like... Just, yeah, just, your body just shut down, man. And I'm like, oh shit, that really happened. I look over there, I see the bags got blood all over it.

And I'm like, oh man. So I started looking for a cut on me. It's not my blood. He never got a leak in on me. It's his blood, not mine. And I got to make a decision, man. I'm like, oh my God, I got to walk out this cell door that all this stuff really happened.

I don't know what's going to happen when I walk out the door, but I got to leave the cell. I can't stay in the cell forever. And Lauren, when I walked out the cell that next morning, it was a different prison for me. Every man in prison saw that I spoke the only language everybody speaks in prison, which is violence. You either, you get very fluent in violence. Either you speak violence or someone speaks it to you, but you become very fluent in the language of violence. Do you think though it's also because you went up against the predator who was the rapist

and none of them wanted to get raped. And so there was something that you diffused with that. No, because he still went on as a rapist. He didn't ever- He didn't stop. Yeah, he didn't ever bother me again. And now that's like predators, predators go after the weakest link, right? They don't want to get hit in the mouth or hit in the head with a fan motor.

He gave me some crazy looks, but he never, never mess with me. I found out later he died in prison too. Carlos told me he died a few years ago in prison. Yeah, he died. Remember he was HIV positive, right? So he was- Did he give HIV to everyone? Yeah.

That's what he did. As a rapist. That's almost a weapon. It is a weapon. Giving HIV. Yeah, you're not supposed to get a death sentence when you go to prison. You know, you're, you go to, you go to prison, you do your time.

It's not supposed to be a death sentence, but for a lot of guys that he raped, that was death, but that's prison. I mean. Why, why do guys like, why do more people, more prisoners not stop a guy like that? Because no one is going to take up for you if you don't take up for yourself, first of all, because

if you step into someone's for yourself, first of all, because if you step into someone's problem and they're not defending themselves, that can become your problem. Michael, I mean, I can still hear the guys at night that got raped. You know, you can hear that. I mean, doesn't he ever go away, but I'm not going to step in and help those guys because I don't want that to become my problem too. Prison, there's a code of conduct in prison. You see without seeing and you hear without hearing. And that's how you, that's how you survive. So you can't get involved as someone else is getting raped, even if it's your own Selmy.

You can, but Lauren, there's a lot of strings attached to that. And a lot of- But if you're ganged up, does that mean you're just like not a target for those? Is that why most people get- Yeah, that's why most people get in a gang. Yeah, exactly. Because it's immediate protection from- Once you get in a gang, you're immediate, you're immediately protected.

You can't, no way can pick you off. You're not like the last, you ever seen the nature videos where the lion gets the last hyena, you know, the last zebra or whatever. So that's, that's the pressure why people fall so easily into that is because they. Yes. And I saw. When you were sleeping every single night, are you worried or no? No, for the first five years in prison, because I was a lifer, I had to live in

the life sentence building the first five years I lived in a cell. So you live in a, so the first five years in prison, because I was a lifer, I had to live in the life sentence building the first five years, I lived in a cell. So the pods, so seven building has 432 men and it's G pod, H pod and I pod. And every pod has three sections and each section has 48 men. So in those sections are cells that doors close and they sell just like you see in a movie, a door closing the cell, you have a cellmate, there's a bunk bed in there, there's a desk, there's a toilet. And that's where you sleep at night, your doors close.

So I was very fortunate, I had some really good cellmates. So Carlos, obviously Carlos is one of my best friends in the world now. Is he still in prison? Yeah, I talk to him every month on the prison phone, I put money on his books every month. There's four guys that I stay in touch with in prison, and you read the book Six Signs of Nickel, you meet some of these guys.

These are people that were just nice to me on the hardest time of my life, and I told them, if I ever get to a position in life that I can help you, I will. These four guys, they don't have a lot of help on the free world, family, and stuff like that, so I am their family. Every month, I put $100 on their books. I mean, they have these tablets, they can buy movies and stuff like that. I give them money for movies and because they were so kind to me in the hardest, darkest place in my life.

Does $100 go a long way in prison? Yeah. Can they listen to podcasts? They can listen to certain podcasts. It just depends on whether or not they get them on their apps. So you would know if Dear Media is on the prison apps, but I can help y'all get on the prison apps if that's what you want to. Cause I mean, honestly.

I just think it'd be cool for them to hear this. Yeah. I mean, this is, I mean, this would be great for them to hear this. I mean, I don't know. We'll talk. So long as they'll use our redemption codes for our beauty products. The women will. I'm just kidding. That'd be cool if they. Yeah. No, I've got, I've got a lot of connections in the Texas prison system, so I'll find out and see if we can't get this episode in there, but... That'd be cool.

Yeah. Because it's inspiring. They read my books a lot in there. So last week, I was in Austin. I was speaking to UT Medical School, right? They brought me in to speak to all the UT Medical, beautiful building downtown, the Dell Medical Building. And the night before, the guy that runs UT Medical School,

he lives in the Westlake Hills up here, beautiful house. I mean, this neighborhood was incredible. Where it lives up in these hills, about 20 minutes away. And they had dinner that was catered. And I was there hanging out with everybody and everybody got to ask questions the night before. And they've all read my books. So they had a lot of good questions about prison.

You would have loved it. They had a lot of questions about prison. And one of the catering staff comes up to me when I go to the bathroom. I say, hey, I gotta go to the bathroom real quick. So I go to the bathroom and this guy from the catering staff comes up to me when I go to the bathroom. I say, I got to the bathroom real quick, so I go to the bathroom, and this guy from the catering staff follows me. He said, hey, man, I couldn't help but overhear what you were talking about there. He said, you're the coffee bean guy, right?

