I got a 65-Year Jail Sentence. Then this happened... | Damon West's Story

[00:00:05] [SPEAKER_02] Oh my gosh. This guy was thrown in jail for 65 years, and he deserved it. You'll hear his crimes, but he first, he was a superstar quarterback, high school, college, turned meth addict, turned hardcore Rico gang criminal.

[00:00:26] [SPEAKER_02] And from that point on, given a 65-year, basically a life sentence, he is the most inspirational story. I want you to listen to it. He's got a book out, Six Dimes and a Nickel, Life Lessons to Empower Change, but Six Dimes and a Nickel refers to the 65 years he was sentenced to prison. You got to get that book. It's coming out.

[00:00:45] [SPEAKER_02] This is a follow-up on his memoir, The Change Agent, How a Former College Quarterback Sentenced to Life in Prison Transformed His World, and also The Coffee Bean, A Simple Lesson to Create Positive Change. But his book just coming out, I highly recommend, Six Dimes and a Nickel. And we talked, I could have talked to this guy forever.

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_02] So here's Damon West to talk about jail, prison, fighting, being a criminal, being a meth addict, and what changed it all. And by the way, this is going to change my life too. I liked his thoughts on this.

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_01] This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is The James Altucher Show.

[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_02] So look, Damon, you were sentenced in 2009 to 65 years in jail. You got out only, what, six years later, you got out of jail? There's so many ways we could start this. One is, why did you go to jail? The other is, why did you get out? The other is, what you've been doing since. I mean, you've got like, I would say you've got four parts to your story.

[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_02] There's kind of like, the dream come true, quarterback, athlete, the road is clear. You got the golden road in front of you. Then there's the downfall. And it's the worst thing. Like, nobody wants to get sentenced to 65 years in jail. Then there's kind of liberation and transformation. And then there's just, everybody wants to know what's happened since. So I think the best thing is, why did you get sentenced to 65 years in jail?

[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_00] That's a great place to start, James. No, it's great. And look, man, thanks for having me on your show. So one of my friends, a woman named Janine Coulter, and she's in San Diego. She is the one that turned me on to you. And she listens to your show. And so she first turned me on to you. And I love your show. So to be here today is an honor and a privilege, really, to be on the show with you, man. I love your stuff. I love your style. So let's start with that. Let's start with me getting sentenced to life in prison.

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_00] The date is May 18th, 2009. On May 18th, 2009, I'm standing in front of a jury in Dallas. And the jury, these 12 men and women in this trial, they just set through a six-day organized crime trial. It's a RICO case, James. So, and the RICO means this. It's organized crime. And I'm the head of the entire organization. What it was was an organization of meth addicts, just like I was at the time. Yeah. We're a meth addict.

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_02] Like a club? You make it sound like a friendly little club. Like, oh, all my meth addict friends hang out at the clubhouse.

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_00] I wouldn't say it's a club. I think it's more like a loose version of a gang. And that's what they do. They classify this as a gang, a criminal gang. But what it was was a bunch of other meth addicts. And what we do is we break into houses to steal for drugs. Addicts will do anything they have to do to get the drug. I believe, James, for the most part, addicts are not bad people. They're sick people that do bad things. And I was certainly one of those sick people doing bad things.

[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_00] Because, look, when I broke into people's homes, I didn't just steal their property, James. I stole their sense of security. That's something my victims can never get back. I can't give it back to them. I can't change it. I can't even apologize to the victims of my crimes. The state of Texas has a felony law that says it's a felony to apologize to a victim of a crime. Really? Yeah.

[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_02] Is that because they might feel threatened if you show up at their door to apologize?

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_00] James, here's what I think it's for. I think it's set up more for victims of violent crimes. And this is a great distinction to have right now in the story. There's two different classifications of crimes in Texas. There's aggravated crimes and there's non-aggravated crimes. Aggravated crimes are crimes where people are physically hurt. You have a victim. Murder, rape, child molesters, robbery, like when you stick a gun in someone's face. These are crimes where there's a physical victim. Non-aggravated classification of crimes are where there's no physical victims. Think about theft. Think about drugs.

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_00] Think about burglaries, which is what I was committing when no one was ever home. In my crime spree that goes on for about three years in Dallas, none of my victims were ever home. I never saw the victims. They never saw me. No one was physically hurt. In fact, James, no weapons were ever used. These are property crimes around meth.

[00:05:03] [SPEAKER_02] But, David, what if you had gone into a house, you broke into a house, you cased it all out, you were sure nobody was home, and then guess what? Someone was home and they had a bat that they were about to swing at you. What would you do?

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_00] Man, I don't know, James. And thankfully it never happened. And here's why it never happened. I was very elaborate with making sure that no one saw him. One of the first burglaries I ever committed, when I'm a meth addict and I'm like, okay, I'm going to start becoming a thief now. I know what I'm doing is wrong, but I also don't want to get caught because you have a preservation of life instinct, right? So one of the first break-ins I did was the U.S. post office, and I stole a mailman uniform, James. I mean, the hat, the bag, the whole thing.

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_00] Then I became this guy that would impersonate a mailman in these neighborhoods all over Dallas, the nicest neighborhoods in Dallas. The crime street was called the Uptown Burglaries for the Uptown neighborhood of Dallas, which is one of the nicest neighborhoods in Dallas, which is where I lived before I lost my mind on meth and was homeless. But the Uptown Burglaries began when this guy that was looking like a mailman would go into these condo buildings,

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_00] and I would break into the mailrooms inside the condo buildings, and inside these mailrooms are all these slots where all the mail is, right? And you can see where the mail is stacked up, where no one's home. Or even some of the slots had a note that says, out of town from this state to this state, hold our mail. So that's where I got a lot of my victims from is I would impersonate the mailman. And another way, James, is I would go into these condo buildings, and once you get above the first floor, once you're inside,

[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_00] and you see someone's door that has a bunch of flyers from restaurants and stuff like that in the door or packages in front of it, no one's home because there's no back door. Your back door's a balcony. If you're on the seventh floor, you don't have a back door that goes outside you can enter into. So I had a reverse people viewer where I could look inside. I would always use a reverse people viewer before I go in to make sure no one's on the inside. What's a reverse people viewer? I never heard of that. So that's one of the things I picked up at a hedge shop.

[00:06:58] [SPEAKER_00] You put it up against a people, and it's got a glass on the inside that reverses the people glass, and you can see inside someone's building, inside someone's apartment, or inside someone's home. Just like they could see outside, you reverse the view, and you can see inside now.

[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_02] And if anyone saw you doing this, they would just say, oh, that's the mailman checking to see if someone's home.

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_00] No, I wouldn't be dressed as the mailman when I'm doing that. I only used the mailman outfit when I was trying to go into the mail rooms, or if I was trying to case a house in a neighborhood, I could walk around. Think about it, James. You don't know what your mailman looks like every day. I was a ghost, man. When I was in neighborhoods, this is a nice part of Dallas that I'm in. If I was in the medical district, I'd dress up in doctor scrubs. If I was in a district with younger people, I'd wear Abercrombie and Fitch. If I was in an area where it's businessy, I'd wear a suit.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_00] I was just basically trying to blend in with whatever world I was in, and I was kind of a ghost. And that's what I did to make sure no one was home. So, James, the fact that no one was home didn't surprise me because I did a lot of work to make sure that I know up front that I'm not doing what's right, but I'm a meth addict, and I want the drugs more than anything. Here's what I know about addiction too, James. Addicts give up their goals to meet their behaviors. That's the very definition of addiction. When you give up a goal to meet a behavior, you're an addict, right?

