7. Sentenced to Life in a Maximum-Security Prison | Damon West

Joe Grover sits down with Damon West—3-time Wall Street Journal best-selling author and one of America’s most sought-after speakers—to explore the devastating impact of failure and the power of redemption. Damon shares his journey from having it all to losing everything after receiving a life sentence in a Texas maximum-security prison (talk about FAILURE.) They unpack the hard-hitting lessons Damon learned during his seven years behind bars and how the transformative "Coffee Bean" mindset helped him rebuild his life. With profound insights on overcoming failure, Damon inspires everyday entrepreneurs to turn their lowest moments into fuel for success.

Links:
Damon West: Instagram | LinkedIn | Website
Joe Grover: LinkedIn

#RealFWord #OvercomingFailure #CoffeeBeanMindset #EntrepreneurInspiration

Speaker Bio:
Damon West, M.S. Criminal Justice, is an internationally known keynote speaker, 3 times Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and former crime boss in Dallas, who was sentenced to Life in prison for Organized Crime. USA Today calls him the “modern-day Shawshank Redemption and the most in-demand speaker in America.” 

At 20 years old, he was a Division 1 starting quarterback at the University of North Texas, when he suffered a career-ending injury and turned to hardcore drugs to cope with disappointments of life.

After graduation, he worked in the United States Congress and trained to be a
stockbroker for United Bank of Switzerland (UBS).One day at UBS, he was introduced to methamphetamines; he became instantly hooked—and the lives of so many innocent people would forever be changed by the choices he made in order to feed his insatiable meth habit. After a fateful discussion during his incarceration with a seasoned convict, Damon had a spiritual awakening. He learned that, like a coffee bean changing with the application of heat and pressure, he was capable of changing the environment around him. Armed with a program of recovery, a renewed faith, and a miraculous second chance at life, Damon emerged from over seven years of prison a changed man. On parole in Texas until 2073, his story is one of hope, redemption, grit and the resilience of the Human spirit.

Episode Transcript

Joe Grover (00:01):
Welcome to the Real F Word.
Today, I have an incrediblyspecial guest here.
He's our first guest thatneeded permission from the state
of Texas and his parole officerto be here, and I am so honored
to have Damon West here, who isgoing to share the details of

(00:23):
his miraculous story and howhe's gone from a life sentence
in prison to impacting millionsof lives, and I think the
application of his experience toentrepreneurship is going to be
something you're not going towant to miss.
So, damon, thank you so muchfor being here.
We're honored to have you here,and you were here speaking at a
big event with several hundredexecutives yesterday, and we're

(00:46):
just grateful that you're herein Salt Lake City sharing this
really profound message.

Damon West (00:50):
Joe thanks for the opportunity, man, and like look,
I mean, the cool thing aboutthis life that I have is, like
you know, getting to come speak.
I get to.
I got to come speak to yourgroup yesterday, but it also put
me in the state of Utah where Ihad an extra day on my hands
and I got to go into a prisonsystem and go talk to the men
and women inside the prisonsystem.

Joe Grover (01:14):
So thank you for the opportunity to serve.
I love that and that's why I'mso grateful to have you on the
podcast today.
You know Damon is an incredibleauthor, he's an incredible
speaker and today I really wantyou to take some of these coffee
bean principles, which you'lltalk about, and and share those
with entrepreneurs that are intheir own journey and they might
feel like they're in prisonsome days and how they can apply
those to really work their waythrough a really difficult kind

(01:37):
of navigation of theentrepreneurial journey.
I also am so excited to toreally have you share some of
your entrepreneurship story,because it's an incredible
success story, and I want you toshare the things that were hard
in the early days and howyou've kind of built your
business.
So thank you so much for beinghere.

Damon West (01:57):
Thanks for having me , joe, and I love what you keep
saying.
Story.
What I've learned is thatpeople in America we love
stories that have certainelements right, we love the
story, the underdog journey, theovercoming adversity, the
redemption story, the personthat wins in the end.
But people really love prisonstories.
Prison stories are somethingthat people are fascinated with

(02:18):
because there's only two ways togo into a prison.
Right, you can get sent toprison, you can work in a prison
, and I happen to have one ofthose stories where I was sent
to prison my story.
We can really start the storyoff in 2008.
The date is July 30th 2008.
And at the time, on July 30th2008, I was the mastermind the

(02:38):
criminal mastermind of anorganized crime ring that
operated throughout the entirecity of Dallas.
We were a bunch of meth addictsbreaking into people's home.
And on July 30th 2008, I was inthis little old apartment I was
living in and the Dallas SWATteam comes in.
They take me down Dramatic SWATteam raid.
They take me to Dallas CountyJail.
They book me in.
They set my bond at $1.4million.
So there's no way I'm gettingout of jail.

(03:00):
My trial takes place 10 monthsafter my arrest.
The date is May 18, 2009.
On May 18, 2009, after asix-day criminal trial, a jury
in Dallas County sentenced me to65 years in prison that's a
life sentence in the state ofTexas.
The charge was engaging inorganized criminal activity RICO
.
I went down for the RICO and Iwas the boss of the whole ring.
Went down for the RICO and Iwas the boss of the whole ring.

(03:23):
I violated the social contract,joe.
The social contract says if yougo out and obey the laws of
society, you can have.
You know all the trappings ofit.
You can enjoy your life insociety.
But I violated all those rules.
I became a drug addict.
I became a criminal.
I became a thief.
I broke into people's homes.
I didn't just steal propertyfrom my victims, I stole their
sense of security.
When I broke in their homes, noone was ever home, thank God.
I never aspired to be a crimeboss and I never aspired to be

(03:46):
any of those things.
I just told you, heck, when Iwas growing up, I wanted to be
Jerry Maguire before there was aJerry Maguire.
I wanted to be a sports agent.
I wanted to play pro football,you know.

Joe Grover (03:55):
And you were a heck of a football player.

Damon West (03:57):
I was a great football player in Texas.
I mean Texas high schoolfootball man.
This is, like you know, aquarterback quarterback.
I played division one collegefootball at the university of
North Texas starting quarterbackby the time I was 20 for a
division one team.
I excelled at that.
I was always a leader.
I was always a great athlete.
I got away from all those thingsin life that I wanted to be
because I was an addict andaddicts addicts give up their

(04:18):
goals to meet their behaviors.
That's the very definition ofaddiction, joe.
When you're you give up a goalto meet a behavior, you're an
addict.
And listen in America our mindstend to go right to drugs and
alcohol when we think aboutaddiction, but the truth is you
could be addicted to anythingright Food, money, clothing,
shopping, sex, pornography, theInternet, social media.
If you find yourself in lifegiving up goals to meet

(04:41):
behaviors, that's addictivebehavior and you need to check
your addictions.
Giving up goals to meetbehaviors that's addictive
behavior and you need to checkyour addictions.
When I was playing collegefootball, I got injured.
When I was 20, my red shirt,sophomore year and my career was
over, and that's when I gotinto the hardcore drugs the
cocaine, the ecstasy, the pills,because I could not live life
on life's terms.
That's the hallmark of being anaddict when you put in

(05:01):
chemicals to change the way youfeel.
I was a functional addict,though.
I graduate college, I move offto Washington DC, I work in the
United States Congress, I workfor a guy running for president
of the United States 2004,.
I moved back to Dallas to be astockbroker for UBS United Bank
of Switzerland, and it was atthat job, as a broker in 2004,
that my life and the lives of alot of other innocent people are
forever changed.

(05:21):
Because that was the day Itried meth for the first time.
Another broker introduced me toit.
They saw me sleeping at work,didn't want me to get fired, so
he brings me to the parkinggarage, he gives me my first hit
of meth and I was instantlyhooked.
Just like that.
I couldn't give everything awayfast enough for that drug Cause
.
Remember that's what addicts dowe give things away.
I gave away my job, my home, mycar, my savings account, my

(05:42):
family, my tethering to God.
In 18 months, I go from workingon Wall Street and I'm living
on the streets of Dallas, andthat's when I became the
criminal that they took down in2008.
The burglaries went on for aboutthree years.
They called them the UptownBurglars.
They called me the UptownBurglar and after the Dallas
SWAT team finally took me down,I realized that they didn't just

(06:04):
arrest me that day, theyrescued me.
That day the Dallas SWAT teamsaved my life.
My angels don't have wings, joe.
They have assault rifles andshields and helmets.
They come through the windows.
They bust the door off thehinges to pull me out of that
world that I was in.
Didn't see it at the time, butI understood it when I got to
prison and I got on my journey.
The real big key to the messagethat I go around sharing is what

(06:26):
happened after I got sentencedto life in prison.
My mom and my dad had thisconversation with me.
She said debts in life demandto be paid.
This is right after thesentencing man.
This is five minutes after mytrial was over, in a little side
room with a bulletproof glass.
Between us.
They're giving my parents thisone last visit because I mean I
just got life.
I mean people were shocked inthe courtroom.
My parents were shocked, the DAwas shocked.

