From Life in Prison To Purpose: How To Rise From Rock Bottom & Rewrite Your Story Ft. Damon West

19:35Damon West: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 want to get caught. I mean, I have a preservation of life instinct that's pretty strong. And I'm not a dumb guy. I mean, you know, I had a fifth grade teacher told me, you're a leader, Damon. You'll always be a leader. you're either going to lead people the right way or the wrong way. And she was right. 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.

20:06So when you're stealing all these credit cards and checkbooks, et cetera, in 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?

20:15Damon West:Nothing. I don't want anything to do with that car. Yeah, but what did you get? Did you get something off the credit card? Yeah, what are you getting? Yeah, we would take stuff from people. stole people's property, property like jewelry, property like appliances even. I mean, they're out of town. You know, 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. 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.

20:55Damon West: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. 10 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 which means it's only a matter of time before they're going to 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.

21:35Damon West:And tumbling across the living room floor is a little canister going end over end, smoking on one side. Man, I lock eyes at this thing and I try to get out of there as fast as I can, but the flashbang grenade blew up in my face. I mean, it was a bright white light, loud noise blew me back on the couch. What is that? Flashbang. Flashbang is, go ahead, Mike. no it's like a it's like almost like a like you know what a grenade is right yeah it's 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 yeah it's dallas swat it's a non-lethal way to disorient some yeah it's dallas swat i'm i'm having a conversation smoking meth with this guy and swat knows where i am they've been watching me and that flash bang grenade 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 i've never played college dude but um 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 the 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 night like what you do to me you literally flash bang me every morning with the fucking closet light i'm gonna start saying flashbang your dad woke you up with a flashbang for the last 21 years well yeah but i mean but if anyone wants to experience you just go 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 salt 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 them 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 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 did they figure 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 i mean yeah we 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 the mazda rx8 calls me up this is february i could tell you the date february 27th 2008 calls me up panicked about 4 30 p.m dude man they're over here they got my car i was like who was over there he said the police i guess they're out there towing my car away he lives up at dfw airport and i'm like what police department?

24:12Damon West:He said, I don't know. It's a guy in 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. So we'll get the number of the tow truck placed on the side, man, that 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 gun's in there. And my fingerprints are on the dashboard. I didn't carry a gun. I wasn't, I'm not a gun guy. I 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 to 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 oh 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 that evening i go to dustin's place and it's like give me the key to the to the vehicle he said what are you going to do i said i'm gonna go to the police impound i'm gonna 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.

25:35Damon West:And so I go to this, 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 across the street from the impound yard, there's a neighborhood. I find a house that's vacant. You know, I can see there's, 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.

26:04Damon West:So I go into the woods on the backside of 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 going to 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 that's 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 rx8 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.

26:58Damon West:I look inside the car. Burglary bag is in there. It's still there. The cops hadn't gotten it yet. And then the idea hits me. I'm going to 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 gate's turning up. 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.

27:32Damon West:And we're not far away. I can still see the driver of 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. Whoa. So I drove this car out to this neighborhood, backed into that garage and I cleaned the car up and that was the biggest mistake, Horn. You asked what mistakes. Why? Because what happened? Because I kicked a hornet's nest. I mean, once you still - So you got their attention. 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 now.

28:07Damon West: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 going to 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.

28:34Damon West: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. Oh, he 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 you're you he's endearing i like that you're gonna love this story today you're gonna love this story am i gonna change my crush to you no no no michael don't worry about 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.

29:15Damon West:And when I turn that corner and the things start happening, it's about how, how I've been able to transform the world because of what happened in my life. I be, I was a morally ambiguous guy too, Lauren. I'm not ready for you to turn the corner because I still, I'm 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, Tony Soprano is a shot caller. How about that? Okay. Okay. I can, I can deal with that. Okay. So Tony's the shot caller. So when they went after you, they knew you were the shot caller.

29:46Damon West:Here's how they figured that out. So they've got a lineup with about a dozen other meth addicts that are involved in this thing. And everybody for the most part has 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 peer 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 is it do you like being the shot caller at the time 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?

30:34Damon West: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 attach organized 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.

31:07Damon West:They arrest me. They booked me into Dallas County Jail. My bond is set at 1.4 million. 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. It's 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, 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.

31:42Damon West:Here's what I think. When I get arrested, I've got one organized crime indictment hanging over me, and the bond was set at a quarter 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 to my calls and they're going and picking up other people. And they're turning state's evidence against me because I led the cops to them.

32:13Damon West: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 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. You want to talk about that? yeah yeah so i call my mom and dad and you know i can't before but did they know you were struggling up at this point or they knew something was wrong but they live in they live in southeast texas i'm up in dallas so south they're six hours away from me you know outside of coming and kidnapping 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 a phone now my mom and my dad my dad died two years ago they were married for 55 Oh, that's all right.