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_02] I feel like to some extent everyone gets addicted at some point or other. I'm not saying everyone gets addicted to meth or heroin or something. You're spot on, James. But often life changes, and you find something that you're obsessed with, and you give up goals maybe positively or negatively.

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_00] 100%. Food, money, clothing, shopping, sex, pornography, the internet, social media, whatever it is. In your life, if you find yourself giving up your goals to meet a behavior, that's addictive behavior, and you've got to really check that. Mine happened to be methamphetamines. So the jury, James, had a six-day criminal trial, and six days is a long trial for crimes where no one got hurt. And in that trial, they heard about this guy named Damon West. Damon West, the ringleader of the whole thing. The guy that had it all.

[00:09:03] [SPEAKER_00] I grew up in this little southeast Texas town of Port Arthur, a high school football star, played under the Friday night lights. All the stuff you see about Texas high school football is real, man. It's intoxicating. I was a great quarterback too, James. I got a scholarship to play Division I college football at the University of North Texas, where I became the starter at 20 years old. And then that year, when I was 20 years old, I got hurt against Texas A&M, and my career was over. And that's when I got into hardcore drugs.

[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_02] So let me ask you a question. You get hurt. The doctor or your coach or your parents, someone tells you that, look, your dream that you've had your whole life of playing professional football and making millions of dollars is just not going to happen. And what's your first reaction to that? Like, what were you thinking then?

[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_00] Life is over. And here's why I was thinking that, James. I didn't just lose my football career that day on Kyle Field against Texas A&M. I lost my identity because I didn't have an identity that wasn't attached to being a football star. And that's a mistake I see a lot of people make in life, James. We can't attach to our identity. Your identity is who you are on the inside, right? It's never going to come from social media, the friends you have, the car you drive, the house you live in, the money in your bank account. Your identity is who you are on the inside when all those things are removed.

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_00] And at 20 years old, I was lost, James.

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_02] I feel like, and again, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I feel like identity itself is an addiction. Like, for instance, like you mentioned social media. People assume their self-worth is the number of followers they have. People get addicted to money. Their self-worth is how much money they have. And this becomes an addiction. So if you're addicted to money, maybe you commit criminal activities. Maybe you do things you wouldn't otherwise do. You give up some goals. Like your dream goal of gardening, you give that up to work on Wall Street or whatever.

[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_02] So like identity itself, associating with any kind of identity is almost like an addiction.

[00:10:52] [SPEAKER_00] Brother, no, your questions and your comments are spot on, man. You've done your research because here's the deal. Once I lose that identity of playing college football, I'm searching for the new identity. And that's when I get into drugs, man, because drugs take you away from the real world. They take you away from the pain that you're in. And I graduated college, James, in 1999. I move off to Washington, D.C. I try my hand working in the United States Congress. Then I move back to Dallas in 2004.

[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_00] And I decide I'm going to be a stockbroker from one of the biggest Wall Street banks in the world, UBS, United Bank of Switzerland. And it was at that job as a stockbroker in 2004 that my life and the lives of a lot of other innocent people were forever changed. With this other stockbroker, it turns me on to meth one day. He sees me sleeping at work. He's telling me you can't sleep on this job. The markets are open. They'll fire you. Come on down to the parking garage. You got something that'll pick you up. So in 2004, I take my first hit of meth, and I'm instantly hooked, just like that. And I give everything away. What did it feel like?

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_00] Oh, man, it was electrifying, James. And I talk about it in one of my books. Change Engine, by the way. Great book, your memoir. Yeah, so exactly. I mean, the hair is standing up in my arms. I mean, every piece of hair on my body is electrified. It's this feeling you get. And I'm, like, zoned in. I'm locked in. And I'm ADHD, James. And so this is, like, at first, I feel like it's the wonder drug, right? I'm focused. I'm aware. I'm attentive. And I don't have to sleep. That was when I was, like, wow, this is incredible, man.

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_00] I don't have to sleep. I was up for, like, four days the first time I did it. But the problem is what goes up must come down. So I've got this raging addiction to methamphetamine going. I can't keep track of everything at work. And I get fired shortly thereafter at UBS. I get fired as a broker.

[00:12:32] [SPEAKER_02] Really? So it did not make you a better performer like you thought it would initially.

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_00] It makes you a better performer for about 24 hours or 36 hours. But after that, look, man, when your brain is up for that long, you start hallucinating after a couple days. And three or four days into it, you're really going kind of wacky. And whenever you're up for four days, you need about a day to sleep. And so this really becomes a problem if the day you need to sleep is on Tuesday or Wednesday, right? Because now you're missing work. And you can't miss work as a broker like that, especially a new broker for a firm like that.

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And I'm just curious. Like, could you have managed the addiction? Like, for instance, take methamphetamines in the morning, take a sedative at night to sleep. And I'm not trying to say, oh, here's how you should do this to be a meth addict.

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_00] But it's a great question. And it's something I eventually ended up doing after I was... All right. So 18 months is what it took for me to lose everything or give everything away. Remember, we give it away. I gave up my job, my home, my car, my savings account, my family, my tethering to God. In 18 months, I'm living on the streets. Living on the streets, James. I'm homeless. I live in dope houses. I sleep in people's cars. And I become a criminal at this point to fund my addiction. And it was petty crimes. Breaking into cars, breaking into storage units.

[00:13:47] [SPEAKER_00] Then I start breaking into people's homes. And then, James, I finally get to where you're talking about. I understand that I can't be so railed out on this methamphetamines and do these crimes. So I know that if I'm up for 36 hours, I got to knock myself down. Now I'm smoking weed. Now I'm doing Xanax. Now I'm drinking a lot of alcohol to knock down the effects of the meth. Because I've got to self-medicate myself and knock myself out. Another thing is, James, look, I'm looking around at all the people around me.

[00:14:15] [SPEAKER_00] These meth addicts around me, their teeth are falling out of their head. Their skin looks like hell. They look like shit, right? And so what I'm doing at that point is I'm, there's not even Google at the time. There's Ask Jeeves, right? And there's Yahoo. So I'm getting in there. I'm like, why do people's teeth fall out of their head? Why does your skin fall apart? And it comes up to a few things. You know, one of them is taking care of yourself, having good hygiene. Another one is drinking a lot of water. Saliva is there to wash bacteria off your mouth all day long. When you're up for days smoking meth, you're dehydrated.

[00:14:45] [SPEAKER_00] You don't drink water anymore. All you do is smoke meth. Nutrients, vegetables. I've forced myself every day to carry around a gallon jug of water during these meth days, right? I wanted to make sure I stay hydrated. And every day I've forced myself to stop into a place like Luby's and get vegetables and protein into my body, even when I'm not hungry. So you're like a self-help meth addict. I've self-help. Dude, it's because I'm so vain, James. And that's the thing. The vanity. I didn't want to look like the world around me. When I got to prison all those years later, the dental hygienist in there, because I would

[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_00] go and get my, you know, I'd go and get my teeth cleaned all the time. And, you know, it's healthcare. It's not free healthcare because you paid for it with your freedom, but you've got access to healthcare in there. So when I'm in prison and, you know, I'm taking care of myself again, I go to the dentistry office in there and the ladies from dental are just shocked that I was a meth addict and all my teeth are good. They're like, how did you take care of your teeth? And I'm like, well, here's the story. I Googled it and not Google, but I got into Yahoo and I knew I needed to drink water. So yes.