(06:47):
They actually got the lifesentence.
Everybody was shocked.
Right, this is 65 years, a lifesentence for property crimes.
No one was ever home during theburglaries, joe.
No one got hurt, no weaponswere used.
I mean there's no physicalvictim to these crimes.
These are property crimesaround a bunch of drug addicts,
I mean, I was locked up withpeople in prison that for murder

(07:08):
charges they got eight years,ten years and they took a person
off the planet.
So after the trial was over, mymom is telling me you know she's
saying debts in life demand tobe paid.
You just got hit with one heckof a bill Damon from the state
texas, but you did the thingsthey said you did.
So you have to go and pay thatdebt to society.
She said you owe texas thatdebt, but you owe your father

(07:30):
and I debt too, and she'sreminding me we gave you all the
opportunity, love and supportto be anything you want to be in
life and that's how you repaidus.
It's not going to work.
So here's the debt you're goingto pay to us.
When you go to prison, you willnot get one of these white hate
groups, one of these AryanBrotherhood type of gangs,
because you're scared becauseyou're the minority in there.
You weren't raised to be aracist.
You're not starting that now.

(07:50):
And that's when she tells me nogangs, no tattoos.
But my mom told me that day.
She said, damon, you come backas the man that we raised, or
don't come back to us at all.
And Joe, I'm stunned, man.
And then just imagine yourmother.
Man, everybody's got a mom,right, not everybody has a dad.
Everybody's got a mom.
Imagine mom telling you thatman, you got to do, you got this

(08:11):
.
Here's the line in the sand.
You did it.
Go, pay that, come back to us.
Here's your debt.
So, um, I'm waiting in DallasCounty jail.
I've got two months before theprison bus comes to get me.

Joe Grover (08:23):
And man.

Damon West (08:24):
I'm frantically asking every guy that's been to
prison before how do I survivethis?
What am I going to do?
And every guy is telling me thesame thing you have to get into
a gang.
That's like the prison culturein there, especially with the
lifers, and I'm going to theworst part of prison, where the
life sentence people liveSupermax, Supermax prison.
You have to live with lifers.
If you get a life sentence inTexas, you don't live with
general population that guysends to 10 years, 20 years,

(08:46):
even 30 years.
You don't see them.
You see the guys that are nevergoing home again.
It's the edge of the earth andthat's what the guys are telling
me in county jail.
You're going to the edge of theearth.
Man, you need help.
The gang is your help.
But there was this one guy thatwas very different in there.
There's this older black mannamed Muhammad.
Muhammad's what you call acareer criminal too, man.
He's been in and out of prisonhis entire life, but he was

(09:07):
really the most positive guyI've ever met in my life.
He had a smile on his faceeverywhere he went.
You know this guy would come upto my bunk every morning and
Muhammad would come up and hewould pick me up like a ray of
sunshine.

Joe Grover (09:18):
Was it Jackson.

Damon West (09:21):
In the book the Change Agent.
I changed everybody's name.
I called him Mr Jackson in thebook, but his name was Muhammad.
That's the only name I knew himby, and I would find out later
on in life that that was hisMuslim name, not his real name.
When I tried to go find himafter prison and there's a good
story about that we can tell atthe end about finding Muhammad
but he's telling me, you know hesaid hey, if you want to

(09:41):
survive this thing and come backas someone your parents
recognize, let me tell you whatprison is really going to be
like, and he's telling me thedynamic of it.
Like everybody separates out bytheir own race and that's how
everybody stays and that's howthey keep the peace in there too
, by the way, because ifeverybody's in their own racial
group, you have less chance of aracial war breaking out.
And the way that works in prisonis the gangs run the prison and

(10:01):
the gangs are made up of races.
That's prison, and that's whathe's telling me that day in 2009
.
So he's telling me, you'llfight the white gangs.
If you survive that, you willfight the black gangs.
The white gangs send the blackgangs after you.
If you survive, that you earnthe right to walk alone.
He said the strongest man inprison always walks alone.
But he told me the truth aboutfighting.

(10:22):
Now this is the truth, joe.
That saved my life back thenand it saves my life now.
He said you don't have to winall your fights, but you do have
to fight all your fights.
He said some days you win, somedays you lose.
He said it's okay if you lose,get back up.
And after that conversation heshared with me one of the
greatest lessons I've everlearned in my life.

(10:43):
He said I want you to imagineprison as a pot of boiling water
.
He said you have three choiceshow to respond to this pot of
boiling water.
You can be like a carrot thatgoes in hard but becomes
softened by the water.
You can be like an egg that hasa soft liquid inside a heart,
but a few minutes inside theboiling water the egg turns hard
on the inside.

(11:03):
Your heart becomes hardened, hesaid.
Or you can be like a coffeebean, which changes the pot of
boiling water to a pot of coffee.
And that's what he said.
If you want to come back on theother side of this thing, you
got to be like that coffee bean.
The power was inside the coffeebean.
To change the water around thecoffee bean, it turns the water
to coffee.
He said the coffee bean is thechange agent.
He said the coffee bean's thechange agent.
You have to be the change agent.

(11:23):
Title of my first book theChange Agent right, but the last
words he ever said to me too,when he leaves Dallas County
Jail that summer he bonds out.
The prison bus is getting readyto come pick me up.
He said be a coffee bean, joe.
Those were the four words thatchanged my life.
They put the power back insideme, and if the power's inside me
, it's not the world around meanymore.

(11:44):
There's a parallel there withShawshank, right, I mean,
because, like you have one guyshowing the other guy the way to
hope, you know, and my story isjust different.
You know, I run into this blackMuslim man in Dallas County
jail that's been in and out ofprison his entire life,
different dynamic than Shawshank.
But he also gives me the toolthat I need to envision myself

(12:04):
in a better place.
I can be a coffee bean.
I've got to find a way to keepthe power inside me.
But if I find a way to keep thepower inside me.
I don't survive prison.
I thrive in prison, and that'swhat I did, joe.

Joe Grover (12:15):
I became a coffee bean, those four words that
changed your life.
What's a prison story?
What's an experience that youhad in prison?
That is, there's anentrepreneurial lesson.

Damon West (12:26):
Yeah.
So in prison, in order for meto change myself, I had to
change the way I think.
Right, your thinking iseverything.
I had to tell myself thatprison, a real physical prison,
this is a super max prison.
This is the most dangerousplace in the world you can

(12:46):
imagine living in.
You're living around peoplethat want to kill you in some
way or another.
You're you're living in a, in aplace that is there by design.
It's a punishment.
Prison is a punishment.
Right, they're very suffocatingplaces.
The walls close in on you in aprison.
You know it's hard to thinkinside of a prison.
You're separated out from therest of the world out there.

(13:07):
Your deprivation of time, allthese things hit you, but you
have to get up every day with agood attitude.
You have to.
I had to stop looking at prisonas a punishment and start
looking at prison as anopportunity.
I've got a good friend namedLee Brower.
I think Lee actually lives outhere in Utah.
He's one of these life coachesand Lee has an acronym for what
I was experiencing in prison.
His acronym was big B-I-G meansbegin and gratitude, and that's

(13:31):
what I was doing years before Imet Lee Brower.
I was getting each day withgratitude, I'd get up, I talked
to God and I had a prayer that Igot into.
You know I'd say, hey, god, putin front of me what you need me
to do today for you and let merecognize it when I see it,
because I don't want to misswhatever that is.
But it's that attitude gettingup every day that I think on the
entrepreneurial journey hashelped me out a lot, because you

(13:54):
don't get so bogged down in thenegatives of life.
Another thing I would say thatprison taught me about the
entrepreneurial journey is thatlife is going to throw you
certain days about perspective,perspective of what a bad day
looks like, right.
But you have to define a badday right On your journey in
life.
What is your bad day?
Let's talk about some thingsthat are universally bad days.
A marriage fails, a bankruptcyhappens, a job is lost, a

(14:17):
business is lost, somethinghappens to one of your kids or
your pets.
My pet, my little dog Lottie,is like.
It's like a kid man I love.
I love Lottie.
Someone dies in your family.
Death is a part of life.
You know these are bad days.
Most of your bad days aren'tgoing to be one of those days.
Most of your bad days that youcall bad days are just not so
good days, but you've got to beable to pull yourself out of

(14:38):
that and apply the perspectiveand say, hey, is this one of
those days?
And if it's not, I'm not goingto let this day pull me back
today.