32:57Damon West: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 and my dad have been married for 55 years. I came from a great family. I got an older brother, younger brother, big Catholic family home, right? 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. She's like, baby, listen, your dad can't talk right now.

33:23Damon West:I've never seen him like this before. We need to have a serious conversation. We need 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 remember the prayer plaque that I had it on your wall as a kid growing up.

33:54Damon West:Now, y 'all, my mom is one of those moms that has prayer plaques and crosses all over the house, man. You can't escape God in my mom's house. It's everywhere, man. But she wants to know about the prayer plaque that was above my bed on Roanoke 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.

34:25Damon West:She said they're walking 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's 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 abandon me.

34:51Damon West: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, Damon. 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 dollar 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 my 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 it's either 40 years or 50 years and there's no meth in jail at this point so you're still there wasn't any 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 i'm all i care about is getting high but rock bottom what happened for me on may 18th 2009 it's the sixth and final day of that trial so the jury gets the case and the jury goes to deliberate for 10 minutes oh oh is that bad how long do you want him to deliberate for you want to deliberate for hours days if possible that means like everyone's a guilty death let's get out of here man this guy's guilty let's just send him to prison.

36:43Damon West:I get back, Lauren, check this out. I'll tell you how bad it was. I get back in the court. It was 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 going to 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 this is crazy no and i mean like you're gonna hear on the other end of the story about the course correction that that that sentence got but you know i asked her that day i was like well no i said what did they what did the judge say the judge said you can give them life but you can't give them 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 uh the judge calls the court back in and uh he reads my sentence out loud he said damon joseph west by the way your name's joseph too i know that and i'm listening to your show i'm a big fan so he said uh good strong strong catholic 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 sentence to 65 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

38:10Damon West:Lauren, 65 years in Texas is a life sentence. They stopped 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 of 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.

38:46Damon West: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 doesn't mean. Well, I think it's case by case. Yeah, I think it's case by case. I don't think we want to blanketly say that every jury's not mad at me. But here's the deal. I want to say this for everybody here. I deserve to go to prison.

39:15Damon West: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 Dimes' courtroom to get that verdict that day. So I did the things they said. Did I get too much time? 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.

39:49Damon West:65 years is a life sentence 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. That's what that means in prison terms. 65 years. Did 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 goes through your mind when you hear that sentence? Man, the first thing that went through my head, my parents heard that.

40:22Damon West: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. I can't imagine that. But everything starts happening fast. Just like in the movies, man. They get you out of there fast. They handcuff me. They drag 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, because 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 65, I got the max.

40:49Damon West: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.

41:20Damon West: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 they said you did. So you're going to go and pay that 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 to love and support to be anything in life. 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 gangs because you're scared because you're the minority in there.

41:53Damon West:She said, you were never raised to be a racist. You're 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 your body in the joint these guys were relentless when i was in there they're like man west let me put a tat on you got to get a tat 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 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 prison stories for you here's have a lot of here's a little caveat about prison that you're going to really love okay 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.

42:53Damon West: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 a prison every day. That's so cute. There'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. The only time I never saw my parents in prison was Mother's Day weekend.

43:25Damon West: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 you were going to pay debt on to 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.

43:56Damon West:But what do I know about prison? Y 'all, I've never been to, I'm a white middle-class guy in America. I don't, 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 before, how am I going to survive? What am I going to 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 can't survive without a gang. They said the gang is your family now.

44:21Damon West: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 from Muhammad's face. And every morning, he comes to my cell, to my bunk, and he picks me up like a ray of sunshine, in 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.

44:48Damon West:I've been watching how you're dealing with these knuckleheads and these dummies talking about, you got to get into a gang. He said, don't listen to these fools. He said, you want to keep the promise you made to your mom and your dad? Let me tell you what prison is really going to be like. So he tells me, the first thing you need to understand about prison, prison is all about race. He said, race runs the whole institution inside of a prison. He said, that's the way all the races wanted 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?

45:34Damon West: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 would go one-on-one. How do you know how to fight a gang member? You just fight. It's just a normal fight, Warren. I mean, you just fight for your life. Is it just like a fight? 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 gang recruiting. I'm 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.

46:03Damon West:If I was 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 going to come after you. You made a promise to your mom and you want to keep the promise. You're going to 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 black gangs after you. the Crips, the Bloods, the Gangster Disciples.

46:30Damon West: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, 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.

47:00Damon West: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're finished. Here's the thing. Years ago, our ancestors ate lots of bitter plants daily that made our digestion work, but our modern diet has completely eliminated these essential compounds, making it harder and harder to digest properly.

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51:04You could do like easy breakfast sandwiches or family meals like enchiladas. You could put egg on it. You could do a bagel and cream cheese or jam. It's just really delicious and really good. And most importantly, it is filled with protein, which we love. They also have two gram net carb hero croissants, which are delicious with coffee. Hero Bread 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 this is like fist fights 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 gonna get to prison fight yeah yeah i got you like i guess what i'm asking is like is this like a high school fight where you fight 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

51:56Damon West:came in with a weapon. There's a lot of weapons in prison, but no one ever came to 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, but you have to let the guy get up and fight. And if you, 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.