[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_02] So it's not the meth itself that causes these problems. It's the type of person you become on meth.

[00:15:49] [SPEAKER_00] 100%. The type of person you become. And again, giving up your goals to meet your behavior. No one sets out to be someone whose teeth fall out of their head. No one sets out to be a drug addict. No one sets out to be a thief. No one sets out to be a person that lives on the fringes of society. But I, you know, but a lot of us become those things, but it's because of addiction, James. And that's the thing about addiction.

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_02] And that's because like when the meth starts to wear off, you're feeling bad or like at what you must've had different points told yourself, hey, it's not good that this is the only goal in my life is to get, you know, the next meth. Like did you, what were your attempts to kind of get off it at this point?

[00:16:32] [SPEAKER_00] I didn't really make any attempts to get off of it. I was so hooked and so driven by the meth. Meth became like football for me. It's almost like an identity part. I became this meth addict. I became the serial burglar. I attracted other meth addicts around me that were into the burglary game too, because theft and meth go together like rats and trash. Eventually there were about 12 of us, young and old, male and female, black and white, and everything in between because drugs and addiction do not discriminate.

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_00] But we indiscriminately and without reservation, we broke into homes all over Dallas to feed our insatiable meth habits. But it all comes up to a head, James, July 30th, 2008. This is a very big day in my life. Because on July 30th, 2008, I'm sitting around this little rundown apartment in Dallas. I'm sitting on this little ratty old couch. And I got my meth dealer, one of my meth dealers, name is Tex. And we're passing this glass pipe back and forth. And I'm telling Tex, man, get out of here. You don't want to be here. The cops are closing in. The end is near.

[00:17:31] [SPEAKER_00] 10 days before this, they picked up my partner in a crime, Dustin. So I knew that they had Dustin in custody. Meaning it was just a matter of time before they could have me and Gusty. Because here's the truth about crime, James. Everybody talks. Everybody talks. And just as I pass the pipe back to Tex, the window on my right blows out and shatters. And then tumbling across my living room floor is a little canister going end over end. And it's smoking on one side. James, I've seen movies like this before. I know what the canister is going to do.

[00:18:00] [SPEAKER_00] I tried to get out of the living room as fast as I could, but it was too late. Boom. Boom. This flashbang grenade blew up in my face. Bright white light, loud noise. My ears are ringing. I can't see. But as soon as my vision comes back and my hearing comes back, there's a cop standing over me. He's got his boot on my chest, a gun in my face. Don't move. Don't move. And I'm like, man, don't worry. Don't worry. It's over. You got me. And one of the Dallas SWAT guys screamed out loud. We got him. We got the uptown burglar. And that was the end of the crime spree, James.

[00:18:28] [SPEAKER_00] It went down in a blaze of glory with Dallas SWAT on July 30th, 2008.

[00:18:36] [SPEAKER_02] Take a quick break. If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it. It means so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast. Email me at altitra at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks. So let me ask you this, Damon, you know, it almost sounds like you wanted to get caught

[00:19:04] [SPEAKER_02] because here you are, you have this superhero style name, like the uptown burglar, but no one really knows who you are. And so, and like you mentioned before, it almost becomes part of our identity. These people were surrounding you that you're suddenly the head of this organized crime ring of burglars. And the other thing is when your partner got caught, you obviously could have just left town and okay, eventually you're going to get caught, but you could have made it a little

[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_02] harder for them to find you instead of hanging out in the same place with your, with your drug dealer.

[00:19:36] [SPEAKER_00] Well, that it's kind of the reason why I'm still there with my drug dealer. Cause I don't have a drug deal in another place. The reason why I'm anchored to Dallas, Texas is because every dope dealer I know is in Dallas, Texas and I need dope. I have to have dope at this point. That's the way my mind tells me, by the way, James, but there was a point 30 days before I get arrested where I ran out of dope for the first time in three years, man. I'm out of dope. I'm laying on my floor. And look, man, when you, you come off a meth, your body's depleted of all energy.

[00:20:05] [SPEAKER_00] I mean, your head feels like it's 200 pounds. You can't even pick your head up off the pillow. You're hungry again. You know, you're going through all these changes that your body, cause I've had meth in my system for three years. And I remember laying on the floor and I'm praying to God. And like, you know, when I talk about God, listen, I'm in a program recovery. So I think everybody can pick their own higher power or whatever you want to believe in life. So I'm laying on the floor of that dope house. And I'm like, man, God, I'm done, man. Take me away. I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. I just want to be out of this life. I want to be over with.

[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_00] And then I got high again and I got my supply back from techs again. And now I got, I forgot about the conversation, but when I'm laying on the floor on July 30th, 2008, I'm sitting there thinking, man, this is not what I was praying for. What are you, what's going on here? I wasn't praying to leave the life this way. I really didn't want to get caught, James. I wanted out of that life. I knew that what I was doing was bad. My family, six hours away in Port Arthur, Texas, they know something's wrong with me, but they can't put their finger on it.

[00:21:02] [SPEAKER_00] My mom and my dad keep begging me to come home, but there's no way I'm leaving Dallas, James, because all my dope was in Dallas. What'd they think you were doing for a living? Man, I lied to them. I told them I was working for a software company at one point. I told them I was working for a limousine company. I just made up lies, James. That's what addicts do too. We manipulate, we lie. We do whatever we have to do to make us seem normal again. The truth is, there's nothing normal about being an addict of any kind. It's a disease. It's a sickness.

[00:21:30] [SPEAKER_00] I didn't know anything about the disease of addiction until later on when I got to prison and I started working a 12-step program recovery and I learned more about it. But my parents were just dumbfounded that this guy that had everything going for him in life is working for this software company they'd never heard of or a limousine company as a driver. I had everything going for me in life and I was throwing it all away.

[00:21:54] [SPEAKER_00] And back to the story on May 18, 2009, that jury that sat there for that six-day trial, they're staring across the courtroom at this guy that had it all and threw it all away to become this drug addict, to become this leader of this group of organized crime ring, this group of meth addicts. And I can feel it through their pores, James. They hate me, man. And I don't blame them. I understand why they don't like me because they're sitting there looking at a guy that if they had the opportunities I had,

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_00] they probably wouldn't be doing the jobs they were doing, man. I had everything going for me in life, James. And at the end of that long six-day trial, the jury deliberated for 10 minutes, James. 10 minutes! Man, if a jury's gone for 10 minutes after a week of trial, it means they smoked you. And the judge probably- Why was there a trial? Like, didn't you plead guilty or no? No, I didn't plead guilty. The only offer the state made, so they can make you an offer that you can take. It's a plea bargain, right?

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_00] The only offer they made was 50 years. Now, in Texas, you got to understand Texas laws, the highest sentence you can get in Texas is 60 years. They don't tell juries this. 60 years is a natural life sentence, James. Anything they give you above 60 is life. Like, if they say 65 or 99, it means life. So when the prosecution came back the week before the trial and they offered me 50 years, there's no way I'm going to sign for 50. I'm going to go to trial and take my chances.

[00:23:19] [SPEAKER_00] And if you go to trial, you can fight your case on appeal. Because when you plea bargain out, you give up your right to an appeal. So I'm like, man, I'm taking my chance at a trial. I knew I was going to be found guilty, James, but I didn't know that I was going to get a life sentence like that. But what did your lawyer tell you you were going to get? Oh, man, my lawyer. Man, this guy. Man, Ed Siegel was his name. Oh, man, he's dead now. Ed, he couldn't get it through his head that this was an organized crime case. He kept telling me this is a burglary case.