I said, yeah, man. I said, how do you know me? He said, I did time, man. I did 11 years in the joint. He said, man, I read your books. He said, you got me through a tough time, man. That's cool. Yeah, it was really cool. It's really cool. I told the guy, the head doctor, the head of the event after it was over, because the guy was like, hey, man, none of my co-workers really know about my backstory. But I just wanted to tell you, man, thanks, coffee bean guy. Took off. Levity is a personalized weight loss program that combines clinically guided support with GLP-1 treatment.

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And here's why. There is nothing worse than investing in a tequila that does not deliver quality and taste, but also that you've paid a ton for. What I love about Estral tequila is, and I've got the three of them right now, I've got the Reposado which is my personal favorite, I've got the Anejo and I've got the Blanco and what I love about this brand is that it is an affordable tequila with a premium taste. Like I said earlier, Estral is my go-to tequila for margaritas at home and it doesn't just taste good, it does good too. Every bottle of Estral tequila helps build homes for families in need in

Jalisco, Mexico after making the tequila They actually upcycle the leftover agave fibers into bricks and use it for homes to build in their community This is obviously an incredible thing. So you get to have great tequila and do good at the same time I did a couple segments on my Instagram talking all about how I make a perfect margarita I do mine with the Reposado. Most people do it with the Blanco. If you just go to my Instagram, Michael Bostic, you can check it out. I give the full steps on how to make a perfect margarita.

But one thing that I've been really enjoying this summer, especially as it's gotten so hot out here in Texas and honestly across the entire world, is doing a tequila soda. You can do it with a nice club soda and with this nice lime and stir it in there. And I like this because it is so hot over here right now and all over the country and all over the world, like I said, that it's so important to hydrate. And so sometimes having those sweet cocktails like a margarita or just doing the tequila on the rocks

gets a little bit too much in the heat and you start to get a little dehydrated. So just doing it with this club soda has been great. And what I love about a straw tequila as well is it makes an incredible gift. I have been giving a straw tequila left right, not this bottle because this one has the engraved Michael on there, which you know, I'll never get rid of this one, Carson, but for others, without the special engraving, I've been giving it out because people love a nice quality tequila. It's something that they can put in their bar card. It's something they can put at home. It's

something you can display. And it shows that you're being thoughtful. You're not just pulling something off the shelf. If you're giving someone a straw, it's because you know tequila and you know quality. So let's talk about the three different estrals that I have in front of me for a second. I have the classic, the Anejo.

This is something that you're gonna wanna have on the rocks. Maybe you're gonna wanna have it with a dinner. I like it with a chicken dish. I love it with Mexican food. Has a little bit of like an orange type flavor flavor has a little bit of a stronger aftertaste And this is going to be a great gift if you if you have somebody that has a palette for more of a tequila Forward more of like an on the rocks type of vibe the tried-and-true Blanco everyone loves a Blanco tequila This is what most people are using in a paloma. It's what they're using in a margarita

This is what the classic margarita would call for I like to take this as a sipping tequila as well on the rocks. What I love about this is you're not gonna have kind of like that strong aftertaste, it's just a smooth transition and something that you know you can enjoy like I said in cocktails on the rocks, sipping. So this is a great tequila with a little bit of versatility across different ways to consume and different ways to to enjoy And then what I have here is my personal favorite has a little bit of a cinnamon aftertaste a little bit of a cinnamon floral flavor and that is the Reposado I use this to make my margaritas

I think it gives them a little bit of an extra bang a little bit of an extra push and Differentiates them a little bit more from what you typically taste in the Blanco not that I don't love the Blanco I'm typically if I'm doing a sipping tequila using the Anejo or the Blanco, not so much the Reposado, but for my cocktails, for my Palomas, for my tequila sodas, for my margaritas, I'm going with the Reposado. This is the one that I have been gifting to friends. I had my friend in the office the other day, Jermedia is fully stocked up and I handed him this and he reported back that it was one of the best that he ever had. So this is my go-to. It's the Reposado. But again,

I don't say that to diminish the either of the other two because they're also incredible. I just happen to prefer the Reposado. Hence why it has the Michael bottle on it. So check them out. All three can't go wrong with any of them. Housemarx summer is here. Time to stock up. Go to www.astraltequla.com to find a straw near you. And don't forget the limes. Please enjoy responsibly. Every day our law enforcement officers face life and death decisions in increasingly dangerous environments from high-stress incidents to critical officer-involved events. from high-stress incidents to critical officer-involved events. These men and women are on the front lines, yet they lack the training, funding, and resources they need to protect themselves and the communities they serve.

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I'm very passionate about this mission and hope our audiences as well. So join us in this crucial mission. Visit c1p.org today to learn how you can help make a difference. Again, if you can go do your part and make a contribution at c1p.org. How are you sitting with us here now? Because life sentence, pretty much you're in prison, doing time. Now you have a little bit of independence. You don't have to gang up.

So I start transforming myself. I started becoming a coffee bean. First bit, one of the biggest things happening there is I got to a 12 step program recovery. I got into AA. No, I don't speak for AA. You got AA people out there like, man, why are you saying you speak for AA? I don't speak for AA. You got AA people out there like, man, why are you saying you speak for AA? I don't speak for AA. It happens to be the 12-step program of recovery that I work in my own life and it's what the

meetings I go to. But I got into going to meetings in prison and I started working the steps. Started working the 12 steps and I started transforming myself in there. I started teaching guys about having a healthy community there because a lot of these guys never had someone to teach them about a healthy community. Healthy community, I believe, is a place where everybody puts their talents on the table. Here's my talent.