Joe Grover (14:45):
So how did you keep perspective Like you're 63 years
, 65, 65 years?
Yeah, that was your sentence.
And you spent seven, sevenyears and some months.
Seven years, three months Right, so super max.
How did you keep perspective?

Damon West (14:58):
Yeah, Well, I mean, like one of the things that I've
I had in life going for me,especially inside that prison,
is my family.
My family never let go of me.
My mom and my dad came to visitme over 150 times in prison.

Joe Grover (15:12):
Wow.

Damon West (15:12):
Unheard of inside of a prison.
The wardens didn't know what tothink about it.
The majors, the chapelvolunteers everybody was like
man.
I've never seen a guy had thismuch support on the outside.

Joe Grover (15:22):
They didn't give up on you, they're like if this
much support on the outside.
They didn't give up on you.
They never gave up on me.

Damon West (15:28):
They would have come to visit you every week, every
week, and it was a God thing.
I got sent to a prison that wasright by where I grew up, 10
minutes from where.
I grew up, there's 100 prisonsin Texas.
It's a big state.
When I was in prison, therewere 155,000 inmates at over 100
prisons.
Right, I could have beenanywhere.
I could have been in a prisonthat's 1,200 miles from where I
live.
Right, because Texas is a bigstate, god put me in a prison 10

(15:50):
minutes away from my parents'house, so they came to see me
almost every single weekend andthat gave me hope.
You know, I had hope.
I had one foot in and one footout, you know.
So I always had this hope Icould lean on.
But that's one of the things Itried to do in there with those
guys too is instill hope in them.
Whenever I was changing myself,I realized that I had the power

(16:13):
to change the prison, too.
The coffee bean thing, right,and it worked.
Another thing on theentrepreneurial journey that I
think people need to understandis that when you're building
this business, this brand, yourbrand is you, and it's something
that you build for a long time.
And, like I was building mybrand of who Damon West is
inside of a prison, right, theguy that the wardens or somebody

(16:38):
at medical or somebody at thechapel or other inmates met, the
guy they met.
There is the same guy that'shere today.
You know I was building thatbrand and it's what do people
see when they see you.
Because you are a brand, you'vegot to be working on your brand
, always be branding.
But that was one of the thingsI realized early on that the guy
I want to be out there has tobe born inside this place.

(16:59):
And if I could grow that guy,if I could become that guy in
this difficult place outside,that guy, if I could become that
guy in this difficult placeoutside will be a lot easier
because some of the trappingsare different on the outside as
they are on the inside right.
I mean, there's very fewdecisions you have to make in a
prison.
Most of the decisions are madefor you when are you going to
eat, what are you going to wear,what are you going to do.
These things are all coveredfor you every single.
You don't have to think aboutstuff.

(17:19):
You just go through this roteday if you want.
But I would pack my days inwith things that would grow me
spiritually, mentally,physically.
I'd make it a point to work outin those three areas every
single day.
Did I have bad days in there?
You bet I had bad days in there, but I always try to remind
myself about perspective, man, Istill had an opportunity at
life.
I was getting up every day.

(17:40):
I was living life, and it's liketraffic, joe.
Sometimes you sit in trafficand the traffic bothers you
right.
Other times you sit in trafficand it doesn't bother you at all
.
Is it the traffic or is it you?
It's you, it's how you see theworld around you, and I
understood that.
The mental side of it, thespiritual side too, though, joe.
What happened in my life was aspiritual awakening.

(18:01):
A human being's not capable ofmaking the kind of changes that
have happened in my life bythemselves.
We just aren't built like that.
You have to be tapped into asource, the higher power.
I'm a Christian, so mine'sChrist, but anybody can pick
whatever their higher power is.
That's one of the things Ilearned when I got into a
program recovery man is thatwe're all on this journey and we
can pick whatever it is wechoose to believe in.

(18:23):
But when we find that higherpower, that source, we have to
turn our lives and our will, ourthoughts and our actions over
to that higher power.
And that's a big deal, man.
That's because now you'resaying that there's a lot of
things I don't have control overand I'm going to let those
things go and I'm going to focuson the things I do control what

(18:45):
I think, what I say, what Ifeel and what I do.
And if you can find yourself atthat place in your journey and
you can focus on those fourthings, now you're investing
your time, most preciousresource you have.
Once time is gone, it's gone forgood.
Take it from a guy's done timeOnce that stuff is gone, it's
gone for good.
All the money in the worldwon't buy one more second of
that stuff that we call time.
But whenever I was in prisonand I could focus my time on

(19:05):
what I think, what I say, what Ifeel and what I do, now I was
actually impacting my life inthe areas I could change, the
things I could control.

Joe Grover (19:13):
If you're an entrepreneur listening to the
podcast and you're struggling toturn a company around or to
keep a company alive, right.
There's so many things youcan't control and you have to
take responsibility andaccountability for the things
you can.
But the way you act, the wayyou speak and what you do,
that's it Right and if you canfocus on those things.

(19:33):
Sometimes you can't control themacro economy or a shift in the
capital markets, right, Right,or a competitive dynamic, but
you can control those things andyou can also control your
perspective.
I love this that you woke uphaving no idea it was going to
be seven years.
You thought it was going to be60 years.

Damon West (19:49):
Yeah, I had no idea it's an indeterminate date.
They can keep me for the wholetime if they want, but I knew
that the man that I wanted to beout there had to be born in
there and that whenever thatrelease date came wasn't
something I could control.
But what I could control is theperson that they were going to
see in front of them when I didcome up for parole one day.
You know and that's that's whatI did years later in life, this

(20:12):
guy named john gordon.
He and I wrote, uh, the coffeebean together.
John's my best friend, I'm amentor, and john told me this
years ago, when the coffee beanwas getting ready to come out.
He said, damon, this book, thecoffee bean, is going to be an
incredible book.
He said the world needs this.
It's right before the pandemic.
Right, we write this book.
He said the world needs thismessage.

(20:33):
It's going to be one of thosebooks like who Moved my Cheese.
In fact, he said it'll be thenext who Moved my Cheese.
He said it's going to sellmillions of copies.
He said you are going to beknown as the coffee bean man,
the coffee bean guy, he said ifyou stick with your brand.
He said your brand, yourmessage is the coffee bean, your
brand.
He said your brand, yourmessage is the coffee bean.
He said stick with that forever.
He said I don't care if youdon't see the results of this

(20:55):
thing for years down the line.
Give it five years before youeven think about changing your
message.
Because he said here's whathappens to people all the time.
He said they don't see theresults fast enough.
Some, some of us, we want to.
We want to buy into this ideaof the overnight success.
There's no such thing as theovernight success.
Joe, the guy that corporationsbring in to speak to their

(21:15):
people right now with me, thatguy was born in the Supermax
prison a decade ago.
There's no such thing as theovernight success.
John said you have to keep thesame message because if you keep
the same message over and overagain the compounding interest
of you going out and sharingyour story in that message
people will understand that'sthis guy's message.
He's the coffee bean guy.
But if you change your messagemidstream now, you confuse

(21:36):
people.
Is he the coffee bean guy?
Is he this other guy?
He said but if you'll do that,you will be known as a coffee
bean guy and that'll be a prettybig thing to be known for one
day.
Always stay focused.
Whatever your brand is,whatever your message is, stick
with it If you don't see theresults right away that's okay.

Joe Grover (21:51):
This is a great.
I mean, this is an essentialmarketing lesson and, as a chief
marketing officer, like I seethis so often something doesn't
work.
Give it three months, we giveit six months, then we change it
.

Damon West (22:02):
Yeah.

Joe Grover (22:02):
Right, and it may not be the message that was
broken.
It may just be your consistencyand execution of saying the
same thing over and over inreally compelling ways that
people can understand.
I love that You've told thisstory.
How many times you think thecoffee bean?
Your whole prison story, yourconviction story.

Damon West (22:18):
Thousands, thousands , thousands, man, thousands of
times you know.

Joe Grover (22:22):
And every time you tell it, there's another 100,000
, 10,000 people that hear thisfor the first time.