[00:23:47] [SPEAKER_00] I'm like, Ed, the state believes it's organized crime. I'm standing in trial for organized crime. But he can argue, though, and he did, that how organized could it be with a bunch of meth addicts? Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, still the jury has to buy into that argument, right? I mean, like it's organized crime by the definition of the statute. Ed told me he thought I would get 20 years because 20 years is the maximum for a burglary in Texas. Burglary is a second-degree felony in Texas. But organized crime makes it a first-degree felony.

[00:24:14] [SPEAKER_00] And a first-degree felony, the maximum sentence is life in prison with the possibility of parole. And James, speaking of life in prison, so that day when the jury comes back with their verdict, the bailiff comes to get me, brings me back in the courtroom. And I had two lawyers, this other woman named Karen Lambert. She was a really good lawyer, second-chair lawyer. She said, you need to brace yourself, Damon. This is going to be bad. And I'm like, how bad? She said, well, while you were there for that 10-minute recess,

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_00] the jury sent a note into the judge from the jury room. They asked the judge if they could give you life without parole. Wow. James, I was like, holy cow, man, life without parole. I said, that's crazy, Karen. That's a capital punishment. That's where crimes are people get killed. Do they understand the rules? She said, the rules don't matter, Damon. She said, they hate you. The judge told them, no, you can't give him life without parole, but you can give him life. And that's what the jury did, James, 65 years.

[00:25:10] [SPEAKER_02] And so what do you think escalated the hate for this jury? I mean, they see you and you were this quarterback. You're a nice-looking guy. You probably, at this point, you're probably not seething on meth. You're talking normally. What was it that made them hate you?

[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, so here's the thing. I went back to school after I got out of prison in 2015, and I got a master's degree in criminal justice. I wanted people to take me more serious than just the average ex-con. And one of the things I did since I've been out of prison is I became a professor at the University of Houston teaching a class called Prisons in America. Like, James, I became the only professor on planet Earth to teach a prisons class who lived in prison. So I totally flipped the script on what someone's capable of.

[00:25:57] [SPEAKER_00] And in studying of becoming a criminal justice professor, getting that master's degree, I learned about juries. Juries in America, they really sentence people to a lot of time like that for one of two reasons or both. One reason is that they're afraid of the person in front of them, right? If we're afraid of that person, we want to lock them away forever. Sure. But the other reason is that they're mad at that person. And if we're mad at somebody, we can act out of anger and really lock them away forever.

[00:26:26] [SPEAKER_00] And mine was the latter. The jury wasn't afraid of me. I didn't ever physically hurt anybody. My crimes were all nonviolent property crimes. No one was ever home. They know that I went to great lengths to make sure that I didn't have a physical victim. They weren't afraid of me. They were angry with me. And here's one of the reasons they were angry with me. The biggest witness that testified against me, now listen, in a crime, in a crime spree like that, everybody testifies against you. I mean, I saw all my co-defendants, my co-conspirators, they're all just paraded in the courtroom testifying against me.

[00:26:54] [SPEAKER_00] But the biggest witness against me was me, James, on the jailhouse phones. Now listen, criminals are stupid. Criminals are very stupid. They make mistakes all the time. And I'm no different than any criminal. I may have been good at playing cat and mouse with the Dallas police. I may have been good when they stole the car from the Texas Rangers one time when they were on our tail. But here's the deal. When I got locked up and they took everything away from me and I'm in this environment I've never been in before, I freaked. I panicked.

[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_00] I got on the jailhouse phones that I know the recording, by the way. And I'm calling people up from the dope world, calling people from the criminal world. Hey, remember that job we did? You owe me this money from that job. Bring it up here right now. Get me out. My bond is set at $1.4 million, James. I got the biggest bond in Dallas County Jail. There's 9,000 people in this jail. It's one of the biggest jails in America. It's like a city when you go inside Dallas County Jail. No one else at the time had a bond that high.

[00:27:50] [SPEAKER_00] And I'm trying to raise money to get to 10% of $1.4 million. And I'm calling all these people up from the criminal world and I'm telling them, you owe me this money. Bring my money now. Those tapes, those recordings were played back in my trial.

[00:28:02] [SPEAKER_02] And I sounded... So why did you do it? Like you knew they were being recorded and I get it. You're desperate. You're panicking. But there's some level of you're almost asking for. You're almost asking for the highest punishment.

[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_00] No, James, it's that Mike Tyson quote, man. Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth, right?

[00:28:22] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:28:22] [SPEAKER_00] And so I'm in jail and I want out of jail. I'm freaked out. I'm scared to death. I don't want the punishment, but I want out. And in my mind, I'm thinking because I've outsmarted these people every time, I'll outsmart them now. I think I'm smarter than everybody else at that point, James. I'm this arrogant, this cocky, this unremorseful criminal. The jailhouse recordings that the jury's hearing, they validate everything that the prosecutor... The prosecutor has called me the Al Capone of Dallas at trial.

[00:28:51] [SPEAKER_00] They've called me the Tony Soprano of Dallas at trial. When I'm really sitting there in the defendant's table and I'm going, man, I'm just a dope fiend trying to get high and I'm trying to do whatever I can to get out of jail and get high again. But I can't tell the jury that because I can't take the stand in this trial. Taking the stand would be disastrous for a guy like me. But I really think, James, I mean, like, one, I'm an addict. I want to get out and get high again. That's what's driving me to get out. Two, I don't want to go to prison for a long time because I don't want to be away from my dope.

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_00] Everything in my life, all my thoughts circle around getting back out and getting high. James, I thought when I went into trial, if they give me a very low sentence, I'm doing the math of how long it'll take me to get out and get high again. Maybe I'll be out in eight months. Maybe I'll be out in 12 months on parole. I'll be getting high again soon. But man, when the jury came back with 65 years or as they say in prison terms, six dimes and a nickel, because every 10 years in prison is a dime. Every five years is a nickel.

[00:29:46] [SPEAKER_00] When they came back with 65 years, James, I knew that something had to change and that something was me. And that's a good place to like bounce off and say that the book that I wrote, Six Dimes and a Nickel, it starts off with a question. And the reason why it starts off with a question is because this question I first heard by James Clear, the question is this. If someone took control of your life tomorrow, what's the first thing they would change?

[00:30:11] [SPEAKER_02] It's such a good question too. Like whether that person is a coach or someone who's trying to make your life better or whatever, if they took control of your life, what would they change? And again, sorry, go on.

[00:30:25] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, no, I'm saying, I found myself in a situation in life where someone did take control of my life. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice took custody of Damon West with a life sentence in prison. And I knew that day that something had to change and that something was me, but I did not know how, James. I had no clue how to make that change. Right after the trial was over, they gave my parents a little visit with me behind this bulletproof glass. They felt sorry for my parents. I just got life. My parents were there for the whole six days.

[00:30:54] [SPEAKER_00] And my mom has this conversation with me, James. She's telling me, you can't get in any gangs. You can't get in one of these white hate groups. You were never raised to be a racist. You're not starting that now. And she's telling me no tattoos. She said, no gangs, no tattoos. Come back as the man that we raised or don't come back to us at all. She draws the line in the sand, James, very clear. So she's telling me, if you become that, you're not coming back to us. And so I get back to my pod in Dallas County jail. I've got two months before the prison bus comes to get me in it.