52:22Damon West:Like hockey. Hockey is 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 a lot of times you see these videos of people like even by mistake they kick somebody on the ground the pipe dies or like it sounds like there's like some real parameters what they've there are parameters in prison fight yeah you have to let you have to let a man fight and whenever you're done in a prison fight you got to 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 and say I'm done.

52:52So they just want to see that you're not a pussy.

52:54Damon West: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. No, 2022. Thank you. I've been listening to your show for a long time. I told you I'm there. It's an honor to be here, y 'all. This is like the pinnacle, man. This is like you and Ed Milet and people like that. Shout out to Ed Milet. I mean, he made this happen. I'm so grateful to be here. I can't believe I've talked about prison so much on the show that that's...

53:25Damon West: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? Oh, yeah. Carson's like, this is a good one. I mean, we've had some people that have been in prison. You know, 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.

53:49No, let's keep telling stories. Keep going, keep going. No, keep going.

53:51Damon West: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 of 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 but he was so good at telling it and so thank you for letting me come on a long-form podcast so Muhammad he's telling me man you're gonna fight the white gangs you're gonna 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 I'm about to walk into that's when he's like West He said, let me break it down for you a different way.

54:49Damon West:He said, I want you to imagine prison as 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 going to 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 heard 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 make the carrots 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 the 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 old egg.

55:43Damon West: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 Shock Collar. He said, your eggshell will have swastikas all over it. Yeah. She's talking about, you know, the movie shot call yeah i've seen the movie yeah how accurate was that one very accurate for how the guy gets in this is and you're about to hear in my story like the how this guy goes in he the white gangs come after him and remember he goes in he doesn't he doesn't fight it off so this will give you a great a bookend to how that can go the other way so 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.

56:44Damon West:And y 'all, I didn't, I didn't, 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.

57:15Damon West: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 their 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 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 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 gotta change the name of the water to coffee?

58:07Damon West: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 got to be like that coffee bean too. He told me what the first day of prison was like, Michael.

58:36Damon West: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 the highest 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 in a building together.

59:05Damon West: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, you know? 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 that day room, you put your bags 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. It's the first day it's going to happen on day one.

59:35Damon West: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 approaches now he's not a threat to you he's an information gatherer he's a scout he'll ask you one relevant question 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 i read two of those books in prison lauren that book that series pissed me off so i would get so attached to a character and they kill them yeah 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 there's like those guys passing 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 thrones 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 he's an information guy that's a scout he'll ask you one irrelevant question this first conversation what gang you're gonna be a part of.

1:00:33Damon West: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. Because 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.

1:01:03Damon West: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 were 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 can 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.

1:01:33Damon West: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 warm 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 and they unshackle you.

1:02:25Damon West: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, y 'all. I don't really want to go in. The guard's screaming at me to get in. So I take a step into the day room, and the big door closed behind me. Boom. And I look up on this giant room with three levels of sales. Inmates are hanging on the railings. It's loud. Prison's 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 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 under one arm a couple 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 and we say property like what do you you could bring a bible with you you could 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.

1:03:24Damon West:You don't hit them first. You go to a transfer facility, but that transfer facility where I am, I got a life sentence. They segregate me out from everybody. I live in a cage with the transfer facility because they don't want life. Transfer facilities aren't maximum security. 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 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 myself because i'm gonna 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 is 45 cell 45 cells up on the third tier by the showers it was a furthest cell from the door I'm like man I'll never make it they'll get me so I put my mattress down to put my bags down and put my back against the wall and I waited doesn't take five minutes here he comes the eunuch little bitty ball I got to Lauren you're making this fun I like this is a never that's never happened on the show so um little bitty ball hit a white dude just like Muhammad said he's tatted head to toe.

1:04:43Damon West:Even his eyelids are tatted up. He gets in my face. Hey, white boy, what family are you riding with? They call gangs families. A gang is not a family, y 'all. He said, what family are you riding with, white boy? I'm like, man, get out of my face, little dude. I'm riding 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 kicked 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 going to come get you. Get ready, white boy. He runs up the stairwell on the right side.

1:05:13Damon West: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, bald head with a swastika all around the top of his skull. Man, I always see 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.

1:05:42Damon West:20 seconds later, he's beating my ass across that day room, man. 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, you're not, when the guards in the pod, you don't do anything illegal activity. Guys are like, Hey man, look, the guards are here to do their job.

1:06:16Damon West:We're here to do our time. So all the tattooing and stuff like that, the fight 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 going to 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 happen 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 in a certain way of like, you know, we're all here living in this space.

1:07:07Michael, get on the prison break. No, no, no. Of course there's etiquette. Meaning like maybe, I'm going to say something strange, maybe in some cases more etiquette than there would be outside of it.