If anybody can use this talent, I'm your guy for that. A healthy community is, you see trash on the ground, you pick it up. They used to make fun of me when I first got to prison. If I saw trash in the cell block where I lived, I'd pick it up. Hey, white boy, that's not your trash, man. Leave it there. So it is my trash. It's in front of my house, man. I want to'd pick it up. Hey, white boy, that's not your trash, man, leave it there.

So it is my trash, it's in front of my house, man, I wanna clean my house up. They caught on, those guys sort of taking pride in themselves. I learned about servant leadership. I think servant leadership is when you help other people reach their goals in life. You help raise everybody to a different station in life because I think when we help other people grow, we grow too.

That's what Oprah did. Yeah, Oprah was there, but that's what y'all do. You have this podcast, you help people grow. And that's what servant leadership is. By you helping other people grow, you've grown too. You've grown, I mean- I think it's the most satisfying thing you can do. Which is why it's so powerful

when that guy, the caterer comes up to you. It's also like, people come to us at this point in our life and they say like, how do you build a career? How do you make an income? And I'm like, well, if you, if you look at it from the perspective of you're just going to help other people and raise them up, like that part actually takes care of itself. And it's so true. And it's even, even this company we run, like, you know, we have this show obviously, and it seems maybe some people think it's

counterproductive to go and raise a bunch of other shows up. And I'm like, well, it's, it's, it's rewarding and also self-serving in a way. Like when you put that out there, I just feel like the other stuff takes care of itself. Like it's almost like, it's like a little woo woo, but the energy you put out is what you get back. The universe loves that, by the way. And look, I mean, I'm not, you can call it God, karma, irony, the universe, whatever you want to call it, right? Everybody can believe whatever they want to believe in. I'm a person, I'm a very spiritual person, Michael.

I think religion is more of a man-made deal and the spirituality is your conscious contact with whatever you call God, and you can believe whenever you want. I had a spiritual awakening in prison. I had a spiritual awakening and it became a different version of me. It was like a caterpillar that goes into a cocoon

and becomes a butterfly. It just happens to be my cocoon was a dungeon. How long were you there for? Seven years, three months, and 18 days. And how did you get out? And wait, did those days go fast, or did it go slow, or do you just kind of- Probably went slow, right?

Or do you lose concepts of time? No, no, you understand time well. There's a saying in prison, they tell you, you gotta do your time, you can't let your time do you. And that's something for everybody out here to listen to because let me Tell you something everybody listen this thing I meet more people out in the free world that are locked up Then I ever did when I serve time in a real prison because more people are imprisoned by their thoughts

By their things and by their prejudices than by steel bars and bar bar and concrete combined that makes sense I can see what you're saying You can become a prisoner of mine really fast. Scroll through social media, start comparing yourself to other people's lives. Prison, right? Prison, you get locked into one of these programs that cause themselves news, whether it comes from the left or the right,

but they're just pumping this hate inside you every day. You become a prisoner. If you're watching something that's called news, but it makes you feel angry every time you watch it, turn it off. Change the channel, man. You are what you eat, right? And so in prison, I learned, I had a spiritual awakening.

I started about servant leadership and my servant leadership project in prison was open or free tutoring service. You know, I had a bachelor's degree, went into prison. Most of the guys I'm locked up with their education stopped in the seventh or eighth grade. So I taught guys how to read and write, I get them ready for the GED test. So if they ever get out of prison, they're gonna be a better seventh or eighth grade. So I taught guys how to read and write. I'd get them ready for the GED test.

So if they ever get out of prison, they're gonna be a better husband or better father. And everything in prison has a cost attached to it. Everything is transactional. Nothing's free in prison. So the guys are like, man, how do I pay you for teaching me how to read? Pay it forward, man.

Don't pay me back, pay it forward. And so you have these guys helping other people out because I gotta pay this back, I gotta pay this forward to West, I'm gonna do it for you. And that guy's like, well, you can't pay me, go pay it forward to someone else. Prison changed around me. 2015, I done seven years of time. I work in the chapel at that point.

I've turned it around. I am the coffee bean. I'm a model inmate. Man, life is moving. Some days are harder than others, right? And I'm up for my first parole. Now, no one makes that first parole. Not many people make the first, I won't say no one.

That's an absolute. I don't want to talk in absolutes. Most people never make their first parole in a life sentence. In my life sentence, I come up for parole because I'm non-aggravated. I get credit for good time. Every day you're there, you don't get in trouble,

you get extra credit. Every day you're there, you're willing to work, you get credit for time too. So at seven years, I was eligible for my first parole and a life sentence. And so, okay, how many, say you have a few of these paroles come up, how often do they come up and is it different for everybody or is it- Good question. This is a solid question here because here's the deal.

Your first parole is important. Your first parole is your one first shot to get to explain to yourself to parole. You actually get an interview the first time. You're not guaranteed an interview every time after that. But parole actually has to interview you on the first parole hearing. Now parole is a panel of three people for a non-aggravated crime. You have to get two of the three votes, which means you really have to get the first vote, right?

Because the second voter is going to vote the way the first person votes. In my mind, that's the way it works. Maybe that's not really how parole works, but you've got to get the first voter to believe in you, to buy into you. Your set off for a non-aggravated crime could be a year before you come up for parole. If you have aggravated offense in Texas, you have to do half of your sentence before you see parole. Now, remember what the maximum is. You can get a 60, right? The guys I live with that have aggravated life sentences, which is about 98%

of the people around me, they have to do 30 calendar years before they see their first parole officer. Where does your hope go at that point? Do you have hope if you don't? You know what the joke was on the building where I lived? Man, they'd say, man, my first parole officer's parents haven't met yet. My first parole officer's parents haven't met yet. My first parole officer's parents haven't met yet. That's how far away parole is for them.