[00:31:22] [SPEAKER_00] And James, I'm frantically asking every guy that's been in prison before, how am I going to survive? What am I going to do? And every guy I'm talking to, man, they're telling me the same thing. You have to get into a gang except for this one guy, this one guy that was so different, this old black man named Muhammad. And Muhammad's a career criminal. He's been in and out of prison his entire life. But he was the most positive guy I've ever met in my life. He had a smile on his face everywhere he went, James. And one morning, he comes up to my cell. He's got a cup of coffee in his hands. He had a smile on his face.

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_00] And he's telling me, he's like, West, I've been watching. 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, but if you want to turn it around and keep the promise you made to your parents, then I need to tell you what prison is really going to be like. And that's what he told me. He said, the first thing you need to understand about prison, prison is all about race. Race runs the whole institutions out of a prison. And he said, every race wants it that way. The division of races is strong in there. That's the way everybody wants it.

[00:32:17] [SPEAKER_00] He said, when you walk in the door, the white gangs get the first dips on you. The Aryan Brotherhood, the Aryan Circle, the White Knights, the Woods. You said, you fight all the white gangs first. If you survive the white gangs, now you fight black gangs. The white gangs send the black gangs after you. The crypts, the bloods, the gangster disciples, they're going to tee off on this independent white guy who won't go with his own race and his own kind. He said, but if you survive all that and you can survive all that, you will earn the right to walk alone. He said, the strongest man in prison always walks alone.

[00:32:46] [SPEAKER_00] 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. He says, some days you'll win, some days you lose. He said, it's okay when you lose.

[00:32:54] [SPEAKER_02] Well, that was when you lose a fight though. Like, I've never been in a fight. And I mean, do they break your nose? Do they break your jaw? Like, how bad is the fight?

[00:33:03] [SPEAKER_00] No, so the fights can end anytime you want it to. And that's what he's telling me. You don't have to win the fights. No one cares about wins and losses in prison. That's what he's telling me. Everybody wants to watch what's called it. They call it a free show. As opposed to like pay-per-view on TV, a free show is when someone breaks out in a fight in a prison day room. Everybody gathers around and watches the fight. And when the fight's over, everybody goes back to doing what they were doing. And when you're in prison, all you have to do is show up and fight back because you're defending your honor. You're defending yourself. And if you do that, whenever you're done fighting, you can just tap out.

[00:33:32] [SPEAKER_00] You're on the ground and say, hey man, I'm done. It's over. You won. What if they swing one punch and you go down and tap out? Do you lose respect? You lose respect fast. And here's what happens when you lose respect. All the predators around you, because it's a very predatory environment. And the only language everybody speaks in a maximum security level five prison is violence. Violence. You become fluid in violence, James. Either you speak violence to other people or they speak it to you, but you're going to learn the language of violence in there. And that's what he's telling me. All you got to do is fight back. Give it a good show.

[00:34:02] [SPEAKER_00] And if you get done, tap out and just tap out.

[00:34:05] [SPEAKER_02] Okay. So I still want to understand that. Like, okay, someone pushes you, you know, a fight's coming and they punch you in the face. How do you keep fighting? Doesn't it hurt? Oh, it hurts like hell, but you keep going. What do you do? Like, let's say they're bigger than you. Like, how do you, how do you even like fight back? Do you kick them?

[00:34:24] [SPEAKER_00] Do you punch their face? You start swinging. You go and you, sometimes you try to tackle them, get them on the ground. Uh, you, but you, you, you punch, you swing, you hit back. And here's what's going on, James. He's telling me he's, he's, he's prepping me for this because he's like, Hey, look, you're going to this world where you're going to have to fight for your life. And because of this promise you made to your mom, you're going against the norm in there. The norm is that you're a white guy. You joined the Aryan brotherhood, the Aryan circle, the white knights, whatever. You join one of these guys because that's where you're supposed to go.

[00:34:54] [SPEAKER_00] And he's telling me about the part of prison I'm going to. You, James in Texas, they got a law that says, if you get a life sentence, you have to live with other lifers. You can't live in general population. You live on a building designated for life sentence people only. This is the most dangerous part of prison because it's the most hopeless part of prison. Seven building is the building I eventually live on in this prison. There's 432 men. Every man's got life and 98% are never going home. Talk about zero hope in the most dangerous world possible. But he's telling them they could do anything.

[00:35:24] [SPEAKER_00] They're not going to get more punished than they are. No, there's nothing that changes their calendar. I mean, most of the people on the life sentence building have aggravated life sentence. So here's the law in Texas. If you have an aggravated life sentence, so aggravated sentences in general. Remember, these are crimes where someone got hurt. You have to do half of your time in prison before you see parole for the first time. If you have non-aggravated time, you get access to good time and work time.

[00:35:51] [SPEAKER_00] You can move your calendar up, but you can also move your calendar back if you get in a lot of trouble in prison. So I've got to navigate this world in prison where I've got non-aggravated time. And if I do everything right, I'll see parole for the first time in a little over six years. But if I mess up and I get into trouble when I'm in prison, I can push that date back all the way to 65 years. You see what I'm saying? Man, I've got this scale that I'm playing with, but the other guys that have aggravated time, nothing is going to move their time.

[00:36:18] [SPEAKER_00] If you come to prison at 35 years old, at 30 years old, and you get a life sentence, you've got to do 30 years before you see a parole officer. Those guys where I was in prison, they would joke around and say their first parole officer's parents haven't met yet. That's how far away they are from parole. But he's telling me, man, look, you're going to lose some of these fights. He said you don't have to win all your fights. You just got to fight your fights. That's what he's telling me.

[00:36:45] [SPEAKER_02] And I still don't even – I'm sorry, I can't comprehend this. Can't someone just grab your neck and break your neck and then the fight's over and you're dead?

[00:36:54] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, it happens. Yeah, it absolutely happens in prison. Anything's possible in prison. They can throw you off. They have three levels of tears that you live on, just like you see in movies. They have different, you know, tears. And, you know, they can throw you off the top run and you fall out of the ground at your death. I mean, you're 35 feet up in the air. There's concrete below. How do you avoid that?

[00:37:13] [SPEAKER_02] If they're determined to really hurt you, how do you avoid that?

[00:37:18] [SPEAKER_00] You can't.

[00:37:19] [SPEAKER_02] Right, so what do you do?

[00:37:21] [SPEAKER_00] You show up. You just keep showing up. There were days – like, look, I'm not going to lie.

[00:37:25] [SPEAKER_02] Did you know how to fight?

[00:37:27] [SPEAKER_00] Were you big enough? I had done some fighting. Remember, I played college football. You know, I was a guy that's very alpha male type stuff. But – and I'd been in some fights growing up and some fights in college. But nothing like what he was describing. And when I get to prison, you know, there's days that I didn't want to fight, James. And so those days that you don't want to fight, the only place you can stay is inside your cell. I would forego eating food sometimes just to recover from the fight the day before. So, I mean, yeah, did I ever duck fights?

[00:37:56] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, the only way to duck a fight is to stay in your cell. But you can't stay in your cell forever, right? You got to get out of your cell. But some days I needed just a little more time to rest. When I get to prison, James, the first two months is a bloodbath. I'll probably get in three dozen fights. And I lose 75% of my fights in the first two months. Think about the math on that.

[00:38:16] [SPEAKER_02] You have to be in there, like, enough time that you don't lose respect. Exactly. Like, how do you – like, a round of boxing, three minutes, that seems like forever for someone who doesn't know how to box. So, like, how do you – I'm still, like, obsessed with this. Like, how did you fight back against these guys who are basically trying to kill you? Or they have nothing to lose if they kill you?