1:07:16Damon West: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 you got 48 men and you live around this little section. If a thief runs around in there and everybody's pointing their fingers at each other, you can 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.

1:07:47Damon West:That's the way prison works, but you got to 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 want to see if they can extort you. They want to 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 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.

1:08:13Damon West: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 date. 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 oh for me no no yeah 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 west i got what you need man i go up to the cell door this guy's got meth in his ice this is the stuff that drove me to this place right i look at that man i'm not interested in that he goes man come on i read all about you online.

1:08:57Damon West: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 TDCJ number, your prison number through that phone. 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 meth. 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 done with it. Rock bottom for me was the day I got sentenced to life in prison.

1:09:26Damon West: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 where 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 the house I just built four miles from the prison. I jogged by my whole prison. I waved for the guys in the rec yard, the way back, stuff like that.

1:09:55Damon West: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, voluntarily. Can I go with you? Absolutely. Whenever you're ready to go in. Would you take me to a female prison or a male prison? I would take you to both. So I want you, and I'll take you all, but here's why I would say this, because every four months... What's going on with you over there? I like, no, I just am intrigued by it. I just think it's like...

1:10:25Damon West:Well, absolutely. Ever since I was little, we would drive by jail 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 outside of the prison that was in San... She would take me when I was a kid and we'd sit outside. It was a weird thing. I don't know why she was doing it. 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.

1:10:54That makes total sense. Yeah, yeah. I just, there's something, I find it interesting. I don't know another word to use.

1:11:01Damon West: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 graduate a 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 of my life because the parole board saw what happened in my life.

1:11:30Damon West:They're like, can you teach the men and women in prison how to think like you? So every four months I graduate a class and every four months I have a graduation ceremony, caps and gowns, a big meal cert. 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 then you change the way you think, you change the way you act, right?

1:11:57Damon West:The last speaker I had was, you know, you football fan? Yeah. 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's 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 to a Texas prison, a maximum security prison, and spoke to all these guys and really held their attention to it, Lauren, because remember how mothers are a big deal in prison?

1:12:30Damon West: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 this, this belief in them. They loved her. She was great. I think that would be really interesting to go into a prison. 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's there is an etiquette there.

1:12:58Damon West:There's an etiquette there. They're going to do anything to you in there. Because, I mean, plus, you're going to 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. Y 'all know what Elf on the Shelf is, right? Yeah. Elf on the shelf. So the lady that started Elf on the Shelf was 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.

1:13:26Damon West: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 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. 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.

1:13:56Damon West:She said, in 2020, during the pandemic, you know, 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 Loomistella is the name of the company. and um 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 um and i said shanda here's what i 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 we take care of children who have incarcerated parents all over america we provide money for extracurricular scholarships really cool yeah because you want to keep them busy and involved and 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's that's 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 really smart 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 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 and it was the 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 these parents in prison are reading the book about the elf to their kid and um i'm getting emotional talking about um you know at the end of the book when you get to name the elf yeah and um they they do that together and it's in the it's in the handwriting of the parents of 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 gonna do it every year so i'm saying all that to tell you that i've got access to the texas prison if y 'all ever really want to go in, I will make that happen.

1:16:03Damon West:100%. I would love to. Okay. I think Michael and I would have a blast. And then the way you just described it, I love the angle that you're taking with it. I mean, I think like, I think 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 and like, that person is a bad person. Yeah. 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.

1:16:40It'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 mythology is like you make one wrong decision and your whole life changes.

1:16:50Damon West: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 a pro sports player. I wanted to be a sports agent. I wanted to be Jerry McGuire before there's Jerry McGuire. 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.

1:17:25Damon West:I'm sorry. I did this. I want to 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 you. I got my clipboard out. So I have 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.

1:18:00Damon West: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 losing. You're tired. Fuck. There's some days I don't leave my cell. Like I don't even go to the chow hall. I just don't want to eat because I don't want to fight that day. And it 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.

1:18:30Damon West: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, 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 wouldn't look at your boxing game in the shower. Showers back there. There's no cameras.

1:18:59Damon West:The guards can't see you. 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 just 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.

1:19:32Damon West:Every sport on the rec yard and that maximum security prison where I was in the life, 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 i'm gonna walk everybody through the record real quick so you go out to the record alarm 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 handball your doubles partner has to be the same skin color can michael play basketball i'm gonna get to that good question like no good question no but i'm gonna Weight stack.

1:20:10Damon West:Just like you see in prison movies, man. Everybody wants to push out iron in prison. And all races can lift weights in prison. But if you wanted someone to spot you, someone to work out with you, your partner, your spotter has to be the same race as you. The movie Shot Call that you watch, 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?

1:20:35Damon West:Man, you can get your ass kicked. I mean, unless you've established yourself in a different way. which is where the story's going. And let me tell you something. It wasn't just like one race wanted that way. And 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. 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.

