#299: The Simple Lesson To Create POSITIVE CHANGE, With Damon West Keynote Speaker & WSJ Best Selling Author

So he walks me through it. The carrot turns soft, goes in hard, but becomes soft. The egg goes in with the soft liquid inside. It's hard, but the heart becomes hardened. And he's telling me, man, if your heart becomes hard in that place, you're institutionalized and you won't come back as someone your parents recognize. And he tells me, the coffee bean. The coffee bean was the only thing that could change the water because the power was inside the coffee bean. That the coffee bean changes the water into a pot of coffee because the coffee bean is the change agent. Everything else in life is going to be changed by the water. His last words to me, be a coffee bean. That's the last words that man ever said to me. In 2009, before the prison bus came to pick me up to go serve my life sentence in a Texas maximum.

Security prison, I'm on this journey with me each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow.

I'm ready for my close up.

Hi and welcome back. I'm sorry. So excited for you to be with me this week. You're not going to believe our guests. He was sentenced to 65, 65 years in a Texas prison. Damon west once had it all. He now is a college professor, internationally known keynote speaker, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Coffee Bean. I mean, this guy is. His book is everywhere. It's incredible. His autobiography, the Change Agent, how a former college QB sentenced to life in prison triple transformed his world, vividly tells how he transformed the pot of boiling water that is a Texas maximum security prison into a pot of coffee. Damon, thank you so much for being here today.

Heather, thanks a lot for having me on your show. It's so good, man. When you reached out to me the other day, you're like, hey, I'm a friend of Ed and John and Katherine. I'm like, girl, I know who you are. I follow you on social media. I was already following you. So, yeah, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for your time today. This is great.

Oh, my gosh, it's so crazy. We have so many people in common. But I love your story. I love the Coffee Bean. As I mentioned to you, I use your coffee bean in so many speaking engagements and I'm just so excited to get into the behind the scenes because, you know, we've had John Gordon on the show before most of my listeners. I think everybody listening right now knows about the copy bean. But to hear Your story and where this all originated from is mind blowing. Will you take us back to back when you thought you had it all? Back in the QB days?

Yeah, no, I was. I had it all. I mean, like, I came from a great family. I'm raised in Southeast Texas, and Texas football is a really big deal. And I was like one of these star high school quarterbacks. Scholarship to play football at a University, a Division 1 college football, university of North Texas. Got injured a couple years in the college. Got into drugs, cocaine, Ecstasy, pills. But I was a very functional addict. Graduated college in 99. Heather, I move off to Washington, DC. I got a job working in the United States Congress. Worked for a guy running for president. Then in 2004, I moved back to Dallas to train to be a stockbroker for one of the biggest Wall street banks in the world. Ubs, United bank of Switzerland. And it was at that job as a stockbroker in 04 that my life and the lives of so many other innocent people would forever be changed. It was 2004, Heather. I was passed out of sleep at work. This other broker comes up, he sees me sleeping and he's visibly shaking. And he wakes me up. He's like, damon, wake up. You can't sleep on this job. The markets are open. You're messing with people's money. He said, they'll fire you if they catch you sleeping here. He said, come on down to the parking garage. I've got something that'll pick you up. So, Heather, I follow this guy down to the parking garage. So the broker down there, we get to his little sports car and he hands me this glass pipe with these crystal rocks in it. And, man, I've never seen a glass pipe before. My man, what is that? He said, damon, just relax. He said, it's crystal meth. He said, you're gonna love this stuff. And Heather, truer words never been spoken because I fell in love with crystal meth that day. Method's the most evil, most destructive, most addictive drug. I smoked it one time and I was instantly hooked just like that. And I started giving everything away for that drug. Because, Heather, that's what addicts do. Addicts give things away. People ask me all the time. Like, I work a program recovery. Today I'm in a 12 step program recovery. But people will ask me, what's the mindset of an addict? And here's the mindset of an addict. Here's addiction 101. And when I'm talking about addiction here, it's not just drugs and Alcohol, it's anything you're addicted to that takes you away from the most important things in life. It could be food, money, clothing, shopping, the Internet, Instagram, whatever. Addicts give up their goals to meet their behaviors. Addicts give up goals to meet behaviors. Focused and successful and driven people. They give up those behaviors to meet their goals. And I started giving everything away. I gave away my job, my home, my car, my savings account, my family, my tethering to God. I went from working on Wall street to living on the streets of Dallas. And then I literally.

Living on the streets.

Oh, yeah, I've slept in abandoned buildings. I've slept in people's car, Heather. I've slept in. I've done it all, man. I lived on the streets, left on park benches. I mean, this is like less than zero kind of stuff. Like, I am destitute. I don't have a place. I don't have but, you know, a couple sets of clothes. I mean, I've lost everything at this point, Heather. I mean, everything. And so what happened is I started becoming a criminal once I was homeless because I lost everything, but I still had this addiction that's gotten worse. And so I started breaking into cars, I start breaking into storage units, do some shoplifting here and there, and eventually it escalates to home burglaries. I started breaking into people's houses. And these burglaries that I committed, Heather, they were in the uptown neighborhood of Dallas. They called them the uptown burglaries. Uptown is one of the nicest parts of Dallas. It's where I used to live when I was a stockbroker. And these burglaries went on for about three years. And, Heather, when I broke into people's houses, I didn't. This is a different kind of crime. I didn't just steal people's property. Burglary is a very personal thing. I stole these people's sense of security, my victims. I stole their sense of security. And I don't even know if they can get that back.

I missed stop you for a second, because this is creeping me out in such a big way on so many levels. Okay, first of all, here's what I don't understand, and I'm going to sound judgmental right now, and I apologize for that. And this is something I'm working on. But when I see a homeless person, and of course I live in Miami, I see homeless people every day, right. It's a major city. And my son gets very nervous around homeless people. And I always say to him that Is a child of God. Honey, that's somebody's child right there. You know, let's look through the eyes of compassion. We don't know. The story is always one of the things I want to remind him when we see. Because I know that we really don't. But to know you now, to know how successful you are, and in my eyes, you're quote, unquote, normal, Right? To me, where were your parents when this was like, why couldn't you call someone? I don't understand how that. I don't understand how you couldn't go back to a regular life.