Damon West (22:28):
Absolutely, and today, like this audience you're
giving a.
I get to speak to your audiencetoday.
This is an audience that wouldprobably never have heard it
before, they didn't hear it onyour podcast, but it's essential
for us to come out there andstay focused on what our brand
is.
Don't leave your brand, don'tabandon your brand because you
don't see the results fastenough.
You are closer to your successthan you even know, and I think

(22:49):
that's true about a lot ofpeople in life, but we pull back
, we give up, we stop doing thethings that made us great, out
of fear and doubt.

Joe Grover (22:57):
What's up, phil fans ?
You know, as we've listened toso many guests on this podcast,
that the road to success isoften paved with failure, with a
lot of challenges and evenfull-on face plants.
But there's a thing that youcould do to help skip some of
those bumps and bruises, andthat's really where the
consultants at Amplio come in.
See, amplio offers fractionalexecutives in finance, marketing

(23:21):
and HR, and these are peoplewho've experienced a lot.
They've been in the trenches,they've built businesses,
they've failed.
But here's the kicker They'velearned from those failures and
now they're applying all thatwisdom to your business to
support you.
So you don't have to learn thehard way.
I mean, think about it.
Instead of stumbling around inthe dark and hoping you don't
hit the wall, you could bringsomeone in who's already mapped

(23:43):
out that room right.
Amplio consultants and expertshave worked with and for
numerous companies of all sizesand they've gathered insights on
what works, where to focus andhow to actually grow your
business efficiently.
So while we embrace failure onthis podcast, there is no rule
that says you have to fail ateverything yourself.
So check out Amplio and see howtheir fractional executives can

(24:07):
help your business move forwardand avoid those painful
learning curves.
Sometimes the smartest move islearning from someone else's
failure.
Visit Ampliocom to learn more.

Damon West (24:19):
In the 1920s there were two serial companies in
America.
There was Post and there wasKellogg's.
Really, it was just Post,though Joe Post was a juggernaut
.
Kellogg's was real small.
They had no market share.
But in 1929, the stock marketcrashes, the Great Depression
begins and when this happens,Post quits doing the things that
made them great.
Out of fear and doubt, theystopped marketing, they stopped

(24:41):
running radio ads.
They fired a lot of people,they laid people off, they quit
reinventing themselves.
Kellogg's, during the same eventin time and history, they saw
what Post was doing.
You know what.
They saw Opportunity and theytook it.
They took the little bit ofmoney they had and they bet on
themselves.
They pushed it all to themiddle of the table.
More marketing, more radioResearch and development picked

(25:02):
up.
They invented a new cerealduring this time called Rice
Krispies.
And by 1933, four years intothat Great Depression, Kellogg's
overtook Post.
It's the biggest serial companyin America and they've never
looked back.
I saw so many Post and Kelloggstories happening during the
pandemic man.
I saw it, man.
You could see it happening.
You can see it happening evennow.
Right, People that abandonedtheir mission lose in the end,

(25:27):
and the people that believe inthemselves, that truly believe
in themselves and that bet onthemselves.
That's what you see happening.

Joe Grover (25:34):
Oh, I remember when the pandemic first happened, all
the investors, everyone Sequoia, all the big investors on the
West Coast and Silicon Valley,most of the local investors all
said hunker down, lay off youremployees, don't spend another
dime.
This is like we have no ideawhat's going to and really it
was just uncertainty, and that'snot a bad recommendation in the

(25:54):
face of uncertainty.
And there were a few there werejust a few that just said maybe
we should just pause, let'sjust let's just 30 days, like,
let's evaluate what's going tohappen, like are people going to
, is the entire economy going toshut down?
And there were companies thatwent and laid off huge, like 20%

(26:18):
, of their workforce in anabundance of caution, and I'm
not saying that was the wrongdecision.
But then we saw some tailwindsfor a lot of industries and a
lot of businesses.
Look at the airline industry.

Damon West (26:27):
Man, look, you're talking to a guy that travels 20
, 25 days a month.
Man.
Again, look, you're talking toa guy that travels 20 to 25 days
a month.
Man, the airline industry isjust now staffing up fully with
their flight attendants andpilots and stuff like that.
I mean, that's a big one.
Look, a lot of lessons werelearned during that pandemic,
and one of the cool things tosee, though, was the people that

(26:48):
really believed in themselves,and they stuck it out.
They figured out a way.
That's resilience, you know, aresilient mindset.
One of the speakers you wereinterviewing yesterday it was a
bank CEO.

Joe Grover (26:59):
He was talking about the resilient mindset the CEO
of KeyBank.

Damon West (27:02):
Yeah, I was listening to his presentation.
He talked about the resilientmindset.
It's something he looks forwhen he's you know, when he's
hiring, he's looking for someonethat has that resilient mindset
.
That's key.

Joe Grover (27:12):
It may be the most important characteristic of an
entrepreneur, especially in theface of failure.
Right, absolutely Resilience.
So how do you developresilience?
Because you I mean you, couldgive a masterclass on this.
You could have taken adifferent path.
Yeah, could have got tatted upand joined a gang and right, and
you might still be in prison.

Damon West (27:28):
Yeah.
So developing resilience.
I can help you out with this alot.
So, first of all, we need tounderstand the truth about fear
and the truth about adversity.
Adversity is never as bad asyou think it's going to be.
Two things I learned aboutadversity in my journey through
prison.
Adversity is never as bad asyou think it's going to be, and
you are always capable of waymore than you think you are.

(27:49):
But sometimes we let the voicein our head guide us.
Can't do that.
Do not listen to yourself,because sometimes the voice in
your head is fear.
Tune that out.
Fear is a liar.
Talk to yourself.
You are the voice that you'regoing to hear, more than any
other voice the whole lifetimethat you have on this planet.
It's your voice that you'regoing to hear.
Is it the voice in your headtalking to you?

(28:10):
Is it really you or is it fear?
I would question and saysometimes it's fear talking to
you.
Don't listen to that.
But if you talk to yourself,when you hear the words come out
of your mouth, it soundsdifferent.
One of the things we do in the12 steps is we have this moral
inventory, that we work and inthe fourth step we write down
all of our fears and ourresentments and stuff that holds

(28:31):
us back a lot in life.
And step we write down all ofour fears and our resentments
and stuff that holds us back alot in life and in the fifth
step we actually tell anotherhuman being.
This is the 12-step journeythat people go through in AA or
NA and, by the way, I don'tspeak for AA.
I want to say that because AApeople get upset if I don't say
that.
But in that fourth step we'rewriting down all these things we
fear.
And the fifth step is when yoursponsor reads them back to you.
The first time my sponsor everread back to me the fears that I

(28:52):
put down there, half of thosethings are like that's stupid.
That sounds like a kid wrotethat.
He showed me the paper.
You wrote that those are yourwords.
When I heard another humanbeing say it back to me and I
felt childish, I felt like whywould I ever?
Why would I ever fear thatthing?
That's not even real.
Fears aren't real.
Danger is real.
You have to respect danger.

(29:13):
Fear isn't real.
It's an emotion, it's a feelingyou get in a situation you're
in.
Fear's not real, Danger is real.
So that's one thing I wouldtell you about the entrepreneur
journey.

Joe Grover (29:22):
By the way, I love that insight because we don't
talk about fear a lot, butthat's really.
We have this fear of failure.
We have the fear of theperception that people have of
us when we fail or if ourcompany doesn't succeed.

Damon West (29:32):
Yeah.

Joe Grover (29:33):
Right, and I think maybe just writing those fears
down, if you're an entrepreneur,what's the worst thing that
could happen to this business,right?
And if you write all thosefears down and then you said
that you had someone read itback to you, yeah, so that's an
interesting thing If you writeall your fears down and then you
go to a close friend or apartner or a spouse or a mother
and say will you read these backto me?
It may help create someperspective and really make

(29:56):
those fears more manageable andrecognize that a lot of those
fears are just in our own head.
They're just perceptions.

Damon West (30:01):
Absolutely.
Here's an exercise for you.
All right, let's say I'mtalking to all the people right
now that are people of faith,people and I'm not even saying
what faith, whatever faith youare but if you're a person that
believes in the supreme being, ahigher power, here's something
you can do.
That I did whenever my sponsorgot with me when I was working
the 12 steps.
I already told you I'm achristian, I believe in christ,
that's my path.