1:21:00Damon West:But every race wants it that way. Every race wants the division of races. Everybody wants that 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 doesn't look like you. You don't want to be associated with people that don't have the same, you know, ideas about sex that you do. You know, if you take all the guardrails off, human beings are tribal people. Human beings have always been tribal. 8 ,000 years of recorded history.

1:21:30Damon West: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 guardrails off society everybody would break off and people that look like them not everybody most people because i wouldn't do it y 'all wouldn't do it i hear your show you got 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 guard i pass up all those other the sports I just told you about.

1:22:04Damon West:And I went straight to the basketball court where the blacks own the basketball court. No white boys are allowed to 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 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?

1:22:40Damon West: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 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.

1:23:08I love when he says that.

1:23:09Damon West: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, Wes, you're good to go, man. You don't have to worry about the blacks rest of the time, man. You've earned your right to exist. You took everything we had. You gave it back when you could.

1:23:34Damon West: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 that point and 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?

1:24:02Damon West: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. 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 an 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 cellmates, little guy named Carlos, not his real name, but his picture is actually in the book. So I tell a lot of stories about Carlos in the book. I come off the wreck yard. Carlos is waiting for me in the pod day room.

1:24:33Damon West:He said, man, get over. He's agitated. I can tell he's agitated. I mean, 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, Blackjack's going to be in the shower waiting to rape you. Now, Blackjack is the biggest rapist in prison, y 'all. This is death in a lot of ways, y 'all. He is 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 blackjack'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 go to shower man i'm just gonna stink tonight i'm sorry man this tail's 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.

1:25:22Damon West: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 where 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 Blackjack dead. He's the biggest rapist in prison.

1:25:45Damon West:He's an animal, man. So they're trying to use you. They're using me. That's a good question, No, 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. 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 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.

1:26:15Damon West: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.

1:26:45Damon West:Put it in a sock or something? Put it in a bag. Good thinking, Mike. you do well in prison so yeah let's hope not you know what i might have i might have aged out now because i'm almost 40 38 so like maybe they might just say hey this guy's a little too old i'm 50 now so i mean i'm good i'm aged out too so we're good 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.

1:27:19Damon West: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 steamy 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 this 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.

1:27:49Hold on. But here, pause. This is where I get confused. If you do that, don't you go into prison longer?

1:27:56Damon West:Here's what he tells me. Good questions. This is good, Lauren. We're here. He said, West, he said, one of two things are going to happen today. He said, he's either going to do something to you that you're going to wish you were dead or you're going to 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 going to leave prison alive. Because what could he do to, like, what is he going to do to you? He's going to give you HIV? Rape me. I mean, I'll be HIV positive. I'll die in prison.

1:28:28Damon West:Got it. Okay. Or I kill him and they give me another life sentence or give me the lethal injection. If they can prove that I'm laying a weight for him, they can give you a lethal injection. They can kill you that. This is what's premeditated? Premeditated. You're waiting. So, 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 about to, I'm like, 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, I'm taking another life. I've never been a violent guy.

1:28:56Damon West: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 thumping through my chest and he opens up the shower door. They had little saloon doors back in the shower back then. And I remember he pulled over that door and I saw his face and he had this grin on his face. Like a dude that's about to get laid at two in the morning. Oh, fuck. He's like, like that, man, that grin changed it for me. Man, I went from just zero to a hundred on rage. I swung that fan motor up.

1:29:25Damon West: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 chest. Like a cartoon character getting shot out of a cannon. Drops a 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 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 going to get him off.

1:29:53Damon West:And man, his gang brothers fly up. And they're like, these are guys I play basketball with now, by the way. They're like, West, don't lay another hand on him. 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. I said, man, he tried to get me, man. He said, look, man, he had a weapon. You had a weapon. It's over. We're going to 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 curling up a ball in that cell, man. I started crying like a baby, man.

1:30:20Damon West: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 burn just burned off. And I'm like, man, I heard the cell doors rolling. I'm like, oh, good. It's chow time. I 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 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 i see the bags got blood all over it and i'm like oh man so i start looking for a cut on me it's not my blood he never got a lick in on me it's his blood not mine and i gotta make a decision man i'm like oh my god i gotta walk out this cell door that all this stuff really happened i don't know what's gonna happen when I walk out the door, but I got to leave the cell.

1:31:04Damon West:I can't stay in the cell forever. And Lauren, when I walked out that 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 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 ever, yeah, he didn't ever bother me again.

1:31:40Damon West:And 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 messed with me again. 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 go to prison, you do your time.

1:32:10Damon West: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. Why do 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 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, it doesn't 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.