[00:38:37] [SPEAKER_00] So, what the first thing they're trying to do is break me. They just want to break me because they want me to go to the white gangs because that's where I'm supposed to go. And, you know, the thing about it is, too, a three-minute round of fighting, man. Most of these fights in prison don't last three minutes. James, if you fight for a one-minute straight, you're exhausted, man. Your adrenaline has spiked. You're exhausted. One minute of fighting is exhausting. You look at these professional boxers that go 12 or, like, they used to go 15 rounds, the three-minute rounds. Dude, those are the best athletes in the world.

[00:39:06] [SPEAKER_00] Because a minute of real fighting, it's exhausting. And then you burst. You have this adrenaline burst. And that's one of the things you learned about fighting is you have to learn how to control your energy. Because if you blow your wad, to use a term, if you blow your wad too quickly, you can zap out of energy too fast. And you'll lose the fight anyway because you're drained for 30 seconds.

[00:39:40] [SPEAKER_02] So let's say someone's, like, 6'8", 380 pounds, muscle. And he wants to fight you. Like, how do you even throw one punch? Like, are you running around? Or, like, what are you doing to fight? And I know I'm, like, oddly obsessed with this. But...

[00:39:56] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, no, we're going to jump around here. So let's jump to that guy. Got it. So Muhammad... I'm going to answer your question with the rest of the story right here, James. So Muhammad's telling me about these fights. And, look, man, I'm looking back at this guy like a deer in headlights when he's explaining prison to me. And that's when he's like, Wes, he said, let me break it down for you a different way. He said, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of boiling water. He said, anything we put into this pot of boiling water will be changed by the heat and the pressure inside the pot.

[00:40:24] [SPEAKER_00] 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 here's where I first heard the story of the coffee bean. It was the summer of 2009 in a jail cell in Dallas County. So he walked me through it. If I put a carrot in the pot of boiling water, the carrot goes in hard but becomes softened by the water. The water changed the carrot. You don't want to be a carrot. The egg in the same pot of boiling water goes in with a soft liquid inside. But inside that pot of boiling water, the inside becomes hardened. Your heart becomes hardened if you become the egg inside that prison.

[00:40:54] [SPEAKER_00] You don't want to be the egg either. But he said the coffee bean was different than the other two things. The coffee bean changed the pot of boiling water into a pot of coffee. It was the change agent. He said the coffee bean has the power to change the water around it with the power inside of it. He said it's the only thing that could change the water. Everything else was changed by the water. And he said if you want to come back and some of your parents recognize, you've got to be a coffee bean. He tells me, he says, let me tell you what the first day of prison is going to look like. He said when they get you to prison, they're going to take you to life sentence building.

[00:41:21] [SPEAKER_00] He said when you walk in the day room for the first time, do not run to your bunk if the guys are scared. He said, man, you put your bags down, put your back against the wall and let it happen. And James, I'm like, what happened, man? What are you talking about? And he said, your heart check. The heart check, James, is the most important fight in prison. It's day one. They want to see what your heart's pumping. They want to see what you're made of. See how much heart you have. He said, you're going to be approached first by a white guy because you're white. He said the first guy that approaches you, he's not a threat to you. He's an information guy. There's a scout.

[00:41:51] [SPEAKER_00] He'll ask you one relevant question in his first conversation. What gang are you going to be a part of? And he said, get him out of your face as fast as you can and get your head on the swivel. Because the second guy comes up to you, he's not coming to talk to you. He's coming to hurt you. He's the enforcer. He said, when the second guy gets in the range of you, put your fist in his mouth. He said, man, hit the guy as hard as you can. Get the jump on the first fight. And just about the time, James, the prison bus comes to pick me up. He had four words for me on the way out the door when he left. He said, be a coffee bean. So I go to prison, James.

[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_00] They get me to the Mark Stiles unit in Beaumont, Texas. Stiles is a maximum security level five prison. Level five is the hardest security level there is in prison. James, I know a lot about prison. Remember, I'm a prison professor in this later in life. So I know about tough prisons. And Stiles is as hard as it gets. So that first day, they separate me out when they get off the prison bus. They take me to the life sentence building, seven building. I walk in the first day. I got a mattress on the one arm. I got a couple bags of property. They walk me into the pod. And the big door closed behind me. Boom.

[00:42:51] [SPEAKER_00] And I look up in this giant room with three levels of cells. Inmates are hanging out with the railings. It's loud. Prison was a loud place, James. But as soon as that door closed behind me, the volume drops to zero. And everybody's staring at the new guy that just walked in. It was like the worst first day of school ever, James. And I'm like, you know what, man? I'm freaked out by this. I don't know what to do. I'm in this world I've never been in. I thought, you know what? I'm going to make a run for it. Forget what Muhammad said. So I started looking for my cell. My cell is 45 cells. I'm up on the third tier by the showers. I'm like, man, I'll never make it. They'll get me.

[00:43:20] [SPEAKER_00] So reluctantly, I put my mattress down. I put my bags down. I put my back against the wall. And I waited. It doesn't take five minutes. Here he comes. A little bitty white guy comes up first. A little ball-headed white dude. He's tatted up from head to toe. Even his eyelids are tatted up. He gets in my face. He says, hey, white boy, what family are you riding with? They call gangs families, James. A gang is not a family. And I'm like, man, get out of my face, little dude. I'm riding with God. Please just leave me alone, man. I'm riding 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's been gone.

[00:43:50] [SPEAKER_00] But we're here and we're coming to get you. Get ready, white boy. He runs up the stairwell on the right side. James, 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. The guy you're talking about, about 6'8", 300-something pounds. He's an ogre, man. He's massive. And he points at me from the third run. He's coming. I watched this guy walk down the stairs.

[00:44:16] [SPEAKER_00] Huge, muscled-up dude, bald-headed with a swastika all around the top of his head. Man, all I see is a swastika, two bitty eyeballs, and a muscle of mountains coming at me. But I remember what Muhammad said. And man, when this big giant got in front of me, I reached up and I hit him in the mouth as hard as I could. Man, he didn't expect me to do that. I hit him as hard as I could. My feet lift the floor at this guy so hard. Boom. And in 20 seconds, James, the first fight in prison was over.

[00:44:43] [SPEAKER_00] Because that big dude beat me from one side of the day room to the other. He mopped the floor with me that day, James. That dude beat the hell out of me that day. My fist didn't even phase his mouth, man. And that was my first fight in prison. 20 seconds, it was over.

[00:44:58] [SPEAKER_02] And so why didn't that kill you? Like, one punch could kill you. Like, what? Was he holding back because he doesn't want to kill you?

[00:45:05] [SPEAKER_00] Oh, I mean, yeah. I mean, obviously, he'd kill me if he wanted to. But I mean, you know, the thing is there's a consequence that comes to killing another inmate. Like, if you kill another inmate, you know, even if you don't have anything to lose, like time, like you're there for the rest of your life, there's still privileges that you can lose. You know, you can lose your ability to be outside of a 23-hour-a-day environment where you're inside your cell. If you get in some serious trouble in prison, they can put you in administrative segregation. That's what the level 5 part of prison is.

[00:45:34] [SPEAKER_00] Level 5 of prison is super sag. That's where you're in your cell 23 hours a day, and you get one hour a day of recreation inside of a cage by yourself. That's a hard way to do time, James, because now you're not just fighting time. You're fighting your own mind locked inside this box. So when you kill another inmate, you get punishment, and not everybody wants to give that up. Another punishment they can take from an inmate that kills somebody is your access to go to commissary. Commissary is an important prison. Commissary is this little store they have inside a prison.