Yeah. And here's the answer to it. Why? You see other homeless people, they don't. They don't go back to a regular life. And by the way, when I see homeless people, I always say, just under my breath, there before the grace of God go I. Because I know what that's like. I've been in that world. And here's why you don't just pick up and go back to normal life. Because if. If you could just do that, everybody would. When you're an addict, when you're in your addiction, Addiction takes control of the way you think. It's a. It's a disease with the way you think. It's a disease of the mind. And you have to change the way you think to get over the other side of addiction. That's what a program recovery comes in. That's what I didn't have at that time. But when I'm in my addiction, All I think about is getting high. Addiction is a very selfish thing. You'll do anything you can to get high, and you'll hurt other people on the way. I tell people all the time, heather, addicts aren't necessarily bad people. They're sick people that do bad things. And that's what I was. I was a sick person. And I couldn't just get up and leave Dallas because the. The dope was in Dallas, my drug dealers were in Dallas, and my access to the dope was in Dallas. So I became a criminal. And my parents were six hours away in port arthur, Texas, where I grew up. You know, I'm a grown man at this point, too. I'm 29 years old. I mean, they had to come kidnap me to pull me out of this world. And I wasn't leaving. They even sent somebody to do a family friend to do an intervention with me back in, like, just like 2006. They know something's wrong, but they don't know what's wrong. They call I lie to them. You know, what are you doing now for a job? I lost my job as a stockbroker, by the way. I couldn't pass A Series 7. I couldn't even function anymore because of the meth. So I got fired as a broker. But after that, I would just lie to my parents. I'd tell them I was, you know, working for a software company or a limousine company. I had all these different lies. And when the lies weren't any good, I just quit taking their calls. Heather. I mean, I'm a. I'm a grown man in another town, six hours away. So they know something's wrong, and they just can't do anything. There's nothing they can do. They have to literally kidnap me. And they tried to have an intervention. But on July 30, 2008, these burglaries that I've been committing, they went on for about three years. And at this point, July 30, 2008, I've got my own burglary crew. I've become the quarterback again, only this time, it's a very bad scene. I'm the top criminal in this criminal pyramid in the city of Dallas. The shot caller is what they call it. I mean, I'm the guy at the very top. And I'm sitting on the couch that day, July 30, 2008, with my dope dealer. His name is Tex. And I'm telling Texas, we're passing the pipe back and forth. Tex, you don't want to be here right now. You need to get out of here. The cops are closing in on me. The end is near. 10 days before this. This guy that I was doing all these burglaries with in Dallas, this guy named Dustin, had been picked up by the Dallas Police Department in a stolen car. So they've got my partner in crime and custody. I know it's just a matter of time before they get to me. And just as I pass the pipe back to Text, the window on my right blows out and shatters and then tumbling across my living room floor with this little canister going end over end. It's smoking on one side. Heather, I've seen this movie before. I know what that canister is about to do. And I tried to get out of the living room as fast as I could. Too late. Boom. The flashbang grenade blew up right in my face. Bright white light. Loud noise. I can't hear. My ears are ringing. And when I came to, when I could see and hear again, there's a Cop standing over me in full swat, right gear, boot on my chest. The barrel of an assault rifle is digging in my eye socket. His fingers on the trigger, and he is screaming at the top of his lungs, don't move. Don't move. And, man, these cops come flooding my apartment. And one of the cops screams out loud, we got him. We got the uptown burglar. And that's the name I'll live with for the rest of my life. Heather the uptown burglar. About a dozen other meth addicts of myself, young and old, male and female, black and white, and everything in between, because drugs and addiction do not discriminate. But we indiscriminately and without reservation broke into the homes of dozens and dozens of people and the uptown neighborhood of Dallas to feed our insatiable meth habits. They took me to jail that day. They processed me in fingerprints, mugshot, threw me in a holding cell. They set my bond at $1.4 million. 1.4 million. Heather There's 9,000 people in Dallas County Jail. It's one of the biggest jails in America. 9,000 people. No one. Child molesters, not murderers, not rapists, had a bond that high. But Dallas wasn't going to let me get out on bond because they were going to take me to a very public trial. And it was, I mean, it was when I walked in the courtroom 10 months later, there's cameras in the courtroom. It's on the news every night. May 18, 2009. Ten months after my arrest, I'm standing in front of a jury in Dallas, and the jury listened to a six day trial. Heather six days is a long criminal trial. These are crimes that were non aggravated, meaning no one was ever home. I never saw my victims, they never saw me. No one got hurt. No weapons were used. These are property crimes around drugs. But at the end of the six day trial, the jury hated my guts. And they went to deliberate for 10 minutes on that sentence. Yeah, 10 minutes. And I gave them every reason to hate me. Heather. I was a bad guy. I mean, I was. Look at what I was doing. I was breaking into people's houses. I was the ringleader of all these other meth addicts. But 10 minutes, 10 minutes means they had their mind made up. When they brought me back in the courtroom from that little recess, my lawyer, Karen Lambert, she said, brace yourself, this is going to be bad. And I'm like, how bad, Karen? She said, while you were gone for that brief 10 minutes, the jury sent a note to the judge. She said, they wanted to know if they could give you life without parole. Life without parole, Heather, that's a capital punishment for crimes where people were killed. I'm like, karen, this is crazy. No one was even home. She said, get ready. And the judge called the court back in and read the sentence out loud. Damon Joseph west, you are hereby sentenced to 65 years. And the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Heather, 65 years in Texas is a life sentence. The jury gave me life that day. Yeah, it's crazy. It's absolutely wild. Obviously, I didn't do the entire life sentence inside, inside of a prison because, yeah, I'm not on a work release program right now. I made it out. I did seven years and three months in a maximum security penitentiary in Beaumont, Texas, before I made parole. But the. The story of the Coffee Bean and where I heard it from for the first time happened shortly after my trial was over. The day the trial was over, right after the trial, the sheriff and bailiff escort me out in handcuffs. They put me this little side room. There's a bulletproof glass right there. They told me to wait. And a few minutes later, they escorted my mom and my dad into this room on the other side of the glass. They've, they've. They feel terrible. They feel bad for my parents because I just got life. I mean, no one saw that coming. The DA wanted it. But for a jury, just to give a guy life like that, his first felony offense and property crimes. So they give my parents one last visit with me. It's a little five minute visit. One of the most impactful conversations I've ever had. And my mom is telling me, she's like, damon, listen. She said, debts in life demand to be paid. And you just got hit with one hell of a bill from the state of Texas. She said, but you did the things they said you did. So you have to pay that debt to society. She said, but you owe your father and I debt, too, Damon. We gave you all the opportunities, love and support to be anything you want to be in life. She said, that's how you just repaid us what we saw in that courtroom. That's not going to work. And she's reminded me, you know, we raised you in Port Arthur, Texas, a giant melting pot of a city, gave you a great moral compass which you chose to not use. She said, so here's the debt you're going to pay to us when you go to prison. You will not get in one of these white hate groups, one of these Aryan brotherhood type of gangs, because you're scared because you're the minority in there. She said, it's not going to work. You were never raised to be a racist. You're not going to start now. She said, you will not get any tattoos while you're inside that prison. Heather. I show people my sleeves all the time. I was in. I was in a maximum security level. 5 Level 5 penitentiaries are the highest level there is. That's where the lifers go, and that's where I had to go with the lifers, like Alcatraz, man, these guys want to tattoo every inch of your body. In the joint, Heather. They'd hit me up all the time. West, let me put a tattoo on you, man. I tell him the same thing, Heather, I can't do it, dude. My mom said no, you know, because that's what she did. She said. She said, damon, no gangs, no tattoos. She said, you come back as the man we raised or don't come back to us at all. I mean, yeah, you're a mother. Imagine saying that to your son.

Well, thank God she did say that to you, though. I mean, I don't know where she got that strength in that moment, but something, you know, that was powerful, what she did for you.