1:32:44Damon West:You see without seeing and you hear without hearing. And that's how you survive. So you can't get involved if someone else is getting raped, even if it's your own cellmate. You can, but Lauren, there's a lot of strings attached to that. But if you're ganged up, does that mean you're just like not a target for those? is that why yeah that's why most people get in a gang yeah exactly it's immediate protection once you get in a gang you're immediately protected you can't nobody 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 that's so easily into that is because they yes become and i saw sleeping every single night are you worried or no no uh for the first five years in prison because i was a lifer i had to live in the life sentence built in the first five years, I lived in a cell.

1:33:26Damon West:So you live in a, so the pods, so seven building has 432 men and it's G pod, H pod, and iPod. 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 closed in 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 door is closed. So I had, I was very four that's a really good statement 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 times a 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 and these four guys they don't have a lot of help on the free world family and stuff like that.

1:34:20Damon West:So I am their family. Every month I put a hundred dollars 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 of my life. And does a hundred dollars 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. Because I mean, honestly - I just think it'd be cool for them to hear this.

1:34:49Damon West:Yeah. I mean, this would be great for them to hear this. I mean, I don't know. As 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 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. 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? that brought me 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.

1:35:25Damon West:Beautiful house. I mean, this neighborhood was incredible. We lived 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 book. 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 go 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 overhearing what you were talking about there.

1:35:53Damon West: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. That's really cool. I told the guy, the head doctor that had the event after it was over, because the guy was like, hey man, none of my coworkers 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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1:38:26In 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 of 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.

1:39:02You 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 as it makes an incredible gift. I have been giving a straw tequila left and right, not this bottle because this one has the engraved Michael on there, which I'll never get rid of this one, Carson.

1:39:34But 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 cart. It's something they can put at home. It's something they 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 straws that I have in front of me for a second. I have the classic, the Anejo. This is something that you're going to want to have on the rocks. Maybe you're going to want to have it with a dinner.

1:40:00I like it with a chicken dish. I love it with Mexican food. Has a little bit of like an orange type flavor. Has a little bit of a stronger aftertaste. And this is going to be a great gift if you have somebody that has a palate 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 going to have kind of like that strong aftertaste.

1:40:33It's just a smooth transition and something that 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 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.

1:41:02Not 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, Dear Media 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 either of the other two because they're all so incredible.

1:41:35I 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. Housemarque Summer is here. Time to stock up. Go to www.astraltequilla.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. 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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1:42:44You're helping build safer, stronger communities. And most importantly, you're saving lives. I'm very passionate about this mission and hope our audience is 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? You get this 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.

1:43:12Damon West:So I started transforming myself. I started becoming a coffee bean. First, one of the biggest things happening there is I got into 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. It happens to be the 12-step program 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 in there because a lot of these guys never had someone to teach them about a healthy community.

1:43:47Damon West: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 in 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. It's in front of my house, man. I want to clean my house up. They caught on. Those guys started taking pride in themselves. I learned about servant leadership. I think servant leadership is when you help other people reach their goals in life.

1:44:17Damon West: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, 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 yeah which is why it's so powerful when that guy the caterer comes up to you it's also like you know people come people come to us at this point in our life and they say like you know 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 like 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 the universe loves that by the way and and look i mean i'm 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 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.

1:45:33Damon West:I had a spiritual awakening in prison. I had a spiritual awakening and I 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? It 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 got to 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.

1:46:06Damon West:Everybody listening to this thing, I meet more people out in the free world that are locked up than I ever did when I served time in a real prison because more people are in prison by their thoughts, by their things, and by their prejudices than by steel bars and barbed wire and concrete combined. That makes sense. I can see what you're saying. You can become a prisoner of your own mind 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 calls themselves news, whether it comes from the left or the right, but they're just pumping this hate inside you every day.

1:46:37Damon West: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 learned about servant leadership, and my servant leadership project in prison was I opened a free tutoring service. You know, I had a bachelor's degree when I went to 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'd get them ready for the GED test. So if they ever get out of prison, they're going to be a better husband or a better father.

1:47:08Damon West: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 got to pay this back. I got to pay this forward to West. I'm going to 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.

1:47:39Damon West: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. and 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.

1:48:09And 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?

1:48:17Damon West: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 vote. In my mind, that's the way it works.

1:48:44Damon West: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. and um you're 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 60 right so that the guys i live with that have aggravated life sentences which is about 98 percent of people around me they have to do 30 calendar years before they see their first parole officer wow 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.

1:49:24Damon West: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. Yeah. Now I can see it 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 in that building so i come up for parole in 2015 i go to my parole hearing because it was non-aggravated non-aggravated right so um you know and i've got a parole packet this parole packets and everything you've done and how you have 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 gonna 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 no i didn't have to think about that answer i knew the answer because i've been living the answer right i build my i was building my brand ever ever since that day when i was in 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 no right success when 2011 you didn't see this any of this happening but you kept putting the work every day right i knew the answer and i fired it offer, I said, useful.

1:51:12Damon West: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 from pretty incredible things. And so I told her, I said, I just want to be useful and I can be useful inside this prison. I could 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.