I don't get that. My first parole officer that I'll have in the free world one day, their parents haven't met yet. Meaning like they haven't even had the person yet. Now I can see in her eyes, she's like, oh wow. My first parole officer's parents haven't even met each other yet. That's what they would say on the building I live. There's no hope on that building.

So I come up for parole in 2015. I go to my parole hearing. Cause it was non aggravated. Non aggravated, right? So, um, you know, and I've got a parole packet. This parole packet says everything you've done and how you, how you transformed. And man, the lady's just like, man, she's like,

look, we don't see a lot of people like you come through the system. She's like, you had it all. Every advantage, every privilege, every opportunity. She said, you're the definition of a privileged person. And listen, y'all, she was right. I did. I had it all. I mean, much like the way y'all grew up. And you don't prison wasn't on my big old car, just like it wasn't on y'all's right. And she said, but you blew through all your opportunities in life, you became a drug addict, a criminal, a thief, a jury gave you life in prison. And she said, I believe you got too much time too. She said, but I'm going to ask you one question. This one question, you know, this one question is going to determine whether I go home or stay in prison. She said, if you could be remembered for being anything in life, anything at all, she said, tell me what that one thing would be, but give it to me in just

one word, go. Oh, I didn't have to think about that answer. I knew the answer because I've been living the answer, right? I was building my brand ever since that day when I was in the dungeon, started working on myself becoming a coffee bean. I was building the brand that you see today. Remember, there's no such thing as an overnight success. When 2011, you didn't see this, any of this happening, but you kept putting in the work every day, right? I knew the answer and I fired it off there. I said, useful. I said, I just want to be useful. And I think everybody wants to be useful, y'all. I think everybody wants to have value. I think at the core of being human, and this is from living in prison and living out here, I think we all just want to belong and we want to be loved.

And when those two things can be met in life, human beings are capable of pretty incredible things. That's what I told her. I said, I just want to be useful. And I can be useful inside this prison. I can be useful in the free world again. November 16th, 2015. I walked out of a Texas prison. Now, I'm not a free man.

I want to get to the end of the story to tell this part. I'm not a free man. I got a little more time left on parole in Texas. Now parole means you're on supervised release. You're still locked up technically being on parole. Every month I report to a parole officer in Beaumont. Well, my name is Braggs. I pay in a cup. I pay my fines. I get travel permits. When I want to leave Texas, I get permission from Texas. Now, I get off parole in the year 2073. So, 48 more years, Lauren, on parole in the state of Texas. I'm on parole the rest of my life. Is there anything you miss about prison?

The time on your hands to concentrate and work on yourself. You'll never have anything like that. That's what Carlos told me, too. He said, man, Carlos was the one that really told me how to change it. He said, this is your problem. Your problem is you think prison's a punishment when prison is an opportunity. Literally. That's so funny that you say that because sometimes I'm like, my

husband would love to go to prison. No, I just mean like, like you, like for you love being cerebral and left alone with your thoughts in your books And I don't like I feel like but I do like I also like the ability to come back from If you have to look at it as an opportunity to survive Yeah, so you were able to have no distraction and just focus on yourself and you were inside. That's what he said. You got 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can the best version.

I imagine that like, you know, life in general is very stressful and there's a lot of decisions, I imagine like a lot of those decisions. Yeah. A lot of that stuff is gone. What you're going to wear, what you're going to do. Oh, that's gone, man. But you have to fill your days. So you asked me about days, some days being longer than others. I filled my that stuff is gone. What you're going to wear, what you're going to do, all that's gone, man. But you have to fill your days.

So you asked me about days, some days being long and others. I filled my day up with stuff. I'd get up every day. I had a, I had a regimen. I'd read, I'd work out. I'd serve people. And I'd do everything I could to fill my day up. I, you know, I'd go to work when I finally got a chance to get a job in there.

I'd go to work every day. I filled my day up with stuff. So when I came home at the end of the day, I was tired. I was ready to go to bed. I filled my day up with stuff. So when I came home at the end of the day, I was tired. I was ready to go to bed. I felt fulfilled. One of the best rehabilitated programs in a Texas prison is that they allow you to have a job. A job is a great thing, right? It gives you value in life. You have a day's wage of what you did. You don't get paid in prison for working, but you get paid in a different way. You get a habit that you build. You get up every day, you go up, you have a purpose, you come home, people are waiting on you whenever you went to work, you do your job, you come home.

The number one indicator of whether or not you're going to succeed after prison is whether or not you can have a job, whether you can find a job and hold down a job. That's the number one indicator. Now, go ahead. No. So when I get out of prison, I know I'm sitting on this incredible story, right? My redemption story is incredible. I know it'm sitting on this incredible story, right? My redemption story is incredible. I know it because I just lived it. In the midst of the coffee bean, I mean, like, but the problem was there weren't a lot of places for me to share the story.

And I found out really quickly, you can't go knock on the door of a high school and say, I just got out of prison. I want to talk to your kids. Chase you down the street. So there weren't a lot of places for me to speak. And I knew I wanted to share my story because I knew I had a powerful story. And I would learn, I'd watch people on YouTube that are speakers, man. That's how I learned how to speak. I watched YouTube speakers and I found out, here's another one you're gonna

love, everyone's a teacher. Some people teach you how to do things the right way, some people teach you how not to do things. So I learned from everybody I watched. Even if it was a bad speaker, I'd learn how not to be a speaker, right? Every night for two years, I practiced my presentation in front of a mirror in my parents' spare bedroom. This little mirror my mom had in that room when I moved in, a little vanity mirror my mom had in there. So every night for two years, I practice my presentation from that mirror. I get in my reps. Remember, no such thing as an overnight success. You got to put in the work. And so there's nowhere for me to speak, so I'm speaking in front of a mirror.