[00:46:03] [SPEAKER_00] Some prisons call it a canteen. Commissary is where you can buy soups, stamps, pastries, cookies, whatever it is. You can buy all the luxuries that come from the free world at the commissary, but if you kill someone in prison, you're commissary restriction. You may be restricted from going to commissary for years at a time, and then you're just living on prison food the whole time.

[00:46:21] [SPEAKER_02] And then here's the obvious question, but like why aren't there guards that are – and I always wonder this in the movies, but why aren't there guards that stop this? Obviously, you know this is happening.

[00:46:32] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, it's a great question. And the reason why is that most of the time when people get into fights in prison, they make sure their guards aren't in there. And look, James, this is a maximum security prison. Fights are a part of it. Violence is a part of it. Violence is the threat of violence. It's the glue that holds a maximum security prison together. Because here's why it's the glue. Because if there's a threat of violence, you'll be respectful to other people. If you do something to violate someone else, there's a consequence that comes with that.

[00:46:59] [SPEAKER_00] That keeps everybody working together because if there's no threat of violence, then people can just act however they want. Kind of like the free world, James, when you see people that are keyboard warriors out here, internet trolls, stuff like that. People that say stuff online would never say that to someone's face in person. You would get your head taken off. But in prison, that's the world where there's consequences to everything you do or say. And that consequence is what keeps the order in there. And the inmates run the asylum, James. Don't ever forget that.

[00:47:28] [SPEAKER_00] Inmates run the entire prison system. And when I say the division of races is strong in there, you know, Muhammad told me race was everything. He said, man, when you walk into prison, there's going to be a TV in your day room. He said, in front of that TV, there's rows of benches. And he told me, the first row of benches, you can't sit on that. That's for the blacks. The blacks own the first row. The second row of benches for the Hispanics. Don't sit on that row. You get your head smashed in. The third row, if there's a third row, is where the white people sit. If there's no third row, he said, white folks sit on the floor in prison.

[00:47:58] [SPEAKER_00] He said prison was an upside down world where the blacks had the numbers now. And so the division of races is how everybody lived cohesively around each other. Because if you were a part of a gang, someone can't pick you off by yourself. It's like those nature videos, James, where you see the lion pick off the hyena in the back. You don't want to be the hyena in the back, right? But the world I'm going into and the fact that I'm going to keep this promise I made to my mom by not joining a gang, it means I'm free game for everybody to fight.

[00:48:27] [SPEAKER_02] So when you reject all the white gangs, though, and then the black gangs start kind of fighting with you, can't you say to them, hey, look, I rejected the white supremacy gangs. I'm, you know, we're cool. Yeah. But they don't believe that?

[00:48:41] [SPEAKER_00] No, because they want me to go with the white gangs. That's the whole trick, right? They all want me to be part of the white gangs. The white gangs want me there. The black gangs want me there because they don't want this independent white guy running around out there like Opie Taylor and could be picked off. Because they want me to go where I belong. Everybody wants me to go where I belong. And everybody belongs by their own racial groups. The chow hall in prison where I lived, the chow hall, you can't go to the chow hall and sit down at the table with people of a different race. Race is everything.

[00:49:10] [SPEAKER_00] And so the black gangs, it takes me two weeks to get through the white gangs. Then it's the black gangs. And the white gangs are watching this because the white gangs sent the black gangs to get me. The crypts, the bloods, the gangster disciples, they're all teeing off on me, man. So here's what happens, James. It comes to a head. Six weeks into prison. It's a Monday morning. I get up that Monday morning. I'm still fighting the black gangs. And I am so close to being a broken man. My hope was almost gone. The violence and the terror is too much.

[00:49:38] [SPEAKER_00] I made a decision that Monday morning to use the only thing I haven't used to earn respect inside that prison. That's my athletic ability. Now, God blessed me to be a tremendous athlete in life. I was a Division I starting quarterback at 20 years old, James. I'm a baller of an athlete. But the rec yard, the rec yard is the most intimidating place I've ever seen because it was the most segregated place I've ever seen. Every sport on the rec yard, James, was segregated by the color of your skin. It was like going back in time. The sand volleyball before the whites and Hispanics. Handball. All the races can play handball.

[00:50:07] [SPEAKER_00] But if you wanted to play doubles and have a doubles partner, your doubles partner has to be the same race as you. The weight sack, just like you see in prison movies. Everybody wants to push iron in prison. All the races can lift the weights. But if you wanted someone to spot you or work out with you, your partner, your spotter has to be the same skin color as you. So that Monday morning, I made a decision to face my fears. I go out to the rec yard. I pass up all those other sports I just told you about. And I went straight to the basketball court. James, the blacks are on the basketball court and no white boys are allowed.

[00:50:37] [SPEAKER_00] But here's why I chose to go play sports that Monday morning to earn my respect. Because I know that in America, sports is the great uniter, James. It's the one thing that brings us Americans together like nothing else can. Not even religion will bring us Americans together like sports. Because in America, we can self-segregate religions. And we do. But sports is the melting pot. It's where everybody comes together to root for their team. I go out to the basketball court that day. I get myself in a game of basketball. And it's not your typical basketball, James.

[00:51:06] [SPEAKER_00] It's not five on five. It's nine on one. My own teammates don't want me out there, right? But I keep showing up every day. I get a little bit better, a little stronger. I give it my best shot. And after a week of playing basketball with those guys, the blacks circled up around me in the basketball court that last day. They said, man, you're good to go with us, Wes. You've earned your respect. You don't have to worry about us anymore. So about two months in, James, the violence was finally over. And the threat to my physical nature was gone. I never had to fight again. But I discovered I was fighting a bigger battle two months in. And it wasn't physical. It was internal.

[00:51:35] [SPEAKER_00] James, I was becoming the egg. Imagine the world that I'm in, right? I mean, like you're in the most violent, dangerous world there is. And it's having an effect on me. I don't want to be the egg, but I don't want to be a coffee bean. But what had to happen inside that prison is, one, I had to have a spiritual awakening. And when I say spiritual, I'm telling everybody out there, whatever you believe in God, or if you don't believe in God at all, whatever you believe. But I had to have a spiritual awakening.

[00:52:03] [SPEAKER_00] And I got into a program recovery in there called AA. Now, I don't speak for AA, but it's the 12-step program recovery I got into. And in my 12-step program, I started learning about principles of recovery, principles about like there's only a few things you have control over in life. And the things you can't control, you have to let your higher power control those things. And I learned about taking accountability for the things you do. I learned about having a positive mindset every day. James, I stopped looking at prison as a punishment, and I started looking at prison as an opportunity.

[00:52:33] [SPEAKER_00] Imagine the mindset shift, right?

[00:52:34] [SPEAKER_02] Why do you do that when you're serving life? Like, was there a specific opportunity in mind, or you just think, hey, if I think positively, opportunities will come?

[00:52:46] [SPEAKER_00] No. The specific opportunity in mind was this. I had an opportunity to work on myself 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I knew from living in the free world, you don't ever have that kind of time working yourself. No one has that kind of time in the real world, right? But I did. I was in a prison environment. So even though I lost my freedom, I gained back the time to work on myself. And that's what I devoted myself to, James. Every day, I'm going to get a little bit better spiritually, mentally, and physically. That was my workout regimen.