Good news. I found out where she got that from, because that's what I wanted when I got out of prison. We started when I pulled out of prison. I lived with my parents the first two years. And so I'm sitting down, my mom one night, and I asked her, it's like, mom, when you told me that, where did that come from? So my mother is a nurse, and she said, damon, as a nurse, I see things always like that. As a nurse, my brain is trained for that. And she said, what I saw is my son is laying on a gurney and he's dying. He's bleeding out. And that was triage. Triage is where they get in there and they just try to save your life. It's a mess. It's ugly, it doesn't look great, but they stem the flow of blood. She said, all I was doing was triage at that point, because I'm looking at my son that I'm about to lose. You know, I've got to do something. And she said, that's what the Holy Spirit gave her to say. And that's what she said. And. And she even backed it up right after she said it. She said, do you understand this debt you're going to pay to us? No gangs, no tattoos. I was like, yeah, Mom, I got it. But. But, Heather, I don't know. I don't know if it's been to prison. I don't know how to do this. I have no. No clue. And I'm in county jail for two more months before the prison bus comes to get me. And while I'm in county, I'm asking every guy that's been to prison before, how am I gonna survive? What am I gonna do? And every guy I talk to, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, they all say the same thing. You have to get into a game, because you can't. You can't survive where you're going without a game. But there was this one guy that was so different. This older Black man named Mr. Jackson. And Mr. Jackson, Heather, he's what you call a career criminal. The dude's been in and out of prison all of his life, but he's the most positive guy I've ever met in my life. And so he comes up to me one day, and he's always walking around with a smile on his face, and he says, hey, West, I've been watching how you're dealing with those knuckleheads, those dummies talking about, you got to get into a game. He said, man, don't listen to these fools. You want to keep the promise you made to your mom and your dad, and let me tell you what prison is going to be like. And so he walks me through it, Heather. He's telling me that prison is all about race. And he's telling me all the inmates in there want it to be about race, that when I walk in the door, the white gangs get the first dibs on me because I'm white, then I have to fight all the white gangs off. If I wanted to be independent of the white gangs, if I survive that, then I got to fight the black gangs. And the white gangs will send the black gangs after me. And the black gangs will come after me and. And jump me and beat me. But he said, you've got it. If you survive this and you can survive this, you'll earn the right to walk alone. He said, the strongest man in prison always walks alone. West. He told me the truth about fighting, Heather. He said, you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights. Means that some days you're going to win, and some days you're going to lose. And he said, it's okay to lose. Get back up. And he's telling me, get back up. But when he's telling me this back in 2000, 9. I'm looking back at this guy like a deer in headlights. All this violence and terror I'm about to walk into. That's when he's like, wes, let me break it down for you a different way. He said, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of born water. And he said, anything we put to the pot of boiling water is going to be changed by the heat and the pressure inside that pot. He said, I'm gonna put three things in that pot of warm water and watch how they change. A carrot, an egg, and a coffee bean. Heather, Here is where I first heard the story of the coffee bean. The summer of 2009 in Dallas County Jail, exactly 10 years before John and I write the book the Coffee Bean in the summer of 2019. So he walks me through it. The carrot turns soft, goes in hard, but becomes soft. The egg goes in with a soft liquid inside. It's hard, but the heart becomes hardened. And he's telling me, man, if your heart becomes hard in that place, you're institutionalized and you won't come back as someone your parents recognize. And he tells me, the coffee Bean. The coffee bean was the only thing that could change the water because the power was inside the coffee bean, that the coffee bean changes the water into a pot of coffee because the coffee bean is the change agent. And he's telling me, he's like, everything else in life is going to be changed by the water. His last words to me, be a coffee bean. That's the last words that man ever said to me. In 2009, before the prison bus came to pick me up to go serve my life sentence in a Texas maximum security prison. But, Heather, it was. It was the four words that changed my life. Because I mean, that this guy was shooting me straight. That put the power inside me. And if the power was inside me, then it couldn't be the hands of the criminal justice system, the guards, or even the other inmates. It was in me. And I go around telling people the story. The coffee Bean, Heather, because the power's inside everybody else. It's inside you. And if you can keep the power inside you, then it doesn't matter what your potable water is, you can change it to a pot of coffee, too, because you are the change agent in your own life, Heather.

So tell everybody you get on this bus, you're literally going to life in prison. And how you became the coffee Bean for that prison.

You know what I've never talked about in a podcast because you made me think about it when you said, get on that bus. The bus ride. In my book, the change agent, I talk about the bus ride. These bus rides are crazy, Heather. I mean, you're, you go, first of all, when you get on a bus, you're shackled up to another human being. I mean, they, and, and Jackson's telling me how to get shackled up too. He told me when I was in county, he said, well, they're going to take you all out in the middle of the night one night. Everybody's going to get on this one bus. They take you out in the middle of the night, they strip you down, and they give you this jumpsuit to put on. And he said, they're going to give you a sack lunch. He said, now what you want to do is you want to pair yourself up because everybody's got to get paired off and get handcuffed to somebody. He said, you want to pair yourself off with someone that's smaller than you, someone that's weaker than you. You want to find someone that's smaller than you, and you want to find their dominant hand and you want to make sure that. So if it's a right handed person, that's what you want to get chained up to. If I'm a right handed person, I need another right handed person because I'm going to lock my left hand, handcuff my left hand to their left hand too. They handcuff you to other people. You walk around just chained up to another human being. So he said, the way you figure this out, when they're eating that last meal, it's like a last supper. You're eating that last, last little sack lunch. Look around, find a guy smaller than you and find out. Find a guy that's eating with his right hand. Watch how he eats his food. Go over there and offer him some of your food and befriend him and then get him to chain up with you. Tell him, hey, you want one of my sandwiches? You can have one of my sandwiches. Get to talking to him and say, hey man, you want to chain up together? Yeah, yeah, I'll chain up with you. He said, and then when you lock yourself up to that guy and you get on this bus ride and the chaos starts breaking out, let him know that he's first to go. If he, if he does anything stupid, you're coming after him first because you've locked up his dominant hand. On these bus rides, it's chaos. People are fighting, there's stuff breaking out. If you got to use the bathroom on one of Those buses you're chained up to another person. This guy you're chained up to, he does number one or number two, you're going and standing with him the whole time. This is. I mean, this is like third world, end of the world type stuff.

Heather, why do you think this man was such a blessing in your. Like, this is not what jail is like. Most people are not there befriending somebody else.

Heather, the answer to that question is it's a God thing. And I'm gonna. I'll get to that at the end after I finally find this guy, which is a very recent thing. When I found out who he really was. In my life, God has never just reached his hand out of my head and said, damon, you're healed. What God's done is put people in my life. And when I was younger, these people were like my parents. They were coaches, they were teachers. As I got older in life and went down different roads, there were guides along those roads. No matter if I took a good path or a bad path, there were always guides there to help me out along the way. There were different messengers. One of them is this black Muslim man in Dallas county jail named Mr. Jackson. But the idea in life is to be receptive to all of God's messengers. And if you're not receptive to all of God's messengers, then you miss the messages along the way. And he just happened to be one of those messengers at the right time in my life. When we get to the story about later on about me finding him, you're going to see how crazy the story is, because literally, he's given me something. He had the Coffee Bean message in his life the whole time, but he couldn't become the Coffee Bean in his own life because he was an addict just like me. But he never got into a program recovery. But literally he passed it on to this other person that he saw a light and he would. So he told me in county jail, he said, you've got this light about you west, but people are going to want to extinguish that. When you get in there, you're going to the darkest place in the world. They're going to try to extinguish you. They're going to try to kill you, but you have to let your light shine. Yeah, it's really. It's really kind of wild. Very. On a spiritual level.

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All right, so you get into the prison and then how do you go from not just being a scared person to saying I want to make a difference?