I get polished, I get my presentation down and I get myself ready for the right opportunity because I believe the right opportunity was gonna be the world of college football. Cause I played division one college football but the problem was when I got out of prison, it's been 20 years, so I took a snap. The coaches don't know me, I don't know them.

January 11th, 2017. You're great with dates, man. Well, I mean, I've lived a hell of a life. Shit, I don't even know what date it is today. But I wrote books about it. So I mean I got the dates back So January 11th, 2017 a buddy of mine in Houston named Mike Orta. He works for KHOU the big CBS station there He calls me up. I've been out of prison 14 months at this point. He calls me up. He said Damon get to Houston right now He said it's the Bear Bryant coach of the year award. They're gonna name the best college football coach in America I said the eight best coaches in the country are in this room right now. He said I got's the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Award. They're gonna name the best college football coach in America. I said, the eight best coaches in the country

are in this room right now. He said, I got an extra press pass. I'll sneak you in the back door. So man, I drive the 90 miles away from Beaumont to Houston. I drive the 90 miles. He sneaks me in the back door of Toyota Center, hands me a press pass. He said, you're on your own, man.

I gotta go to work. So I'm in this room, y'all. And every coach is there, USC, Wisconsin, Penn State, PJ Fleck, they're all there. And I run around this room and I shake every coach's hand and I give them my pitch of why they should bring me in to talk to their team and every coach I meet that night, slam the door in my face. They all said no in one hour, Lauren.

I got seven nos from eight coaches. That's a no every eight minutes. I'm standing in the corner at Toyota Center that night. I'm 10 feet from the door. I'm licking my wounds. I'm feeling sorry for myself. And the voice in my head is screaming at me, go home. The voice in my head is telling me things like, you don't belong in this room.

Why'd you come tonight? The voice in my head called me an imposter. And I bet everybody listening right now, you know the imposter voice, right? You've heard it before. But I'm going to tell you what I quit doing a long time ago. And I learned this in prison. I quit listening to myself a long time ago. And the reason why I quit listening to myself is because sometimes the voice in my

head that was talking to me was fear talking to me. And man, you don't want to listen to fear because fear is a liar. So instead of listening to myself, I talk to myself and I do it all the time. So that night I'm telling myself, Damon, you're not going anywhere. That last coach is going to tell you no to your face before you go home. And the last coach is the hardest guy to get to in the room. His team just beat Alabama two nights before for the national championship. Everybody is aligned to talk to this coach.

They all want their picture with him. But I remind myself, Michael, remind myself, you survived prison, Damon. This isn't prison. This is going to hurt like prison did, man. Sometimes in life, we need to remind ourselves of a time when we succeeded, you know? That's the memory we need to hold onto. When you're faced with something difficult,

think about the wins, focus on the wins. So that night, I stalked Dabo Sweeney around that room, the head coach at Clemson. I look like a crazy person. I'm hiding behind fake plants. I'm pushing people out of the way. Dabo sees me. Security sees me too.

I mean, it's just who's going to get there first. I finally get in front of Dabo and I give him my pitch. Why should he should bring me in to talk to his team? And it falls flat. Dabo is, he looks terrified. First of all, he's like, man, you got a card on you. I gave him my card. He was nice enough.

He said, I'll check you out. He was gone. That's a no. I seen that no before that night, but I felt good about that last no, y'all, because I left it all in the field, right? One of the biggest lessons I learned from playing sports, the biggest takeaways, you'll give it all you got, sometimes you lose or Mohammed, you don't have to win all your fights, you got to fight all your fights. So I went home that

night. I slept like a baby. I forgot about the night because I gave it all I had. Four months later, I get an email out of the blues, the director of football operations at Clemson University got a Mike Dooley. Mike Dooley's email said, Hey Damon, coach Sweeney met you at award show in Houston. He'd love to have you come talk to his team. Do you have August 1st open?

I got every first open brother. I got, I'm talking to a mirror man. So August 1st, 2017, I go speak to the Clemson Tigers, the defendant national champions of college football. And when I get down to my presentation tonight, dabble was in my face, man. He's like, that's the most amazing story I've ever heard, Damon. I've never seen my players respond like that to a speaker. He said, have you been to Alabama to talk to their football team?

And I'm like, no, man, I've been to Clemson. I hadn't been anywhere, man. What do you mean Alabama? He said, man, I just text Nick Saban from the back of the room. Told him when I was watching. Man, the next day, Michael, when my flight lands in Houston for my trip to Clemson, I turned my

phone on, there's a voicemail and a text message from the director of football operations at the university of Alabama, the whale, the biggest program in America with the best coach to ever do it. Here's what the voicemail said. Hey, Damon Dabo called coach Saban last night. Coach Saban cannot wait to hear your story. He said, how does August 21st, 730 PM work for your calendar?

I laughed out loud. I didn't have a calendar, man. I didn't need a calendar back then. Just like that, Dabo Sweeney kicked open the biggest order of college football. And Dabo didn't stop there because Kirby Smart calls, Lincoln Riley, Chip Kelly, Lane Kiffin, Ryan Day, every coach in America starts blowing my phone up. When are you coming to talk to my team? So the dream is real. It's happening. But the biggest event had to happen yet. I hadn't met this second servant leader that was going to run. Dabo was the first servant leader,

right? The second servant leader. August of 2018, one year after their first presentation at Clemson, I get a phone call out of the blue. And on the other end of my phone is this guy named John Gordon. Now y'all, John Gordon is one of the biggest motivational speakers and authors in America. This is the energy bus guy. Y'all should have John on your show actually.