1:51:44Damon West: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, a woman named Ms. 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 2000 in 73. 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.

1:52:21Damon West: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. Well, I don't think I... No, I just mean like, for you love being cerebral and left alone with your thoughts and your books. And I don't, like, I feel like you have to think of it as an opportunity. I also like the ability to come back from being an optimist.

1:52:56Yeah, I understand. No, but I mean like, 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 when you were inside. That's what he said.

1:53:06Damon West:You got 24 hours a day, seven days a week to get the best rest of your life. I imagine that life in general is very stressful and there's a lot of decisions. I imagine a lot of those decisions, a lot of 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. You asked me about some days being along with others. I filled my day up with stuff. I'd get up every day. 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'd go to work. When I finally got a chance to get a job in there, I'd go to work every day.

1:53:41Damon West:I'd fill 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 rehabilitative 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. If 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.

1:54:15Damon West: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 because I just lived it. And the message 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 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.

1:54:46Damon West:And I would learn, I'd watch people on YouTube that are speakers, man. That's how I learned how to speak. I watch YouTube speakers. And I found out, here's another one you're going to 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'd practice 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.

1:55:13Damon West:So every night for two years, I practiced 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 going to be the world of college football because i 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 don't even know what date it is today but i wrote books about it so i mean i got the dates that so january 11th 2017 a buddy of mine in houston named mike orda 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 gotta ask for a press pass i'll sneak you in the in the back door so man i drive the 90 90 miles away from beaumont to houston man i drive the 90 miles.

1:56:14Damon West:He sneaks me in the back door of Toyota Center and hands me a press pass. He said, you're on your own, man. I got to 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, I got seven no's from eight coaches. That's a no every eight minutes. I'm standing in the corner to Toyota Center that night. I'm 10 feet from the door.

1:56:46Damon West: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.

1:57:15Damon West:And man, you don't want to listen to fear because fear's 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 in line to talk to this coach. They all want their picture with him. But I remind myself, Michael, I remind myself, you survived prison, Damon. This isn't prison. This is going to hurt like prison did, man.

1:57:44Damon West:Sometimes in life, we need to remind ourselves of a time when we succeeded. That's the memory we need to hold on to. 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 he should bring me to talk to his team. And it falls flat. Dabo, he looks terrified, first of all.

1:58:15Damon West:He's like, man, you got a card on you. I gave him a card. He was nice enough. He said, I'll check you out. He was gone. That's a no. I'd seen that no before that night. But I felt good about that last no, y 'all, because I left it all on the field, right? One of the biggest lessons I learned from playing sports, the biggest takeaway is you'll give it all your guys. Sometimes you lose. Or Muhammad. 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.

1:58:44Damon West:The director of football operations at Clemson University, guy named Mike Dooley. Mike Dooley's email said, hey, Damon, Coach Sweeney met you at a award show in Houston. He'd love to have you come talk to his team. Do you have August 1st open? I'm like, 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 defending national champs of college football. And when I get done with my presentation at night, Dabo 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.

1:59:15Damon West: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 texted Nick Saban from the back of the room, told him what I was watching. Man, the next day, Michael, when my flight lands in Houston for my trip to Clemson, I turn 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.

1:59:46Damon West:Coach Saban cannot wait to hear your story. He said, how does August 21st, 7.30 p.m. 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 door to 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.

2:00:15Damon West: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. They're all bestsellers. We love it. He is a mad. 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.

2:00:46Damon West: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, well, 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 Muhammad 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?

2:01:17Damon West:Four to six weeks, it rides high at the top of every bestseller list. It's a global publishing deal. Wow. It starts getting every language in the world. The books are popping 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.

2:01:53Damon West: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 that door that night, y 'all, we're not having this conversation today and the world doesn't have the coffee me message. So what I want everybody to know, listen 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.

2:02:22Damon West: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. Well, 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 mean, I feel like you need to come back for a part two. Do you want to know what happened to Mohammed? 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 Dimes on Nickel, I wrote that book because it's about everything that's happened in my life.

2:03:00Damon West:This is the newest book. Yeah, it comes out in July. It's pre-order right now. Get on Amazon right now. Sure. Both of these books and the coffee bean you can't put down after hearing you speak. So Six Dimes of 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 strings 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.

2:03:30Damon West:I had to find Muhammad to tell him I made it. I became the coffee bean. And I start looking for him. And 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 matched everything he told me in county jail had him in Dallas county jail and I was there in 09 so I know this is my friend all we got to do is find his current address but we never did find his current address because James Lynn Baker the second Muhammad he died of an opiate overdose in Dallas, Texas on May 9th, 2017.

2:04:27Damon West: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 where I could redeem myself. He gave me that message so I could come back and redeem him one day.

2:04:55Damon West: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 Cowboy cheerleader ever. First woman to ever wear that uniform. His mother opened the first licensed black daycare in Dallas, 1948. 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 Be a 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 of life through education.