It took two months of constant fighting the first two months I was there. And I mean like when I say constant fighting. Heather I probably got in three dozen fights those first two months and I lost 75% of my fights. I mean I got my but kicked all over that prison, but I won all of my fights because I showed up to my fights. And that's what Jackson said. You don't have to win those fights, you just got to fight those fights. And, and in prison no one cares about whether you win or lose. They just want to see if you're going to defend yourself. Will you defend your honor and get out there and fight. But really it's the same thing in life. No one counts your wins and loss. You do. You count your wins and losses, but no one else is counting them. But everybody's watching to see if you get back up. And that's what they were waiting to see in prison. Would he get back up and could we break him? Finally what happened, what finally broke it open for me is I got out to the wreck yard. The rec yard was a very intimidating place and the life's in this building. Everything was segregated by the color of your skin on the rec yard. Every sport, depending on what the sport was depending on, certain, certain races could do this and do that. But I ended up playing basketball because it was during the period where I was fighting the black gangs. I went out there and got in the basketball court because I was a great athlete. God blessed me to be a tremendous athlete. And it took about a week of playing basketball with those guys out there. Most brutal basketball I've ever played. But I learned two things about adversity that week on the wreck yard. I learned that adversity is never as bad as you think it's going to be. And you're always capable of way more than you think you are, because so many times in life we can allow overthinking to get in the way of overcoming. And after spending a week on the wreck yard, earning my respect out there like that, the violence was finally over and the threat to my physical safety was gone. But two months into prison, I've got a bigger threat on my hands than my physical safety. My problem is internal, Heather. I'm becoming the egg. I don't want to be the egg, but I don't even know how to be a coffee bean, you know, I don't know how to do it.

Meaning you were getting hardened.

Yeah, I was getting hardened. My heart was becoming hard. One of the hallmarks of being an egg is you're angry, you're irritable all the time, and you're never happy.

And.

And that was happening to me. I was getting sucked into this world of prison. But I know I can't get stuck in this world because I want to go home one day. And I have hope. Hope, Heather. I mean, hope is the thing that everybody has to have. And in prison is the one thing that's in short supply. People just don't have hope in that place. That's why it's such a dark place, because it's seemingly hopeless. And one of the last conversations I had with Jackson in county jail before I left for prison, I asked him, I said, what am I going to find more of when I get to prison? And he fired back without hesitation. He was a very intelligent man. His answer was profound. He said, you're going to find more eggs, Wes. And he said, here's why you're going to find more eggs. He said, the egg is a natural evolution of any human being inside of any difficult situation. He said, you're about to walk in one of the most difficult there is. He said, the truth is, you're going to probably become the egg, too. And he was right. He was right about everything. And I was having a conversation with my first cellmate in prison, Carlos. Man, Carl. I talked to Carlos on the phone. Like, Carlos gonna be in prison for a long time. Good dude, though. About five foot four, little Hispanic guy, a little bank robber. He was serving 99 years for a bunch of bank jobs he did. Real good guy, though. And I mean, Heather, when you're.

It's so surreal to be having this conversation with you. Like, it's so matter of fact, Carlos, 99 years in prison. Okay, go ahead. Back to you.

Yeah, but it's like. But that's the thing. I mean, like when I say that people, you know, I go to corporations all over the world, masterminds, and talk to them, and I'm telling them about Carlos, and they're laughing because I'm like, carlos is a good guy, but he was. When you live with the lifers, you've got to change your mind about who the good guys and bad guys are. You have to make friends in this place somewhere. And Carlos was one of the good guys. I was very fortunate enough to have him in my cell. So one night, I'm having a conversation with Carlos. I've got the bottom buck, he's got the top bunk, little 10 by 12 cell. And I'm telling the story, the coffee Bean, just like Jackson told it to me. Because I'm like, carlos, I can't figured this coffee bean thing out. And, man, Carlos comes flying down at the top bunk. He's a real animated little guy. He's like, oh, my God, West. He said, I love the story of the coffee Bean. He said, but. But you're no coffee bean, and you'll never be a coffee bean, man. I got in Carlos's face, I'm like, what do you mean I can't be a coffee bean? I mean, who are you? The coffee bean, man? Why can't I be a coffee bean? And he told me, he said, because you have stinking thinking. He said, your thinking is awful. Here we are, Heather. We're back to thinking. Your thinking is everything. He said, your thoughts control your actions, but your actions come from your thoughts. He said, your problem is right now, you think prison is a punishment when you need to be thinking about prison as an opportunity. First time anybody's ever said that this experiment, that I'm in, this. This prison, this punishment I'm in is an opportunity. I think it's a punishment. And I'm like, carlos, I don't understand what you're saying. And he said. He said, this is your opportunity, West. Your opportunity to work on yourself 24 hours a day, seven days a week, become the best version of yourself possible. And it lights out that night, Heather. When the guard got done counting our cell, he peeks his head down from the top bunk. He said, psst, West. What are you prepared to do tomorrow with your opportunity? This little dude refused to call prison a punishment, Heather. And he's in my cell. He's my cellmate.

I love this guy.

Yeah. No, Carlos is great. And like, I take Care of Carlos. There's, like, four guys in prison that were really good to me. They don't have any family out there to really take care of them. And every month, heather, I put $100 on their books. They want. If they want me to send them books, I send them books. Or newspapers. Whatever I got, as long as I'm out here, I got them in there. So the next morning, after this conversation with Carlos, I wake up. My feet hit the cold concrete for that prison cell, and I look up at the ceiling, and I'm like, all right, God, thanks for my opportunity. And I didn't believe it, Heather. I said it out loud, but I didn't believe it. But you know what I did that is so necessary in life to change the situation I was in? I took one small step of action into this life I have today. And that's what's required of everybody in life if you want to change your circumstances. You have hopes and goals and dreams. You have to take action in your own life. Because here's the deal. No one can take your action for you. No one is going to come save you. No one's coming to wake you up. The calvary isn't coming because you are the calvary in your own life. Heather. I got up every day in that dungeon. Days became weeks, weeks became months, and months became years. But I finally. I finally became a coffee bean.

And it was just from that conversation was the pivotal moment when you decided, I'm going to start seeing everything differently.

Pivotal. I've got someone in my cell. He's a positive influence. The people around us matter. These are all things you can take anywhere you are in life. You surround yourself with positive people. But then you become the energy that you want to see in the world. You become the change that you want to see. So I started gradually just working on myself and. And I developed these rules about being a coffee bean. Rules I had to live by every day. Like, smiling everywhere I went. No matter what was happening. Smile. Because, man, your smile is powerful. When people see you smile, they smile back. It changed the energy in the whole prison. You know, working out every day on myself in three areas. I had it routine every day, spiritually, mentally, and physically. I had to work out my mind, my body, and my soul every day. No days off on this kind of thing. That's what you have to do in life every day. Your mind, your body, and your soul requires work. People ask me all the time what my spiritual workout is. I mean, I'll tell you, Heather. I mean, I get up every day and I ask God for two things. I'm like, hey, God, put in front of me what you need me to do today for you, and let me recognize that when I see it, because I don't want to miss whatever that is. Amen. That's it. That's what I pray for. Just a chance to be useful again. And it's your mental workout that's important. It's every book you read, the videos you watch, the websites you go to. It's your social media, it's your television that you watch. You are what you eat. Not just about food. It's everything you put up here. Another rule about being a coffee bean was the secret to life. The secret to life. I learned inside that prison. The secret to life is servant leadership. Serving other people, helping other people reach their goals in life, helping to raise other people up. I learned this from guys that would come in and they come into these church retreats in prison. They. These guys would come in, Heather, they'd spend four days with us. The curse, the wicked, the sinners, the incarcerated. They give up their lives, their jobs, their families for four days. And they loved on us. And they taught me what it was like to be a servant leader, because servant leadership, you look for ways to help other people that don't necessarily have any means to help you out, because that's not what it's about. It's about helping someone else reach their goals in life. Another thing was learning what I did and did not have control over. You know, there's only. There's only four things I found that you can control in life. You can control what you think, you can control what you say, you can control what you feel. And what I mean is, what do you do with your feelings? Do you talk about your feelings? Do you get that out? And the last thing that I found that you can control is what you do, what you think, what you say, what you feel, and what you do and everything else. I just stopped trying to control that. I just worked on those four things because that's the stuff I can affect change on. And that's kind of when my life started taking off. The parole board came to see me. It was 2015. I was working in the chapel. I was a chapel clerk. And the chaplain came in that day in 2015. He said, Wes, the parole board's here to see you. Parole is a deal they can do to let you out of prison early. It doesn't mean you're done with your sentence. You're just done Inside of a prison, you get out, you get a pro officer and Heather, I know I'm up for parole, but I don't think I can make parole. Not my first time, not seven years. I figure I probably have to do about 10 or 15 years before I.