John is massive, man. He's written 33 books, are all best sellers. We love it. He is a man. He's one of the biggest motivational speakers and authors in America. He's on my phone. I'm like, John, I know who you are, man.

How do you know who I am? He said, Dabo Sweeney. He said, Damon, I just got done speaking to Clemson's team today. Dabo brought me to office for 30 minutes to tell me your whole life story. John said this before the pandemic. John said, Damon, the world needs a Coffee Bean message.

Damon, let's deliver this message to the world. He said, will you write a book with me? We'll call it the Coffee Bean. In the summer of 2019, y'all, 10 years after I first heard that story from Mohammed in a jail cell, that book, the coffee bean came out took the world by storm. The whole planet, y'all. It starts off in America first, right? Four to six weeks, it rides high at the top of every bestseller list, gets a global publishing deal. Wow.

It starts getting to every language in the world. The books to pop it up in Chinese and Spanish and Arabic, French, Italian, German. And in 2020, a global pandemic hits. The entire world becomes a pot of boiling water and the entire world will search for the right message. Like Shanda Bell will search for the right message. And that's when so many people discovered

the coffee bean guy. Y'all my life went like this, just vertical, just took off. Since 2021, I've been on the road 20 to 25 days of every month, somewhere on the planet sharing this story. But it all goes back to that one night in Houston, Texas, January 11th, 2017. Remember that night I had seven no's in one hour? And I'm standing by the door, getting ready to walk out and leave because the voice in my head told me I didn't belong in that room. And if I walk out door that night y'all we're not having this conversation today and the world doesn't have the coffee bean message.

So what I want everybody to know listening to this is you don't give up because life gets tough. You don't quit because it gets hard. You don't not ask your questions in life. The only question you know the answer to in life is the one you do not ask. That answer is no every time because you didn't ask your question. I think Wayne Gretzky actually said it best. Wayne Gretzky said you miss 100% of the shots that you do not take. So you have to take your shots in life. Wow. You told me you were good at stories. You said you were a good storyteller.

I got a few more for you. I'm sure you do. I don't even, I mean, I feel like you need to come back for a part two. You want to know what happened to Muhammad? I do. I was going to ask you off air because I didn't know. Oh yeah. That was an appropriate question.

I actually was wondering that. So the book, Six Times a Nickel, I wrote that book because it's about everything that's happened in my life. This is the newest book. Yeah, it comes out in July. So it's pre-order right now. You don't Amazon right now. Sure.

Both of these books and the coffee bean, you can't put down after hearing you speak. This is the newest book. Yeah, it comes out in July. So it's pre-order right now. You get it on Amazon right now. Sure. Both of these books and the coffee bean you can't put down after hearing you speak. Yeah. So Six Times a Nickel tells the whole story about what happened in my life afterwards, because here's the deal. We talked about the universe a while ago. The universe is pleased when you do things out there. I believe my purpose, so many blessings have come into my life, but those blessings come

with spiritual dreams attached to them. It's not all for me. I've got to find a way to spread this around. So one of the most important thing when I got out was finding Muhammad. I had to find Muhammad to tell him I made it. I became the coffee bean. And I started looking for him.

And then Muhammad's not his real name. That was the hard part. Muhammad's his Muslim name. When a person converts to Islam, they get rid of the real name, they take on a Muslim name. Kind of like Cassius Clay becomes Muhammad Ali. So I don't have his real name or birth date.

I don't have vital information to find him. And I have to hope at this point he finds me. Three years ago, I got a letter from an inmate at the Texas prison system. And the inmate wrote the letter to me. He said, hey, find James Lynn Baker and you find Muhammad. So seven years I waited for this clue. I go back to Dallas, my lawyer finds a private investigator, we find his criminal record.

Match everything he told me in county jail. Had him in Dallas county jail when I was there in 09. So I know this is my friend, all we gotta do is find his current address, but we never did find his current address because James Lynn Baker the second, Mohammed, he died of an opioid overdose in Dallas, Texas on May 9th, 2017.

Muhammad's been dead eight years now. Integrity is who you are when no one else is watching you. That's that little bug in your ear that tells you to do the right thing, even if you can get away with the wrong thing, right? I told my lawyer that day, I said, listen, man, I owe my life to this guy. Now that he's dead, I feel like we need to go find his family because his family needs to know what he did in my life. He needs redemption too.

That's one of the things I found out about the coffee bean. That he wouldn't just give me that message so I could redeem myself. He gave me that message so I could come back and redeem him one day. I find his family. Comes from a dynamic family. His little sister, a woman named Von Seale Baker,

in 1972, Von Seale Baker was the first Dallas Cabocha leader ever. First woman to ever wear that uniform. His mother opened the first licensed black daycare in Dallas, 1948. Really cool. So he came from a really good family. So I called his family up and I said, hey, listen.

I said, I'm going to start a scholarship in your brother's name. We'll call it the James Lynn Baker II Bia Coffee Bean Scholarship. I'll fund it. Every year for the rest of my life, I'll put $10,000 into a trust and every year I want your family to pick the winner so that every year one little

boy or one little girl that grows up in his old neighborhood, they get out, they get a better chance at life through education. Cause these two guys met up in County jail back in 09 and, and you know, all the sisters took me up on it, man. Every year they pick a scholarship winner. Every year, one of these kids goes to college. This one of them is a little girl named Megan, man. Her mother's a school teacher.