(30:22):
You can pick any path you're on.
But he said hey, damon, you gota lot of these fears going
around your head and we keepcoming back to these sponsor
sponsee meetings and some of thefears keep coming back to these
sponsor-sponsee meetings andsome of the fears keep coming
back up.
He said I want you to go hometonight, get a shoebox, this old
shoebox.
He said I want you to take ducttape out and tape up the lid to
that shoebox, really good andtight, so you can't get back
into the box.

(30:42):
Then I want you to cut a holedown the middle of that box,
just a slit enough for a pieceof paper to go in, and then I
want you to write in real bigblack marker God's box.
He said I want you to writedown every fear that you have
every day and slip that piece ofpaper that you write it down on
inside of God's box, becausenow you've given it to God, let
God deal with that.

(31:03):
He said.
Once you start putting thesefears in there, you can let go
of them and trust God to do it.
This is for people of faith.
Now, if you really believe inGod, here's the thing that I
know about this and I can shareif you're a person of faith.
When I learned about what youcan and can't control, it was at
an AA meeting.
It was this beautiful prayerthat we start the meetings off,

(31:23):
called the Serenity Prayer.
You've heard this prayer before.
God, grant me the serenity toaccept the things I cannot
change, the courage to changethe things I can, and the wisdom
to know the difference.
So I go to a meeting in prison,an AA meeting.
We have them at the Chapel ofHope every Wednesday morning,
and that morning the guy thatbrings the meeting in for the
free world we'll call him Ray.
To protect his anonymity, raysaid hey, damon, today we're

(31:46):
going to diagram the serenityprayer.
He had a chalkboard behind him,joe.
So he draws a line from oneside of the chalkboard to the
other and he addresses the wholegroup.
He says that line is God's line.
He said God's line is biggerthan the chalkboard.
It's really infinitely long.
It's massive.
It's one horizon of theuniverse to the next.
You can't fathom how big God'sline really is.
Right, it's huge.

(32:06):
He said the first part of theprayer God.
God, grant me the serenity toaccept the things I cannot
change.
He said, damon, the things youcan't change are on God's line
and every time you try to touchthem on God's line you hurt
yourself and you hurt otherpeople, because you are not God
and God doesn't need your helpdoing his job.
He said stay off of God's linebecause you have your own line.
So he turns around, he erasesone little inch off of God's

(32:31):
line, something we could see onthe board.
The line's broken by an inchand he held his fingers up an
inch apart for the entire chapelto see.
He said if God's line'sinfinitely long, there's your
line, you have one inch.
That little one-inch line, hesaid, was called humility.
He said, because when we arehumble we are right-sized, and
when we are right-sized we canbe useful to other people.

(32:53):
We have to be right-sized forthat.
So that's the second part of theprayer the courage to change
the things I can.
He said.
The things you can change areon your little one-inch line.
God gives you four things towork on every day.
The four things you can'tcontrol are the four things you
can actually change what youthink, what you say, what you

(33:14):
feel and what you do.
He repeats them what you think,what you say, what you feel and
what you do.
He said if it's not one ofthose four things you have no
control over Fears, all thestuff that holds you back in
life.
Most of them don't fall on yourline.
He said the most important partof the prayer was the last part
of the prayer the wisdom to knowthe difference between the big
line and your little small line.
Joe, I can't tell you how manytimes a day in my life, in my

(33:39):
entrepreneurial journey, in myfamily, in the decisions I make
every day, I walk up to thingsall the time and I say that's
not on my line and I walk away.
Man, I have saved myself somuch pain, hurt, suffering, loss
, saved other people too,because I just know what's on my
line, what's not on my line andit's that trust and that faith
I told you at the beginning ofthis thing.
It's a spiritual component.

(33:59):
You have to have to turn thingsaround in life and become the
best version of you.
That's the spiritual side of it.
That's the stuff that we can'tdo as human beings.
We have to trust the process toa supreme being, to a higher
power.

Joe Grover (34:12):
I love that this is on your line or it's not on your
line.
And your line is an inch long,which means most of the things
that happen in our lives and inour journeys are not on our line
.
They're not and we can saylisten, we can't control that.
Right, we do the best that wecan with that one inch line and
the decisions can make.
Try doing that without faith.

Damon West (34:33):
Ooh, man, you talk about a big—that's a big one,
Because now you're putting onyour back God's job.
You know You're saying I cancontrol these things I can't
control.
You're not omnipotent, youcan't do that, but God can.
Whatever you believe, god is,god can.
God can take care of thosethings you can't.
But if you focus on the thingsyou can control, give you a good
story about this COVID.

(34:55):
So let's go the entrepreneurialjourney.
So I made it out of, first ofall, the lady from parole that
interviews me in 2015.

Joe Grover (35:03):
By the way, we needed permission from your
parole officer for you to comehere to Salt Lake.
Yeah, and you're going to be on.

Damon West (35:10):
I'm on parole till 2073.
So the recording of thispodcast.
I've got 49 more years left onparole.
Not bad, I got againperspective of what a bad day
looks like Every month when I goget my travel permits because I
have to get permission totravel I always snap a picture
at the parole office in front ofthe big parole seat.
This is this big scary seal thatsays Parole Division, texas

(35:31):
Department of Criminal Justice.
And there I am smiling big infront of the parole seal and
people were like man, why areyou smiling so much?
I'm like because I'm not inprison.
I could be serving a lifesentence in a supermax prison,
but I'm out, I'm on parole.
I can't get travel permits butI'm on parole.
Do you know that every man andwoman in prison all over America
they want to have just onetravel, because that means

(35:52):
you're free, you're out, right,you got a chance out there.
That's the way I look at beingon parole to 2073.
I'm not worried about being onparole because I'm a coffee bean
.
As long as I'm a coffee bean,the only way I'm going back into
a prison is how I came into aprison.
The other day here in Utah Igot to go in there and spend a
whole day in one of your prisonshere and share this story with
the men and women inside thereto bring them hope on I love
that they actually created aUtah license plate that said

(36:14):
coffee bean and gave that to youas a gift.
It was so cool man, one of thecoolest gifts, and you know why
to me.
I mean I put it out on socialmedia and I get a little
emotional talking about this.
I put it on social media to theoutside observer that's never
lived in a prison.
It's like that's cool man.
You got a license plate thatsays coffee bean.
But I understand.

(36:34):
You know there's not a lot a mancan do for someone that when
he's in prison, his kids, hisfamily, you know.
I mean you don't.
You can't pay for a littleleague or you know music lessons
or dance lessons or karatelessons.
You can't pay for that withsoups and stamps and cookies
from the commissary in prison.
You know nobody's taking moneyout the free world, that they
have money in prison.
Money in prison is stuff offthe commissary, the free world.

(36:56):
You need cash money.
There's nothing you can do foryour family while you're in
prison.
It's difficult for a man to dosomething for someone else and
when those men in the licenseplate factory wanted to make me
a license plate to give to mebecause that's the one thing
they could give to me, it meanta lot.
It meant a lot.

Joe Grover (37:13):
Yeah, I have a friend who was in prison and
he's an incredible artist.
Prison artists, man, they'regreat, they've got some talented
artists in prison and man, hewould create birthday cards and
illustrations for a lot of hisfellow inmates' families and for
their kids' birthdays and stuff.

Damon West (37:30):
I've got a story for you about that and it's going
to dovetail perfectly wherewe're going with this parole
conversation.
So in 2015, the parole boardcomes to see me.
Now.
People wonder if you got a lifesentence, how are you eligible
for parole at seven years?
Here's how Texas does this.
Give you a quick lesson aboutparole in Texas.
The maximum sentence a humanbeing can receive in Texas

(37:51):
prison is 60 years.
60 is life, because you have tobe 17 to go to prison.
60 years on top of that is thelifespan of a human being.
So when a jury gave me 65, theygave me 60.
They gave me life.
Juries don't understand this.
They don't want juries tounderstand this, because then
they're out calculating well,how do we keep them in there as
long as possible, right?
So when I got 65, I got 60,basically because 60 is the cap

(38:14):
In Texas.
If you have an aggravated crime,a crime where you physically
hurt somebody, you have to dohalf of your sentence before you
see a parole officer.
Half of 60 is 30.
So on the life sentencebuilding where I live, most of
the men probably 97 of the guysthere's 432 men on this building
I live on called the lifesentence building.
97 of those guys are liferswith aggravated time, meaning 30

(38:37):
years before they even see aparole officer Very dangerous
place to live in.
Most of those guys are going todie in prison.
I, on the other hand, was anon-aggravated offender.
No one was ever home toburglaries.
I never saw my victims.
They never saw me.
We didn't physically hurtanybody.
So when you have non-aggravatedtime, you don't have a physical
victim.
You only have to do 25% of yoursentence.