Out of there, because it's very rare for someone to get out that early on such a long sentence.

Oh, yeah, it's. I mean, it. I mean, very rare. I mean, it hardly ever happens at that point. I had never heard of it happen to anybody else. They're not your first time on life. And the reason why I can get out early, like, I've got this life sentence, but I don't have an aggravated life sentence. Aggravated means that someone is a physical victim in your crime. You know, a child molester, a murderer or rapist, someone that beats somebody, and someone assaulted somebody. Those are physical victims. I don't have any physical victims. I. I stole people's property. I stole their sense of security, but I didn't physically affect them because they weren't ever home. So Texas looks at that like that kind of crime. You're not a violent offender will give you a chance to get out earlier, but it doesn't mean you're going to get out. I go down the parole office. I'm standing in line waiting. There's a few other guys in front of me. I got a smile on my face because, you know, coffee beans. We smile. And the lady from parole calls me, and she's smiling a little bit, too, and. And she says, sit down. She's got my criminal file open in front of her. Heather. It's about this thick. It's everything I've ever done. They've got a bunch of stuff on me. And she's flipping through the pages of it for about 20 seconds. She slammed the file shut. She pushed it away. She said, Mr. West, I came here today to ask you one question for this parole hearing. One question to us, Heather. She said, the answer to my question is not in the file about the guy that I'm reading about that committed those crimes. She said, we don't see a lot of Damon west come through our state prison system. She said, you had it all. You had every advantage, every privilege, every opportunity. She said, you are the definition of a privileged person, but you somehow blew through all your privilege. You became a drug addict, you became a criminal, you became a thief. And a jury in Dallas gave you life in prison for the things you did, she said. But instead of letting the license define you, she said, you changed Yourself inside this prison. She said, but what got our attention is you didn't just change yourself. She said, you changed an entire prison around you. One man was able to change this prison. So she said, here's my question. She said, if you could be remembered for being anything in life, anything at all, she said, I want you to tell me what that would be in just one word. Go. And, I mean, Heather, I breathed out and relaxed. That's. That's an easy question for a coffee bean man. I fire her answer back at her. I was like, ma', am, I just want to be useful. And I could use. I mean, everybody wants to be useful, Heather. Everybody wants to feel like they have value and worth in this life. And that's why. That's what I told her. I said, I just want to be useful. And I can be useful inside this prison, or I can be useful out in the free world again. Finding more coffee beans. November 16, 2015. They all never forget I walked out of that prison. Now, I'm not necessarily free because I'm definitely not a free man in this world. I'm on parole in the state of Texas until the year 2073.

What does that mean that you could go back to jail at any point in time?

They told me, if you come back in handcuffs anywhere in America, you violate the rules in any city in America, you will come back to prison and you will finish your life sentence. There is no third chance.

So are you nervous every day when you get up?

No.

The answer to that is honestly, it's no. Because I'm a coffee bean. And as long as I live as a coffee bean, the only way I'm going to prison is when I go to prisons all over America. And I do. I go to prisons all over the place, and. And I go and speak and share the story with the men and women there to bring them hope on their journey. Because now, now I get to smuggle hope back into the place where there's no hope. You know, I'm a smuggler of hope. But that's the only way I go to prisons. When I go in there voluntarily and I walk back out the front gate of all my prisons. But, I mean, speaking about prisons, I'm very passionate about prison stuff because it's a world I lived in, and I've got this unique life where I have my feet in all these different worlds. One of them is corporate America. One of them is prison, because I've been there. The worst part of the prison system, when I got out of prison, I Went back to school and got a master's in criminal justice. And I became a professor at the University of Houston downtown. I've taught. I've been teaching a class called Prisons in America. Prisons in America. I'm the only professor on earth that teaches a prisons class that lived in the prison. Yeah. So it's like I've tried to find everything I can in life that's a negative and turned into a positive. How do I turn my liabilities into assets? Because that's what life is all about. Find the things that are negative and turn it into a positive. It's like Ed, our friend Ed, says, life doesn't so much happen to you as it's happening for you. Everything is happening for you. But that's a mindset. And I've shifted my mindset long ago to say, hey, you know what? Even this thing of being a formerly incarcerated person, ex con, I can use that to help other people. There's value in that. But I just have to have other people believe in me. And that's the thing about. About growth. Growth is a very uncomfortable thing. Growth always follows belief. And no one is going to believe in you until you believe in yourself, Heather. And that's what I know to be a fact. It's so, so true. When I got out of prison, I had been out of prison for about 14 months, and I'm working at this law firm. And, Heather, I've got this great job at a law firm. I did my own legal work. We're trying to get myself out of prison. These lawyers in Beaumont, Texas, they take notice of it, and they told me, you did great legal work for a guy that's never been to law school. If you ever get out of prison, come see us. We got a job for you. Day two, getting out of prison, on parole for the rest of my life. I get a job at the most prestigious firm in Southeast Texas. Unheard of. I mean, instant validation for a guy that needs validation. But I've got dreams in life, Heather. I've got hopes and goals and dreams like anybody else. I work at a law firm. I'm a paralegal, but I can never become a lawyer. I. I've hit. I've hit the ceiling just from the word go. Because of the choices I've made in life. There's a lot of jobs I can never get.

Because you had a felony on your record, you're. You are not able to be a lawyer.

Absolutely. In the state of Texas. I think it's Texas. There's three states in America that you cannot sit for a bar exam if you're a felon. Texas is one of them. I'm sitting in one of them.

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Damon, I'll tell you the thing that I noticed just since, since you met Mr. Jackson, I do want to get to the story who he really is, but since you met him, the content that I'm seeing from you is adapt and change. Adapt and change. You notice, you pay attention to the people around you and then you are adapting and changing. What did that process look like for you from the time you got out of jail until now?

At first, when I got out of prison, I thought my purpose was to go around talking to kids and be a warning about the dangers of drugs, the consequence of bad decisions. But I couldn't even get into a school and talk to a school. I mean, I just got out of prison. You can't just go knock on the door of a school and say, I just got out of the joint. I want to talk to your kids.

Right. I wouldn't be welcoming you at my son's school when you first got out.