Her dad's a disabled veteran. Right now, Megan's sitting in class at Texas A&M. She's going to be an engineer one day. Y'all. Really? That's a school teacher. Her dad's a disabled veteran. Right now, Megan's sitting in class at Texas A&M. She's going to be an engineer one day, y'all. Really cool. That's awesome. Yeah. Found Muhammad. Now the last thing I want to share with y'all.

Obviously I got married. I got a family. I got married on May 18th, 2019, Lauren. So 10 years to the day that I got sent to life in prison. I got married for the first time. I became a husband and a stepfather. Congratulations. Yeah.

Yeah. So my wife is a woman named Kendall husband and a stepfather. Congratulations. Yeah, yeah. So my wife is a woman named Kendall. My little stepdaughter named Clara. Clara's, she's 13 now. It's cool, man. It's a cool role to be a stepfather in a little girl's life and to be a husband.

And, you know, my mom lives with me now. I built her house. So my mom lives with me. You got to put the footprints thing up. Yeah, they're in her house. So yeah. But one of the coolest things, and I want you all to see that the whole full circle of redemption, because I think that your listeners will probably, some of them

probably wondering if any of the victims have ever reached out to me for my crimes. Right. And that's a real question, right? Do any of the victims reach out? Now we know I can't apologize to my victims and I can't respond to them. Even if they reach out? Even if they reach out. And you would do it if you could, it sounds like.

Can't answer that question. Oh my gosh. I can't. Wow. I can't apologize or even make it look like I'm apologizing. I can't do anything like that. But this is a story in Six Times and a Nickel that I told. Now victims have reached out to me and most of the time, it's not great. A couple of times it's been okay. I mean, it's, you know, they're not.

I understand it too, because I stole these people's sense of security, right? I did something terrible to them. I can't fix it. I can't replace it. And I understand their anger at me. And, you know, it's hard. The biggest victim of all my crimes, there was a, And I understand their anger at me and you know, it's hard. The biggest victim of all my crimes, it was the last weekend of our burglary sprees in July of 2008, Dustin and I break into this condo building uptown Dallas and we go into this lady's condo. She's out of town, we knew she was out of town.

We go in there and we take her electronics and all that. And there's a safe in the closet and we break into the safe and there's a diamond ring in there. So we steal the diamond ring. What we didn't see inside of her apartment, this is why she's the biggest victim of all my victims, y'all. What we didn't see in her apartment was a trough holder American flag, the KIA plaque that was next to the flag. That ring belonged to her dead fiance who stepped on an IED in Iraq in 2007. Defending our country, y'all. Defending the rights of a scumbag like me.

Her fiance died for this country and we stole the last memory she had of him. Y'all this is the first witness at my trial and I remember it vividly. I carried that memory around with me everywhere around that prison y'all. There wasn't a place I didn't go that that memory didn't go with me and that was I felt like it was my penis. It was almost like a toxic companion I had to take around with me because the reminder of what I did to these people man man. I was a bad guy. Even though I didn't physically hurt somebody, I was a bad guy. So in 2020, this reporter in Dallas named Kevin Reese,

real good reporter from WFAA, he wanted to do a story on me and I've avoided Dallas this whole time I've been out of prison. Remember I've been out in 2020, I've been out for five years. It's five years ago. And I finally agreed to do the story under a few conditions. One is that there's no apology, but you let me explain why I can't apologize. Because the story about a guy that's doing great in life and overcoming without an apology looks really weird, right?

Why didn't he apologize for what he did? So I have to put in there, I can't apologize, I won't apologize, and here's why. The other thing is I want you to let me tell the audience that I was a bad guy and I was a scumbag. And Kevin let me do that. He told a really good story on WFA that night in January of 2020. That night after the story, there was two emails in my inbox. The first email was from one of the detectives that took me down all those years ago. And it wasn't a good email, y'all. He's basically saying, you were a fast talker then, you're a fast talker now.

I don't believe any of it. I don't believe the transformation at all. And I sat with that email for a second. You know, I thought, why would he write that? But then I thought, you know what? He's entitled to his opinion. And he represented society when he took me down. I broke the social contract.

He represented society. I didn't respond to his email because I'm no longer a criminal and he doesn't have any power over me. So I let it go. Other people's opinions of you are none of your business, by the way. And that's something I learned in my 12 steps. Other people's opinions of you are none of your business. So I let it go. Other people's opinions of you are none of your business, by the way. And that's something I learned in my 12 steps. Other people's opinions of you are none of your

business. So I let him go. That's his opinion. He's entitled that. The second email, it stopped me in my tracks. The subject line said, Damon, I forgive you. And it was from a name I did not recognize. And when I opened the email up, I saw it was from her, the biggest victim. When I opened the email up, I saw it was from her, the biggest victim. So she goes to this email and I'm going to read it to you. This email is hard to read, y'all. She is telling me about the burglary from her perspective. I get it from the victim's angle. She walks in, first thing she runs to is the safe, right?

That's the only thing she cares about in the whole house. The safe doors busted open. The ring is gone and it's gone for good. And. She's struggling in the email, you can see she's struggling going back and forth with seeing me on the news at night, too. And she finally gets to the end of the email. I read you all what she wrote.

With that, I'd like to say, I forgive you. I'm moving on in the hope that you're a genuine person with a good heart, and the hope that you put others before money or fame as you share your story, and the hope that you and your family never experience great loss or violation. Most importantly in the hope that you feel peace in knowing that we are saved from mistakes that we make in this world thanks to the unfailing love of Christ. Life is such a gift, may you live it to the fullest, Damon. Wow. That was the full circle moment in everything.