(38:58):
But you get something that theaggravated guys don't have
access to good time and worktime.
Every day that you're in prisonand you're good and you don't
get any write-ups, you get anextra day.
You get day for day good time.
Every day that you're in prisonand you're willing to work
because inmates really do runthe asylum you get a half a day
credit because inmates really dorun the asylum, you get a half
a day credit.
So when I got to six calendaryears, I had six good time years

(39:20):
and I had three work time yearsbuilt up.
See how that works.
Yeah, now I've got 15 years.
That's 25% of 60.
Now I'm eligible for parole atsix years.
Seven years in the parole boardcomes to see me.
They finally get to my name onthe list.

Joe Grover (39:36):
I cannot imagine this day for you dude?

Damon West (39:38):
Oh, I am.
First of all, I don't thinkthere's a way I'm going to make
parole, not the first man.
No one makes the first parolein life, joe.
I mean it's just not no one.
It's very rare.
I didn't meet anybody that haddone it, you know.
But uh, I put together thisparole packet.
My mom helped you all the stuffyou've been doing in prison.
It gives them a chance to seethe guy on the reform side of it

(39:58):
.
How did you transform yourself?
The coffee bean, the coffee bean.
The lady from parole is diggingthrough this parole packet and
I mean I've got letters ofsupport in there from police
chiefs.
I've got letters of supportfrom actual captains in the
prison that have served my time.

Joe Grover (40:15):
It's like he's never seen a captain write a letter
for an inmate Like it's unheardof, and whenever I was, because
who we're meeting today, this iswho you were in prison.
This is who I was then.
This is who you are.
This is your authentic self.
You made a bunch of seriousmistakes.

Damon West (40:26):
I was branding myself back then.
The brand you meet today is thebrand from back then.
That's why I tell people allthe time your brand takes years
to build, Build it, Stick withit.
Brand takes years to buildbuild it, stick with it.
Regardless of yourcircumstances right.
Regardless of your circumstancesSuccess, failure, ipo or bust,
it's it.
You're building your brand.
The lady from parole wasmeeting me in 2015.
She's never met me before.
She had a file in front of her,she had my parole packet and

(40:49):
she is just amazed at the stuffI've been able to do.
And you know, we're reallytalking about the transformation
that I made inside that prison.
And she said you know, we'rereally talking about the
transformation that I madeinside that prison.
And she said you know, youdidn't just change yourself, mr
West, you changed this wholeprison around you.
This is one of the toughestassignments in tech.
Stiles unit is one of thetoughest prisons in Texas and

(41:10):
remember, I know about prisonbecause I'm a professor of
prisons but Stiles is one of thehardest assignments you can get
.
It's a very tough prison.
And she's telling me she's likeman, it's astonishing.
You know you had it all.
You threw it all away, but youdidn't just change yourself, you
changed the whole prison aroundyou.
And she's asking me how did youdo that?
And I'm telling her thesethings about being a coffee bean
.
Like you know, I said I smiledeverywhere I went, I had
positive body language, becauseyour smile, your body language
is important, joe.
People see you smile.
They action of positive energy.

(41:40):
Muhammad told me in county jail.
He said you know you'll eitherinfect the room that you walk
into with your negative energyor you affect the room with
positive energy.

Joe Grover (41:44):
You know you infect or affect and I wanted to have a
positive effect.
That's it.

Damon West (41:46):
You're the disease or the cure Everywhere you go.
Disease cure.
Which one do you want to be?
I want to be the cure, and Itold her about some of the ways
that I transformed the prisonand I learned about servant
leadership when I was in prison.
Servant leadership is when wehelp other people reach their
goals in life.
We help raise other people upto a different station in life.
Every successful entrepreneurknows what servant leadership is

(42:07):
, because you have to become aservant leader to be great.
You know you have to serve tobe great.
You don't have to be great toserve either.
Someone said that Maybe it wasJohn Gordon.
You don't have to be great toserve either.
Someone said that maybe it wasJohn Gordon.
You don't have to be great toserve, but you have to serve to
be great.
So when I was in prison, Ilearned about servant leadership
.
I asked myself how can I servethe men around me?
And so I was.
Like you know, I opened up afree tutoring service in prison

(42:28):
because I had I'd been having avery privileged life.
I had a college degree, the GEDtest.
They don't have to pay meanything.
And they're asking me hey man,how do we pay you, don't pay me,
pay it forward.
So this taught guys about animportant lesson about building
a community.
A healthy community, joe, iswhen everybody comes out into

(42:50):
this community and they say,these are my talents that I'm
putting out on the table for thecommunity to use.
If someone needs this, that'smy talent, come see me.
And everybody else says, hey,here's my talent, come see me if
you need this, and we'll makethis community grow.
People invest in the community,right?
I realize that most of the guysI've been around didn't come

(43:11):
from a place where community wastaught.
Maybe they didn't have thefather to teach them Like I had.
My parents were married for 55years.
I had a dad in the home.
You know, nobody ever stoppedto teach them about community.
That's what I did.
Here's how the community worked.
In prison, where I lived, Itaught a guy how to read and
write.
This guy was a prison artist.
This guy could draw man.

(43:32):
He was great.
You got a guy over there,though it's an indigent inmate.
Indigent means you have nomoney.
This guy wants to send aChristmas card home to his
family this year.
You know he's feeling goodabout it.
He wants to do something forremember, you can't do much for
your family out there.
He can't afford the prisonartists.
Prison artists rates are high.
But because he's been shownsome love and respect by a guy

(43:53):
named Damon West and he's beenbeing taught about servant
leadership, he approaches thatguy.
He says, hey, I know you wantto send a Christmas card home.
I'm going to do this for youfor free.
And the guy's like, wow, howcan I pay you for that?
You can't pay me, but you canpay it forward.
And then you look up a couple ofdays later, the guy that
received the free Christmas card.
He's one of the guys in awheelchair.

(44:13):
He's pushing him to chow oneday, you know, pushing him
around the rec yard.
Then you see the guys beingpushed around the rec yard,
pulling his wheelchair up toanother guy's cell that's
depressed or feeling down, andtalking to him, being eager to
listen.
You saw this community changeman.
The positivity was there, itwas real, and the wardens could
see it, the majors could see it,the administration could see it

(44:34):
, the majors could see it, theadministration could see it.
And that's how the parole boardsaw Damon West, the change agent
, and the lady from parole askedme.
She said hey, listen, if youcould be remembered for being
anything in life, anything atall.
She said tell me what that onething would be.
But she said I'm curious, Justgive it to me in just one word
Useful.
I just want to be useful.
Remember that little thing,that little one-inch line.
You're useful, again.

(44:55):
Useful.
Remember that little thing,that little one-inch line.
You're useful again.
So I just want to be useful.
I can be useful inside theprison, I can be useful in the
free world again.
And on November 16, 2015, Iwalked out of a Supermax prison
man on parole for the rest of mylife.
But man, now I'm out thereagain and I got this great story
.
I know I've got this greatstory that I want to share, but
there's nowhere for me to reallyshare it.
At first, how many ex-cons thathave come before me have burned

(45:17):
the bridge to the ground?
Most of them.

Joe Grover (45:19):
You can stand on a stage and speak to 500
executives, but those same 500executives probably don't hire
you in a senior role in theircompanies right, that's right.

Damon West (45:28):
That's right Because I've got this little box I'm
going to check that says I'm anex-con.
But I had to get in my repssomehow, Joe.
I had to get my speaking outthere.
I had to understand how tobuild a presentation and
practice it, because practice iseverything.
Getting in your reps iseverything.
Whatever your product is,whatever you're trying to sell,
you don't go pitch it for thefirst time in front of somebody.
You practice it.
In my parents' spare bedroom,where I lived for the first two

(45:50):
years I was out of prison.
There was a mirror in thereHappened to be there when I
moved in.
Well, they had a mirror Everynight.
For two years I practiced thispresentation in front of that
mirror.
I got in my reps, I was gettinggood at my craft and I was
getting myself ready for theright opportunity, and I
believed the right opportunitywas going to come from the world
of college football, Because Iplayed college football.
The problem was I didn't knowcoaches anymore.
They didn't know me.

(46:12):
You know, A buddy of minesneaks me into a coaching award
show in 2017, the Bear BryantCoach of the Year Award.
I'm out of prison about 14months.
At this point I'm runningaround the room.
There's eight coaches in theroom that night In one hour,
seven of the eight coaches tellme no.
And I mean one hour, Joe.
That's a no every eight minutes.
I've faced all the rejection,all this big dream of building
this speaking.
You're asking for a job orasking for a speaking game?