No. And it's the thing that has, that's a mindset. Change has happened to a lot of people that didn't want me in at first, but they changed their minds too, because they're like, okay, wait, this is something valuable. We can use this. Because now my son or my daughter can hear from someone that's not. Not a cop, not a teacher, not a parent. Someone that's been down the road, they've been down and made some mistakes. But when I first got out, there was nowhere for me to go talk. No one would allow me in. And I was, I was working the 12 steps. My sponsor, it was like one month out of prison. And my sponsor, we'll call him Ray for his anonymity, he walks into the sponsor meeting with me, he says, hey, Damon, you're about to go back to prison. And man, that Got my attention, Heather. I'm like, dude, Ray, I just got out of prison, man. I don't want to go back to prison. He said, you're going back to prison because you're stuck inside yourself. No one that's stuck inside themselves is working a program, recovery. Because recovery is all about serving other people. Service work. And I'm like, service. I say, ray, what do you want me to do, man? No one will let me in. I'm an ex con. He said, man, you're really in trouble now. Now it's self pity. Now you're feeling sorry for yourself. You're going back to prison. And I'm like, what do you want me to do, Ray? How do.

I'm getting nervous for you listening to this story.

Yeah. I'm like, what do you want me to do, Ray? He said, listen, man. He said, you got to find some way to serve other people. You got to find something to do with your time. I had a lot of time on my hands. He said, go to a senior citizen center anywhere down here in southeast Texas. Go to the front desk. They don't care that you're a felon. You're not the kind of villain they're worried about. Go to the front desk on a Saturday and a Sunday. Ask them for a list of people that never get visitors. They're going to give you a list of mile long because a lot of these people have been dropped off by their families and never heard from again. He said, go spend your weekend, this weekend visiting with people that hadn't had visitors in years. And then you come back and tell me about your problems in life. He said, you know what it's like to live in an institution and be lonely. Go spend some time with some lonely old people and tell me about your problems. So I did it, Heather, because I promised him I'd go to any links to stay sober. I spent that Saturday and Sunday in the senior citizen center I visited with people. Some of these people hadn't had a visitor in 10 years. I hadn't had anybody. There's no one to listen to them, just to listen. That's one of the most fundamental parts of communication, is listening, man. Everyone wants to feel like they've been heard. And when you feel like you've been heard, you feel like you're part of something bigger than you. But if you never feel like you're heard, well, you feel like you're invisible. You feel like you're, you're hopeless. It's that hopeless thing again. So I got to Go into the senior system, bring hope, listen to people, just hang out with, play some dominoes with some of them. I started doing it every weekend because I didn't have anything going on in my life. So I would go in there and spend time doing that and serve other people. And that's how I got the foundation for who I am, because I had to go out and be willing to serve, to be great. That's the thing about life, man. We're all called to be servant leaders, but it's when we get stuck inside of ourselves that we forget about that, when we think it's about us and not about other people. And that was one of the big things. Whenever I was working that law firm, you know, I really, like I said I had aspirations to do other things. I just didn't know how I was going to do it. And. And I follow all these other speakers, like John Gordon and all these other speakers online on Twitter and stuff like that. I follow them on social media and I'm like, I know I can do that. I know I can speak to these schools. And my thing was like, I wanted to go talk to college football programs because I played college football and I can relate to these student athletes. But I don't know any college football coaches. It's been 20 years since I've taken a snap. The last snap I took in College in 1996 against Texas a and M. A buddy of mine, I can tell the date that it happened. It was January 12, 2017, a little over six years from when recording this buddy of mine in Houston, 90 miles from where I live in Beaumont, he calls me up, he says, damon, tonight is the Bear Bryant coach of the year award. They're going to name the best college football coach in America. He said, the best coaches in the country are going to be in this room. Eight up, eight of the best coaches. He said, someone didn't show up for work tonight. I've got an extra press pass. He works for a media company in Houston. He said, do you want to go, man, you better want to go. I mean, but I had to leave work early. I told my boss, I said, you know, Chris Kirchner, my boss, man, he's so supportive. I said, chris is going to be my shot. He said, man, get out of here and go. First thing I did, I went to my parents house because that's where I live when I first get out of prison. I live my parents. You know, I had two hand me down suits at the time. I got the better the two hand Me down, suits on. I took a bath in the sink real quick and I took off. Hour and a half, I'm driving to Houston and I'm practicing this elevator pitch. Then I'm going to give these guys this pitch I've been waiting to give for a long time. He sneaks me in the Toyota Center. I hit the ground running. And all the best coaches are there that night. I mean, usc, Wisconsin, Penn State, they're all there. And I get to go up and meet all these coaches and shake their hand. And every single coach I met that night slammed the door in my face. Every one of them told me, no, no, no, don't call us, we'll call you in one hour. I've been told no seven times. Seven of the eight coaches have rejected me that night.

And you're just asking to come in to speak.

Yeah.

Let me positivity into their teams.

30, I'm got 30 second, a 30 second elevator pitch of, why didn't you bring me in? But I mean, my pitch is terrible. I mean, it's just like I've never practiced it before in front of real people. And these are coaches. I'm a little nervous. My hands are sweaty. One of the coaches, when I told him I just got out of prison, he took off running. He couldn't get away from me fast enough. So in one hour, I've been told no seven times. I'm in the corner of the Toyota center and I'm licking my wounds. I'm feeling sorry for myself. And the voice in my head says, go home, it's over. It was a dream too big. Get going. The last coach is going to tell you no like all the other coaches did. And Heather, the last coach is the hardest guy to get to in the room because his team had just beat Alabama two nights before for the national championship. Everybody's trying to get in front of this guy. But you know what I quit doing a long time ago, Heather? Listening to myself. I don't listen to myself, man. I talk to myself. And I'm telling myself in the corner, I'm like, dude, you're not going anywhere. That coach is going to tell you no to your face. And then you go home. And I'm applying perspective. I'm telling myself, you survived prison, Damon. You survived something way worse than this. We all have perspective in life, Heather. We have this perspective of what a bad day looks like. We forget to apply it sometimes. Sometimes we think we're having a bad day. But if you'll stop and take a step back and say, wait a second. Did a loved one die today? Did a. Did a relationship fall apart today? Did. Did I lose a career today? Did I get fired from a job? These are bad days. Most of our days aren't those in my life. Every day that I wake up and my feet don't hit the cold concrete floor of the prison cell, I'm having a good day. And that's what I'm telling myself in the corner. I'm like, you're not going anywhere. He's going to tell you no to your face, and then you go home. So, Heather, I stalked Dabo Sweeney around this room, the head coach at Clemson. And I'm following this guy. I'm like a nut, man. I'm hiding behind fake plants. Every conversation he has, I'm there. I think security is going to come take me away. But I finally get in front of Dabble. I give Dabble my best stuff. And after a minute of talking to him, he's like, man, you got a card on you or something, dude? So I gave him my card. He snatched it. He said he would check me out. He took off, run. He couldn't get away from me fast enough. Heather, I'm going to have consumed this guy for a whole minute. And that's a no. I mean, but you know what? I felt great about that last no, because I left it all on the field. And that's what we learn when we're younger in life. You give it all you got, you try your hardest, and if you come up short, that's okay. Jackson said you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights. I fought all my fights. At night or in sales? In sales, man, you knock on every door, you make every call, and then your day is over. So I drove home and I slept like a baby. I forgot all about that night. Four months later, I'm sitting at my desk at work at the law firm. I get an email from the director of football operations at Clemson University, a guy named Mike Duley. Mike Dewey says, hey, Damon, Coach Swinney met you at award show in Houston. He'd love to have you come talk to the team. Do you have August 1st open? Heather, I got every first open. I got nothing going on in my life this time, so, man, August 1, 2017. I'm speaking to the Clemson Tigers, the defending national champions of college football. And when I got down with my presentation that night, Dabo was up in my face this time. And Dabo is a very high energy Guy and, man, he's like, Damon. He said, I've never heard a story like that before. He said, I've never seen my players respond like that to a speaker that we brought in. He said, have you been to Alabama yet? I'm like, no, Dabo. I've been to Clemson, dude. I hadn't been anywhere. He said, well, I just text Nick Saban from the back of the room. Yeah. He said, just text Nick Saban from the back of the room. We'll see what he says. I landed in Houston the next morning from a trip to Clemson. Turn on my phone. I've got a voicemail and a text message from the director of football operations at University of Alabama. And this director of football operations, Alabama, says, hey, we'll see you in Tuscaloosa in three weeks. August 21st is your date. You are on. I mean, just like that. Dabo. Now Kirby Smart's calling. Lincoln Riley's calling. Dabo's giving my number to every coach in America. They're calling my cell phone. But the real magic in my life happened. It was one year after that presentation at Clemson. It was August of 2018. I was working at the law firm. Now, Heather, I don't work at the law firm anymore. I've become an entrepreneur. I've got several businesses now. But August of 2018, I'm still working at that law firm. And my cell phone rings. On the other end of my cell phone is this guy named John Gordon. John Gordon, the energy bus guys on my phone. I follow John on Twitter. He's my inspiration every morning. And, man, I get up, I was like, john, I know who you are. How do you know who I am? He said, Dabo Swinney. He said, I was just talking to Clemson's football team. Dabo brings me in the office to tell me your story. Dabo brought me in there to tell me the story of the Coffee Bean and how it impacted your life. And John said this in 2018, Heather. He said, the world needs the Coffee Bean message. Let's deliver the world. Will you write a book with me? We'll call it the Coffee Bean. And, Heather, my. My response to John was so shocked that he asked me that. My response to John was like, no, John, you go write the book yourself. You don't need me. You're John Gordon. I'm Damon West. You don't need me. Thankfully, John is one of the most unbelievable men I've ever met. John said, no, Damon. He said, God has already showed me what the COVID of the book Looks like your name is on it. Let's write this book. He said, he said, I'll share the advance that Wiley has given me for the book. He has a book deal with Wiley. He said, I'll split the advance with you 50, 50.