2:05:30Damon West:Cause these two guys met up in County jail back in 09. And, and y 'all, the sister took me up on it, man. Every year they pick a scholarship winner. Every year, one of these kids goes to college. 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 cool. That's awesome. Good for you, man. 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 sentenced to life in prison, I got married for the first time.

2:06:02Damon West:I became a husband and a stepfather. Congratulations. Yeah. Yeah. So my wife is a woman named Kendall, my little stepdaughter named Clara. Clara's, um, she's 13 now. It's, 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, um, you know, my mom, my mom lives with me now. I built, 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 y 'all to see 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.

2:06:36Damon West: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 my victims. Even if they reach out? Even if they reach out. And so. And you would do it if you could. it sounds like can't answer that question oh my god i can't wow i can't apologize for even make it look like i'm apologizing i can't do anything like that but this is a story in six times in 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.

2:07:19Damon West:And I understand their anger at me. And, you know, it's, it's hard. The biggest victim of all my crimes, there was a, um, it was the last weekend of our burglary sprees in July of 2008. Dustin and I break into this condo building up down Dallas. And, uh, we go into this lady's condo. She's out of town. We knew she was out of town. Um, we go in there and, uh, we take her electronics and all that and there's a safe in the closet and we 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 folded american flag the kia plaque that was next to the flag that ring belonged to her dead fiance who stepped on ied in iraq in 2007 oh god defending our country oh defending the rights of a scumbag like me.

2:08:18Damon West: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. I felt like it was my penance. It was almost like a toxic companion I had to take around with me because a reminder of what I did to these people, 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 for WFAA, he wanted to do a story on me.

2:08:54Damon West: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 a story about a guy that's doing great in life and overcoming without an apology looks really weird, right? Like, 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.

2:09:23Damon West: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. You know, 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 his opinion. And he represented society when he took me down.

2:09:53Damon West: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 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.

2:10:27So she goes to this email and I'm going to read it to you.

2:10:33Damon West:This email is hard to read, y 'all. she's telling me about the burglary from her perspective I get it from the victim's angle as 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 door is 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 that night too and she finally gets to the end of the email I'm going to read y 'all what she wrote

2:11:10Damon West:with that I'd like to say I forgive you I'm moving on 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 experienced 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 day wow and um that was the full circle moment and everything like the biggest I can't apologize to her. I can never ask for her to forget to show me so much grace.

2:12:07Damon West:Y 'all, grace is hard. Grace always costs the person giving it more than it costs the 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.

2:12:39Damon West:I got a prayer that I pray every morning. I've been praying this 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 prayer is when you talk to God and meditation is 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.

2:13:11Damon West:That's the thing. That's the thing that was so, like in the 12 steps, you work the steps and 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 of whatever you've done to them, right? And the other thing an amends can do when you make an amends to somebody is it can free you from the resentment you feel towards yourself. And not being able to make an amends to somebody can hold you back.

2:13:40Damon West: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 in man's. 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. Wow, what a story. You are very, very inspirational. I think everyone should go pick up all three of your books.

2:14:16If they're going to start, should they start with the coffee bean?

2:14:19Damon West: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 going to love the change agent because it's all prison culture stuff. It happens mostly inside of a prison. But the six times a nickel has a prison story too. But there's also this big story that's going on after prison because I think people want to 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 started speaking. I wasn't even married at the time.

2:14:50Damon West:I mean, but six times a nickel is everything. What Six Dimes 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 Dimes and a Nickel is the one book you need to get that encompasses the change age of the coffee bean and everything.

2:15:21Damon West:So Six Dimes and a Nickel, definitely. I want all three. Damon, so many people said you'd be amazing on a mic. Ed Milet was not wrong. You did not fail to deliver, my friend. That was great. Thank y 'all. I'd love to come back at another time. Anytime you want to 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. I believe that every company needs the message of the coffee bean. It's that message that tells us the powers inside us to change the world around us.

2:15:58I don't want to be the limp dick carrot.

2:16:00Damon West:No, but I mean, I want people to know, but it's like, I'm not one of those guys that's like, oh my God, this guy rides around on a private jet and stuff like that. No, I'm just a regular guy. I speak to Fortune 100s and I speak to Extreme Exteriors in Abilene, Texas, a landscaping and pool company. I speak to everybody's companies. I want to go out and share this message 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 definitely if we do that give me the sack with the fan 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 numbers numbers after this i'm not messing with y 'all i'm dead serious i'll bring y 'all into a prison we'll do it yeah you'll get the vip treatment in there and we'll go to a women's prison in gatesville texas y 'all i realized something i've 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 don't i haven't been doing enough in women's prisons those those ladies need more brought i'm sure yeah a lot of them are mothers they have a they have a podcast in prison lauren they have a 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 looking to monetize.

2:17:12Damon West: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. I want to check it out. You're great. Thanks a lot, y 'all. Mike Warren, thanks a lot.