(46:34):
I'm asking for the opportunityto speak in front of their team
and I'm telling them I'll do itfor free, just let me come in.
Boom doors closed everywhere,man.
They don't know who I am.
They don't believe in me.
Growth follows belief.
Joe, you have to believe inyourself before anybody's going
to believe in you.
And I believe in myself, butnone of them are believing in me
.
That night in one hour I gotseven no's from the eight coach

(46:54):
in the room.
I'm standing in the corner ofthe Toyota Center that night.
I'm ten feet from the door, I'mlicking my wounds, I'm feeling
sorry for myself and the voicein my head is screaming at me go
home, get out.
The voice in my head said Damon, you don't even belong in this
room.
The voice in my head called mean imposter.
I know everybody listening tothis thing.
You have felt like the impostersometime 100 but again, don't

(47:15):
listen to yourself, talk toyourself.
And that's what I did thatnight.
I'm practicing the same, thesame techniques I used in prison
.
In fact, I'm reminding myselfyou survive prison.
This isn't prison.
That's not gonna, that's notgonna hurt like prison.
That last coach is telling youno to your face and then you go
home.
So I stalked dabbo sweeneyaround that room and man, I
finally get in front of dabboand I give him my best stuff and

(47:36):
dabo gives me the same reaction.
The rest of the coaches likehey, man, look, you got a card
on you.
I gave him my card.
He says I'll check you out andhe takes off.
Everybody's trying to get dabostime he won the national
championship.
So I got my last no and I wenthome and I slept like a baby
because I left it all on thefield.
Joe, that's what I learned.
I learned from playing sports.
Or Muhammad, you don't have towin all your fights, you've got

(47:57):
to fight all your fights.
Or sales man, anybody hasworked in sales.
You've got to knock on everydoor.
You've got to make every call.
That's when you're dead.
You don't work by a clock.
So I went home that night,forgot about that night.
Four months later, I get anemail from theweeney met you at
an award show in Houston.
He'd love to have you come talkto the team.

(48:17):
Do you have August 1st open?
I got every first open man.
You know like I got nothinggoing on in my life.

Joe Grover (48:22):
Of all the coaches that would say yes.
One Dabo Sweeney said yes, man,and it was four months later.

Damon West (48:34):
And I've spoken to every program in America.
At this point, joe, you'retalking to a guy that Dabo.
After I spoke to Clemson'sfootball team in 2017, he called
Nick Saban.
Saban brings me in the next fewweeks.
I'm talking in front of Alabama, then Kirby Smart calls Lincoln
, riley, chip Kelly, lane,kiffin, ryan Day.
They all call my phone, butDabo introduced—.

Joe Grover (48:55):
And this has got to be really special for you.
You're a college footballplayer.

Damon West (48:58):
Oh yeah.

Joe Grover (48:59):
Right, you like grew up playing quarterback, right?
I mean, this was pretty special.

Damon West (49:03):
I've got currency to spend with these guys.
You know, and the Coffee Beemessage is spread in the world
of college football.
Man, it's taken off.
You know, the media is findingout about it.
You know, d Dabo Sweeney becamethe one client that we're all
searching for in life.
That turns a Rolodex over toyou, and he did it.
His Rolodex was the world ofcollege football.
But the real big thing Dabo didin my life, bigger than all the

(49:24):
college football teams I'veever spoken to because of him,
is he introduced me to a guynamed John Gordon 2018,.
I get a phone call out of theblue from the Energy Bus guy,
himself John Gordon, and John'sone of the biggest motivational
speakers and authors in America.
I follow John on Twitter for myinspiration and I'm like John
man, I know you are.
How do you know who I am?
He said Dabo Sweeney.

(49:44):
He said now this is 2018.
It's right before the pandemic.
He said Damon, the world needsa coffee bean message.
Let's deliver this message tothe world.
He write a book with me.
We'll call it the coffee bean.
So in the summer of 2019,exactly 10 years after I first
heard the story of the coffeebean, and from in a jail cell
from a guy named muhammad.
The book the coffee bean comesout took the world by storm, and

(50:06):
I say the world because ithappened in america.
First, four to six weeks at thetop of the bestseller list here
gets a global publishing dealattached to it.
Global publishing deals arerare, joe.
That's when your book startsappearing in every language in
the world.
Right, it starts coming out inChinese and Spanish and Arabic,
french, italian, german.
And then the year 2020, a globalpandemic hits the entire world,
becomes a pot of warm water.

(50:27):
Now on my entrepreneurialjourney, the last two
presentations I did before thepandemic, before the shutdown
happened in March of 2020, Ispoke to Walmart, the biggest
employer in America.
Before the shutdown happened inMarch of 2020, I spoke to
Walmart, the biggest employer inAmerica, and the Minnesota
Timberwolves.
Those are the last twopresentations I did before
everything shut down the biggestemployer in America and now I'm
in the NBA and shutdown happens.

(50:48):
I get up every morning, everyemail I open up, it's a
cancellation of a speaking event, everything I've been building
towards up in smoke because noone's having presentations
anymore, no one's travelinganymore.

Joe Grover (51:00):
The world lives in fear of the pandemic and you had
zero control over this.
Zero control.
This is on the larger line.

Damon West (51:07):
Oh man, this is on the big line.
But you knew, this is themoment when we're really tested,
when you're in adversity, whenthe bullets are flying.
Do you remember what got youthere?
You know, do you remember thestuff, the lessons you learned
back then?
And for about a week I'dforgotten all that.
I would get mad.
I was the egg, I was the egg,the egg, the egg.
My wife is even, like my wife's, a nurse practitioner.
So she's frontline work, she'sgoing to work every day and

(51:29):
she's seeing me, you know, atthe house sitting around.
She's like you got to figurethis out, damon, you can't sit
around and mope around like this.
And finally I snapped out of it.
I was like you know what?
I survived prison.
This isn't prison.
I know what a bad day lookslike.
This is a.
This is bad for sure, but I'mgoing to find a way out of this
because I've got to find a wayto serve other people.
Serving other people, joe.

(51:50):
If we can pour ourselves intoother people, we take ourselves
out of our own problems and wealso realize that our problems
are not as great as we thinkthey are.
How can I serve other peopleright now?
During this pandemic it came tome.
I got a friend named Lisa Spain.
She's got a big Zoom platformbefore Zoom was even known.
I said Lisa, let's you.
She's an educational consultant, so she's at home too.
I said Lisa, let's use yourZoom platform.

(52:12):
My story, my message theworld's a pot of boiling water
right now.
The world needs my message.
No one's spending any money.
Remember the pandemic.
Everybody's freezing everything.
We don't know what's going tohappen yet.
So uh, I said I'm just going togive it away.
She's like what You're going togive it away every day?
Let's give my message away.
Let's let's reach the worldwith the message In the next
three to four months.

(52:32):
I did about 120 free Zoom callsthis presentation that I make
money for today, going around toall these corporations.

Joe Grover (52:38):
I gave it away.

Damon West (52:39):
Every single.
And here's what happened.
I got up every morning.
I had a purpose again.
There's people out there inAustralia or wherever waiting to
hear the coffee bean message.
They need this message rightnow.
I got up every day and not onlydid I have purpose, I was
serving other people again Feltgood, joe.
I got up every day and I wasgetting my reps in.
I was practicing mypresentation.

(53:02):
I was keeping it fresh, right.
I got up every day and I wasgetting my message out there to
an audience that had never heardit before.
Four months into, the pandemictravel starts getting lifted.
You know, my people startedmoving around around August,
september of 2020.
My DMs start blowing up.
Twitter, instagram, facebook.
Hey, I said- you had just seededthis message, didn't even
expect this to happen.
Though I'm scrambling around,trying to go around.

(53:22):
I'm talking to Lane Kiffin.
I remember Lane Kiffin.
Let me come talk to the OleMiss football team.
I did it for free.
I was like Lane, let's just go,let me do it for free.
Let me put it on social mediathat I'm out there speaking to
you and get my name out thereagain.
You know, in public, because noother speakers were speaking.
So that's what I was doing.
I was traveling around on my owndime getting myself out there,

(53:44):
but then my DMs start blowing up.
Hey, man, I sat through apresentation you did during the
pandemic.
That message was incredible.
My company is starting to bringeverybody back in.
We want to hire you to speak.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
The Coffee Bee message takes off.
The world was looking for theright message and because I put
myself out there, because I saidyou know what, I'm not going to
take my football and go home.
I'm not going to.
You know, just because I'm notgetting paid doesn't mean I

(54:05):
don't still have a business.
You know, I've got to figureout a way around this thing.
My life took off and the coffeebean message became so
ingrained.
My business of speaking today,joe, I mean every year I do a
couple million dollars a year.
This thing started in myparents' spare bedroom in front
of a mirror, joe, in front of amirror.
Let's take the money out of it.