Just for everyone listening right now. This is so incredible. I mean, this is dropped a gift right from God. I mean, this is incredible. But the one thing I want to mention for everyone listening is that you were showing up and putting the reps in. You were knocking on the doors, you were making the pitches, you were grinding at the law firm, you were spending certain time serving a population you didn't even know. On the weekends. You were putting the reps in for years for this to happen. All right, back to you.

No, that's exactly. But you hit nail on the head. And that's what it's about, putting in the reps. When I got out of prison and there wasn't anywhere for me to go speak, there was a mirror in my parents spare bedroom where I lived. And I mean, Heather, think about this. I am living with my parents in their spare bedroom. I'm on parole for the rest of my life. I mean, I'm working a job that I'm making about $30,000 a year. I mean, if I would have had a Tinder profile, it would have sucked, man. But I didn't. And oddly enough, my, my wife, who I'm married to today, she met me in the middle of all that when I was living with my parents, this woman fell in love with me. That guy, she fell in love with that.

He really loves you.

Oh, man. Yeah, that's what it's God, another God thing, right? But whenever I had was with my parents and I had nowhere to go speak, I knew that I had to get in the reps and there was a mirror in my parents spare bedroom. And every night that I wasn't speaking somewhere, which was most nights in those first two years, I'd practice my presentation every I never miss a night, I'd get in front of that mirror, I'd time it, I'd have my laptop out, I'd practice it. I had a PowerPoint at first and I'd follow it. I got in my reps even though I wasn't publicly speaking, anywhere I was speaking, I was speaking. And when my time came, when my moment came to talk in front of Davos Whitney's team, I was polished and ready to go. That's what it's about, getting in your reps. Back to John Gordon. John Gordon. He says, damon, I'll split the. The advance on the book. It's a hundred thousand dollars. I'll split the advance of the book with you. 50. 50. Let's write this book. Let's deliver the Coffee Bean message to the world. Heather, $50,000 is more than anything I've ever seen. I've never. I haven't seen $50,000. I mean, when I was a broker, I saw 50,000. But that was before I got on drugs, became a criminal. My God, $50,000. All them in the world but that money. When I was arrested, my parents loved me, Heather. My parents. This summer, my parents will celebrate 55 years of being married. I mean, that they've been married. I didn't come from a broken home. We were going to split home. My parents took some of their retirement out. They don't make a ton of money. They took out $50,000 of their retirement to give me two lawyers to represent me at trial. So whenever I got the money From John, the $50,000, I called my parents up. They live about 10 minutes away from me, and at this point, I'm living with. With my wife, and it's 2019. And I said, hey, you're going to be at home. Yeah, yeah, we're at home. Come on. You know, I was like, I got to bring some over to y'.

All.

Gotta drop something off. So I'll go over there and see my parents, and they're, you know, I don't have anything in my hands and hug them and everything. And my mom's like, I thought you're bringing something, dropping it off. And I showed him the check. I said, here's your money back for all the. For all that you did. I mean, $50,000. They loaned me 50,000. I kept telling them I was going to pay them back. I'm making little payments of a couple hundred dollars a month to them. And my parents are in tears. My dad even says the words. He's like, damon, I didn't think I'd be alive and ever see this money. I just didn't expect it to ever happen while I was alive. And I'm like, dad, man, it's. It's integrity. You have to do what you say you're going to do in life, integrity is important. So John and I write the book, the Coffee Bean. It becomes a bestseller. It launches me to a different level of speakers, Right? I mean, yeah. I mean, I'm. I'm. I'm still, you know, having to put in the work to get the gigs, but John gives me some of the best advice and this for anybody out there, that's, you're building a brand. This is your message right here. John tells me. He said, damon, you've been out there sharing this message. Be a Coffee Bean is your brand. You're talking about this. He said, do not change it ever. He said, don't stop saying that, he said, because eventually you'll be known as. If you keep. If you keep on message, you'll be known as the Coffee Bean guy. He said, and one day, that's going to be a pretty cool thing to be. But if you change your message because you're not seeing the results, you're going to confuse people and no one will know what you are. He said, so many people in life, they don't see the results in the timeframe. They think it should be there, and. And they change course. They go different. They quit. You know, some of the best advice ever got, Heather, because I stuck with that message. And I tell people all the time the story about, you know, that everything that's happened in my life because of John and Dabo, it goes back to that one night in Houston, Texas, January 12, 2017. I'm in the corner of the Toyota center and I'm licking my wounds. I've been told no seven times in one hour. I'm about to walk out the door, Heather. I mean, I'm this close to leaving that place at night. I'm about to walk out on that, that last no, which ends up being the biggest yes I've ever got in my life. And I tell people that all the time, you can't give up before the miracle happens in your life because you're literally. You're one yes away from your entire life changing that person that believes in you, gets behind you, gets their Rolodex out and turns it over to you because they believe in you and what you're doing. You can't give up. You can't quit. You got to put in the work. You got to make all your calls. You got to ask every question. The only question you know the answer to is the one you don't ask, Heather. That's a no every time.