The biggest, I can't apologize to her. I can never ask for her to forget to show me so much grace. Grace is hard. Grace always cost a person giving it more than it costs a person who receives it. What did it cost her to do that? But I mean, that's the program recovery at work, y'all. When a person works a program recovery, they find out that God, whatever you believe God is, can do things for you you couldn't do for yourself.

And by working my program every day, by just getting up every day, kind of like you're talking about, just getting up every day, looking for ways to serve other people, everything has fixed itself in life. Life has been totally changed. I'm a good person that goes out and finds ways to serve other people. I got a prayer that I pray every morning. I've been praying since I got into 12 Steps in prison. I get up every day and I do a little prayer and meditation in the morning. I think, prayers when you talk to God and meditations when you listen to God. And every morning my prayer is the same one I've been praying since prison.

I ask God for two things. Put in front of me what you need me to do today for you and let me recognize it when I see it because I don't want to miss whatever that is. It's probably cathartic for her to be able to email you that she forgives you. I think that is like, it's so nice for her, probably. That's the thing. That's the thing. In the 12th step, you work the steps.

You have the eighth step is when you have a list of all the people you've harmed. The ninth step is when you make an apology, you make an amends. And amends are important because the biggest thing an amends does is it allows the other person you've harmed to free themselves or whatever you've done to them, right? And the other thing an amends can do when you make an amends to somebody is can free you

from the resentment you feel towards yourself. And not being able to make an amends to somebody can hold you back. And so in recovery though, they have this thing called a living amends. This is so cool, y'all. The living amends is when you go out and do good deeds and you expect nothing in return. And that's what you do when you have apologies you can't make because to do so would cause them or you harm.

And my entire life has been living amends. And my entire life is going to continue to be living amends. I find ways to serve other people every day because I believe that that's how I'm going to make it right in this world. So. Wow. What a story. You are very, very inspirational. I think everyone should go pick up all three of your books.

If they're going to start, should they start with the coffee bean? I think they should start with Six Dimes and a Nickel because it's the most recent book and it's the book where I got to tell the whole story. Now, the change agent is the one, Lauren's gonna love the change agent because it's all prison culture stuff. It happens mostly inside of a prison. But the Six Times and a Nickel has a prison story too,

but there's also this big story that's going on after prison because I think people wanna see the full redemption story. When I wrote the change agent, all these things hadn't happened in life. I just barely met Dabo, I just barely started speaking. I wasn't even married at the time. I mean, but Six Times and a Nickel is everything. What Six Times and a Nickel is, it's basically a memoir,

but it's these personal development nuggets, right? Every chapter is a life lesson, a life principle I live my life by. The body of the chapter is a story behind the principle. Remember, storytelling. People learn and are entertained through stories. I'm a really good storyteller. I've gotten good at that.

And at the end of each chapter is a reflection on how you apply that principle in your life. So I think Six Times and a Nickel is the one book you need to get that encompasses the change date to the coffee bean and everything. So Six Times and a Nickel, definitely. I won all three, Damon. So many people said you'd be amazing on a mic. Ed six times a nickel, definitely. I want all three.

Damon, so many people said you'd be amazing on a mic. Ed Mylet was not wrong. You did not fail to deliver my friend. You did not fail. Thank you all. I'd love to come back at another time. Anytime you wanna come back. Where can everyone find you on Instagram

and say hello and support what you're doing? Yeah, so my Instagram is at DamonWest7 and people find me to speak. My website is DamonWest.org and look, I speak to all sizes of companies. Like, I believe that every company needs the message of the coffee bean. It's that message that tells us that the powers inside us change the world around us. I don't want to be the limp dick carrot. No.

But I mean, I want people to know, man. It's like, I'm not one of those guys that's like, Oh my God, this guy rides around a private jet and stuff like that. No, I'm just a regular guy. Like I speak to fortune 100s and I speak to, you know, extreme exteriors and Abilene, Texas, the landscaping and pool company, you know, I speak to everybody's companies. I want, I want to go out and share this mesh with as many people as possible. Really, really cool message. Maybe I can come with Michael to speak at a prison. I'm interested in that

I was if we do that give me the so with the pen I will tell y'all November will be the next opportunity to do it Okay, so if y'all are in if y'all I mean like we're gonna get you some number that numbers after this I'm not messing with y'all. I'm dead serious. I'll bring y'all into it I would like to do it. We'll do it. Yeah, you know you get the VIP treatment in there And we'll go to a women a prison in Gatesville. I would like to do it. We'll do it. Yeah. You get the VIP treatment in there and we'll go to a women's prison in Gatesville, Texas. Y'all, I realized something I'd been missing

when I did the Elf on the Shelf stuff. When I went to women's prisons and did the Elf on the Shelf thing, I haven't been doing enough in women's prisons. Those ladies need more brought to them. I'm sure, yeah, a lot of them are mothers. They have a podcast in prison, Lauren. They have a podcast in prison that goes out to 11 different states prison systems.

Oh my god, you have to look at that, that is so cool. Yes, it's called the tank. The tank, in prison when you live in a pod it's called a tank, you live on a tank, right? So the tank is run by these ladies on the women's prison, it's a female host on the lady tank, they have a male tank in one of the male prisons in East Texas, but they have two different tank podcasts, the ladies tank and the men's tank. Cool. And it's a real podcast. Well, sign us up. Great. Thanks a lot, y'all. Mike Horn, thanks a lot.