(54:29):
I've got a purpose today inlife.
I've got a mission that I'm on.
I'm sitting on one of the bestmaybe there's five or six
messages like this out there onthe planet and I'm sitting on
like it's like falling in thesewer and coming out with a
Rolex.
Joe, I mean, I've got thisincredible life of impact where
I get to go and share a missionwith the world that brings
people hope, that shows peopleit can be done, that pulls them
out of their rut, and I get tohave a thriving business also
with it and provide for myfamily.

(54:50):
What more can I ask for in life, joe?

Joe Grover (54:52):
on Life Show every day, you could literally be
sitting in Texas StatePenitentiary right.
Oh, yeah, like today.
Yeah, you could still be inprison.
Instead, you're impacting allof these lives because you're a
coffee bean, because you were ina pot of boiling water and you
weren't an egg and you weren't acarrot, and you were a coffee
bean.
You changed that water intosomething that Starbucks will

(55:14):
charge $10 for that's right.

Damon West (55:16):
Nitro cold brew man, it's almost $10 a cup.
But that's the thing too.
It's like it wasn't just thecoffee bean message, it was my
program recovery, the principlesI learned that program recovery
.
One of the principles we liveby is you've got to give it away
to keep it.
Yeah, really think about what Ijust said.
I'm not telling you to giveaway your business, but about
what I just said I'm not tellingyou to give away your business,
but you got to give a way tokeep.
It means that whenever youstart getting some success in

(55:38):
life, you got to find ways tospread that out to other people.
You got to find a way to putback.
I was reading a book.
One of my favorite books I readwas called the Strength to Love
.
The Strength to Love was by DrMartin Luther King Jr A bunch of
sermons that he did.
In this book there was a sermoncalled the Death of Evil Upon
the Seashore, and in that sermonI read about a guy that Dr King
talked about named Charles ABeard.

(56:00):
Charles A Beard lived in the20th century.
One of the most brillianthistorians to ever walk the
earth.
This guy knew every date andtime and event that ever
happened in history.
You could ask this guy aquestion.
He could name them off where itwas anytime in recorded history
.
Brilliant guy, he said in thesermon.
He said one day somebody went upto Charles A Beard and said hey
, dr Beard, what lessons hashistory taught you?

(56:21):
Now, remember, this is thehistorian.
The academic can tell you dates, places, names and times.
His answer became my favoritequote, the quote that I
memorized, the quote that I puton.
Everything is when I was inthat prison.
Dr Beard said there are fourlessons history has taught me.
First, whom the gods woulddestroy?
They must first make mad withpower.

(56:43):
Second, the mills of God grindslowly, yet they grind
exceedingly small.
Third, the bee fertilizes theflower that it robs.
Fourth, when it is dark enough,you can see the stars.
Think about this quote for asecond.
It took me months.

Joe Grover (57:01):
That's a lot going on there.

Damon West (57:03):
That is a lot I'll break down for you what it meant
to me, and you can, as you knowthe listeners whenever you go
back and think about what itmeans to you.
It's all interpretation.
First, whom the gods woulddestroy?
They must first make man withpower.
History is littered with peoplethat were in the pursuit of the
wrong things, that were in thepursuit of power.
When we get off the track inlife where we're after the

(57:24):
things that don't enrich ourlives enrich the lives of other
people they eat us up, theydestroy us.
In the end, you've got to befocused on the positive in life.
You have to have pure goals,pure ideas in mind.
Don't get obsessed with power.
Second, the mills of God grindslowly, yet they grind
exceedingly small.
Life is made up of all theselittle bitty moments in life.

(57:45):
The mills of God grind slowly,yet they grind exceedingly small
, all these little bitty momentsin life.
Life's a marathon, not a sprint, and when you have one of these
little bitty moments that goesoff tracks, don't worry about it
, because there's a one of theselittle bitty moments that goes
off tracks.
Don't worry about it, becausethere's a lot of more little
bitty moments coming up.
Man, keep it in perspective.
Third, the bee fertilizes theflower that it robs.
This is servant leadership Inlife.
In nature, you have to put back.

(58:07):
You have to give back.
Nature abhors a thief.
Nature abhors something greedythe bee that's stealing the
pollen from the flowers.
He pollinates the other flowersas he flies off.
The bee has to give back.
Nature demands this of people.
It's expected of us to giveback and be servant leaders.
And fourth, when it's darkenough, you can see the stars.
That's when you're at yourlowest point in life when it

(58:28):
doesn't seem like it can everget any better.
You look up and it's justterrible and you think you can't
go on.
This is your moment.
That's when you get the chanceto shine your brightest, because
when it's dark enough, you cansee the stars.
That's when the world you get achance to light up the world.
I love that, yeah, so that's myfavorite quote.

Joe Grover (58:47):
I love that and that last piece is so relevant in
the entrepreneurial journey.
You know my favorite quote whenI was 17 years old, I started
my first business and my dad wasgiven, I think, when he left a
company, at this plaque with aTheodore Roosevelt quote that we
all know so well, and I satcalling during my summer
vacation trying to sell videoproduction services and it was

(59:09):
tough, right and just like coldcalling.
I had literally the yellowpages.
This was in the nineties and Ijust picked up the phone and
started calling companies as a17 year old and I that's not
what I wanted to be doing, but Ireally wanted to be an
entrepreneur and so on mytoughest days I would look over
and I would read this quote andover time I just kind of
memorized the quote and now Iprobably have paraphrased it,

(59:30):
man, and that's the quote that Icome to when I'm in the arena,

(01:00:00):
the man in the arena when I'mreally challenged in life, in
work, right, I think about thatquote.

Damon West (01:00:06):
But it's full circle .
You created a podcast about theman in the arena.
That's what this podcast isabout.
That's right, the real F wordfailure.

Joe Grover (01:00:12):
And you have spent yourself in such a worthy cause
and are making such an impact,and it is, like my, one of my
greatest honors to just hearthis story again and to hear
your insights, your perspective,your enthusiasm and, really,
your focus on being the coffeebean and spreading this amazing
message for entrepreneurs thatare listening today.

(01:00:34):
I want you to look in thecamera and I want you to tell
them something that you wantthem to remember the one key
takeaway from your lifeexperience and from the
principles that you teach thatyou want them to remember when
they're facing adversity intheir work and entrepreneurial
journey.

Damon West (01:00:52):
The last thing we didn't get to cover today is me
finding Muhammad.
I found him.
It took seven years to findMuhammad.
He was dead when I found him,but I found his family.
I started a scholarship in hisname and we honor him every year
.
I have to honor the guy thatgave me the message.
Here's what I'll tell you.
It took seven years to find myfriend Muhammad.
It took seven no's that nightin Houston to get to the one yes

(01:01:13):
I needed, with Dabo Sweeney, tochange my entire life.
It took seven years to walk outof a super max prison.
Some of your goals in life aregoing to take you longer than
others.
Don't quit, don't give upbefore the miracle happens.
Life's a pot of boiling water.
You already know it.

Joe Grover (01:01:30):
You got three choices.

Damon West (01:01:32):
Be like the carrot that turns soft and mushy and
weak, or the egg that becomeshard and mad and mean and angry,
or you'd be like that coffeebean that changes that pot of
boiling water into a pot ofcoffee.
So my call to action to you isthe same call to action Muhammad
gave me 15 years ago, when aprison bus picked me up to serve
a life sentence in a Texasmaximum security prison.

(01:01:52):
My call to action to you you goout there and you go, be a
coffee bean.
Be a coffee bean, joe.
Thank you so much.
Thanks a lot, man.
Thank you.

Joe Grover (01:02:02):
Thanks for tuning in to the Real F Word.
The Real F Word is failure, andremember that failure is a
stepping stone, it's not just astumbling block.
Join us next time as wecontinue to explore the journey
of resilience and growth,without ignoring the true costs
personally, professionally andfinancially that comes with
failure.

(01:02:22):
Keep learning, keep growing andkeep embracing the real stories
of entrepreneurship.
See you next time.