Okay, we need to get back to your point around integrity and doing the right thing and the fact that you weren't going to just let Mr. Jackson disappear, but you wanted him to know the difference he had made, and you wanted to give him the credit. Can you tell us how you eventually found him?

I love how you just set that up. This is like the icing on the cake to the whole story. So, Heather, his real name is not Mr. Jackson. Matter of fact, I didn't ever know his real name. The only name I knew him by in Dallas County Jail was Muhammad. Because when the guys go to prison and they convert to Islam, they give up their government name, their real name. My government name is Damon West. You're Heather Monahan, right? I don't know what his real name was. It's like Cassius Clay. Cassius Clay goes to prison in the 1960s, and he comes out of prison as Muhammad Ali. This guy was Muhammad. So that's the only name I know him. I get out of prison integrity. I owe a $10,000 fine to Dallas county for my trial. 2016, 2017, I'm trying to pay my fine off. I go up to Dallas county, and I'm paying my money to him, and I'm like, hey, I'm trying to find my friend Muhammad. And they're like, well, we need his real name, because we can't find him by his Muslim name. We need a birth date or something. So I couldn't find him. And now I'm back telling the story of the Coffee Bean in the South. And I just don't think, Heather. I can run around rooms in the south saying, muhammad told me this and Muhammad told me that when I was in prison. I think they're going to throw me out of the room if I say that. So I give them. I gave him the name Mr. Jackson because everybody loves the name Mr. Jackson. But I keep on looking for him, and I'm hoping he's going to find me at this point, because the only way I can look for him is to do news stories in Dallas, do new news interviews. And I talk about him, and. And I'm thinking, man, if this guy sees it, he'll find me. In March of this past year, I became business partners with Dak Prescott, the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys. His production company is going to help produce this story you've heard today into a limited series for television. So, man, I'm teamed up with the Dallas Cowboy quarterback. This guy I met in county is from the streets of Dallas. But here's how it happened. Here's how I found Mr. Jackson. I got a letter this past summer from an inmate in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. I get a lot of inmate mail, about 100 letters a month. Love it, too. This letter was unique. No return address, one sentence written down. It said, find James Lynn Baker, and you find Mr. Jackson. There's the name, right. So I go to Dallas, is six hours away. I get. Get with my attorney, and we get a private investigator. Let's go find James Lynn Baker. First thing, we find his criminal record. It matched up everything he said. Heather. In another prison all of his life. Had him in Dallas county jail in 2009 on a parole violation, which is what he told me he was in there for. Had him born in 1950. I always told the story that this guy was in his early 60s. So when I met him in 2009, he was 59 years old. This is my guy. And Heather, I am so excited. I get. I'm getting ready. Like, I'm. I'm rehearsing what I'm going to say to him when I first see him. Never got to meet him again. James Lynn Baker II. Mr. Jackson died on May 9, 2017, of an opiate overdose. He was a drug addict, just like me, but he never got help. Like all those people we talk about that are in their addiction, that never get help, and the homeless and all these other people you see that just don't get help because their addiction will eventually kill them. And that's what killed him. An opiate overdose in 2017. Integrity. I know who this man is now. His message saved my life, changed my life, put me on a whole different course in life. I've got to do something to honor this guy. So I told the private investigator, let's go find his family. Here's where it got crazy, Heather. In 1972, the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders started out their first cheerleading squad with seven ladies. His little sister, Von Seal Baker, is the first Dallas Cowboy cheerleader ever, the first woman to wear the uniform. A few years later, his other little sister, Vanessa, she's a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. But the real history maker in their family wasn't the sisters. As amazing as those two ladies are, it was his mother, Bertha Baker. Let me tell you about his mama. In 1949, Bertha Baker, his mom, became the first licensed black daycare owner in the city of Dallas. The first daycare license to a black resident went to his mother, who started the first black daycare out of the home he grew up in. In fact, the home he grew up in, Heather, is a city landmark in the city of Dallas. It's a protected structure. I'm floored at what God's throwing at me. I mean, this is crazy, man. But it's where it's going. So I told the PI Set up a call, please, between the sisters and I. So I get to Talk to the three living sisters, Visha Von Seal and Vanessa Baker. And I told them the story and I told them about Their brother in 2009 in Dallas County Jail. And I ended it by saying, listen, I don't know what your feelings are about your brother and the choices that he made in life, but I want you to understand that he impacted at least one life on this planet and that one life is trying to impact the entire planet with the message he gave me, the Be a Coffee Bean message. And I said, I want to do something to honor your brother. I said, what high school did y' all go to? You know, because he told me in Dallas County Jail, he's from a very inner city, very black part of Dallas. And they confirmed that. Dallas Lincoln High School. Dallas Lincoln is as inner city and black as you can get in Dallas. I said, great, here's what I want to do. I'm going to put $10,000 every year into a trust for the James Lynn Baker the second be a Coffee Bean scholarship available to one kid at Lincoln High School every May. A boy or a girl that grows up in his neighborhood and goes to his high school is going to get a better chance at life through education because these two guys had this chance encounter in Dallas county jail in 2009. The family's on board. They're super excited. They're going to get to pick the first. They're going to get to pick the scholarship recipient every year. I'm just going to keep the money in the account every single year in perpetuity. Next week, two weeks from now, I get to go to Dallas Lincoln High School, go speak to the seniors for a senior assembly, tell them the story and then announce the scholarship. The first James Lane Baker the second be a Coffee Bean scholarship at their school. One of those kids in that audience, Heather is going to get a $10,000 scholarship in May. It's so cool. So I finally found Mr. Jackson.

It's such an incredible story. I'm so proud of you. I'm so happy for their family that you circled back, that everything came full circle. And now you have your new book, how to Be a Coffee Bean.

Your new version, new version. 111. Try to get the. There's no shine on it. How to be a coffee. So 111 principles of being a Coffee. What John and I did. The Coffee Bean came out four years ago. Took off like a rocket ship. Best selling book in America. Global publishing deal attached to it's in every language in the world. But what we saw Is that different companies, different teams, different organizations, they applied the Coffee Bean miss a different way. You know, I had my five, five ways of being a Coffee Bean, my five principles that got me through prison. But other groups were having all these other principles and we started collecting all these things and asking people, how are you applying the Coffee Bean message? That's what this book is. That's the maturing of the Coffee Bean message as it spread all over the world for the last four years. It's in one book now. It's really cool. It's going to. It's, it's way more in depth than the original Coffee Bean book.

Where can everybody find the book? And where can everyone find you?

Yeah, anywhere books are sold. Amazon, Barnes and Nobles. Anywhere books are sold. You can find me@damonwest.org d a m o n w s t.org that's where people find me for speaking engagements, social media at Damonwest7, Instagram and Twitter.

Damon, I'm so proud of you. I love the work you're doing. Thank you for being the Coffee Bean. Thank you for being here with us today at Shining youg light and spreading Mr. Jackson's message everywhere in this world.

Thank you, Heather. Thank you, Sahi. Look, honestly, I'm so grateful that you asked me to be on the show. I'm like, yes, thank you so much, Heather.

Well, pick up this book, people. It's going to be linked in the show notes below. You need to have the Coffee Bean in your life. You need to be the Coffee Bean. Go get the Coffee Bean. Until next week. Keep creating your confidence. You know I will be.

I'm going to make it my own.

I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.

Come on this journey with me.