[00:53:16] [SPEAKER_00] Spiritually, mentally, and physically, my goal was to work out every day. You know, before we came on the show, I was talking to your producer, Jay, and he was asking me if I've ever read the book Man's Search for Meaning. And James, day one of walking into prison, well, day two, I was in there. My cellmate, Carlos, Carlos handed me Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl's book. He said, you have to read this book if you're going to survive what you're about to go through. And I read it, James. And I was like, oh my God. It was one of the best books I've ever read. Another book that I read, and this is like feeding yourself mentally,

[00:53:44] [SPEAKER_00] because I believe that you need to read. I think reading is one of the most healthy things you can do and expand your mind. And that's how you exercise your brain. Another book that I read, probably the best book I ever read, best fiction book, was The Count of Monte Cristo. You ever read that book, James? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a long time ago. Oh, it's a great book, man. Yeah. And you know, this guy, Dantes, you know, he gets thrown into a dungeon, and he spends all this time in prison. It was the ultimate book about resiliency. It was the ultimate book about grit. It was the ultimate book about determination.

[00:54:13] [SPEAKER_00] It was the ultimate book about revenge. And it was the ultimate book about forgiveness. Because if you remember the story of The Count of Monte Cristo, he gets out. He's devoted his life to getting revenge on the guys sitting there. He was an innocent guy that went to prison, to a dungeon. He comes in his fortune, and he takes his fortune. Instead of doing all these good things with his fortune he could do, he uses it to build this name of The Count of Monte Cristo so he can get back at his enemies, and he does, James. He gets full revenge on everybody, and at the end of it all, he's empty.

[00:54:42] [SPEAKER_00] He's just spent 38 years or 40 years of his life and acting this revenge. It almost drove him mad, and he learned that the best way to deal with life is to let things go and go live your life. And that's one of the biggest things I think people need to understand in life is that, you know, resentments are the things that hold us back in life, James. And when I got into a 12-step program recovery, I started working through my resentments. A resentment is when you resent a person, a group, a place, or a thing.

[00:55:13] [SPEAKER_00] What I have to do in the 12 steps is understand the role that I play and the problems that I have. Because here's an axiom we have in 12 steps. We believe that whenever I'm disturbed, there's something wrong with me. So I play a role in my problems somewhere, and I have to find what my role is. And if I can find my role in a problem that I have, it's the one thing I can fix, the one thing I can change. It's the only thing that I have control over.

[00:55:53] [SPEAKER_02] But let me ask you a question. Think of the victims of your crime. So, like, you burglarize someone's house, and in the beginning of this show, you said you invaded their sense of security. Like, they thought they were secure in their house, and it turns out they weren't hurt, but their house was penetrated. Things were stolen from them. It hurt them. Who would it? Of course they're going to resent you without even knowing you, and it's really not their fault, right? They don't play.

[00:56:23] [SPEAKER_02] Do they play a part in what happened to them? Like, what's the role of resentment there?

[00:56:29] [SPEAKER_00] James, this is an incredibly good question, and this is an incredibly deep question. So the eighth step of the 12 steps is when you make a list of all the people you've harmed. I don't know how much you know about the 12 steps or your listeners know, so I'm going to explain it. The eighth step is when you make a list of all the people you've harmed, and you become willing to make an amends to those people. And the ninth step is when you actually go out and you make the amends. And they have a caveat in there, except when to do so would cause them or you harm.

[00:56:59] [SPEAKER_00] Now, James, I was a criminal for three years. I broke into a lot of people's house. I broke into way more houses than I went to trial for. There were dozens more burglaries they never caught me for, but they had me dead to rights on about 50 of them, so that's what I stood trial for in the organized crime case. I've got a lot of victims out there. But remember, Texas has the law. I can't go do that ninth step to my victims, right? I can't apologize to my victims. An apology to my victims sends me back to prison. That's what they told me when I got out.

[00:57:29] [SPEAKER_00] So in the ninth step where it says, except when to do so would cause them or you harm, we have a thing called the living amends. A living amends, James, is when you go out and do good deeds. You help other people and you expect nothing in return. So when I'm in prison, James, this is my lifeline, right? I learned about this living amends. I'm like, hey, this is how I'm going to make things right with everybody I've done wrong that I can't apologize to. I'm going to go out and just do good deeds everywhere I go.

[00:57:59] [SPEAKER_00] And that's what a living amends is for. And so that's what I devoted my life to, James. And I don't know if all my victims see the Damon West that is out here now. The Damon West has been out for 10 years and changing the world around me. I'm like, James, I can't believe this is my life. I can't believe I get up every day and I've got this opportunity to go impact the world with a coffee bean message in my story. I'm on the road 20 to 25 days a month speaking somewhere on the planet, sharing my message and story with audiences.

[00:58:28] [SPEAKER_00] I can't believe this is my life. I get to go volunteer in prisons. I get to help children who have incarcerated parents. I do a lot of stuff. That's my living amends. And so I said, I don't always know if my victims see it. Sometimes, man, sometimes, James, my victims reach out to me. And my parole officers told me, because now I'm on parole until the year 2073, James. I'm on parole the rest of my life. I got 48 more years from this recording on parole. But my parole officer has told me if a victim ever reaches out, I can't respond back to them.

[00:58:58] [SPEAKER_00] I have to send the message they send me on social media or whatever. I got to send it to her, and I can't respond. No response at all. And I can't apologize. So very strict guidelines here on this stuff. Man, when my victims reach out to me, there's been some negative conversations, you can imagine, because I did a lot of damage to a lot of people, James. And it's unfortunate. What's an example of a lot of damage? It's property.

[00:59:25] [SPEAKER_00] Things that I've stolen from people that I can't give back and I can't replace. And they have that resentment that they're still holding on to because of this guy that they did it. It's my hope that they can see the guy that I've become and the positive impact I'm having on the world. But you can't force someone to see that because sometimes people can't see past their pain. But I'll tell you this. I'm going to share with you a story that I shared one other time. And it's in Six Dimes and a Nickel. And the chapter is called The Healing Power of Forgiveness.

[00:59:57] [SPEAKER_00] So the biggest victim of all my crimes, it was a burglary I committed over the July 4th holiday weekend in 2008. And remember, I go down on July 30th, 2008 when SWAT gets me. That July 4th weekend, Dustin and I break into a lot of condos. Remember, July 4th, people are out of town. We break into several condos that weekend. One of them is this woman that lives in uptown Dallas. And I won't say her name or anything like that.

[01:00:24] [SPEAKER_00] But we break into her condo and we're dope fiends.

[01:00:27] [SPEAKER_02] And by the way, when you say break in, you pick the lock, you break the lock. How do you actually break in?

[01:00:34] [SPEAKER_00] Oh, good question. So there was one method that we used and it became what's known as a signature crime. And when you have a signature crime, that's what can tie you into a lot of other crimes. So what we would do a lot of times, James, is you have a deadbolt on a door. And if you take a little thin screwdriver, like the ones you work on a computer with, you take a little thin screwdriver and you wedge it behind the wood of the door and the deadbolt behind it, and you put that screwdriver down, there is a catch in there that controls that locking mechanism, that throw.

[01:01:04] [SPEAKER_00] You can take that little screwdriver and just flick it to the side and the whole lock opens up. That's how easy a deadbolt is to get it. It takes about 20 seconds. It leaves a little hole at the top of the door. That was a signature crime. So some of the other places, if I could pick a lock and do it, I would. But it was much quicker to use that deadbolt technique. But that became the thing that they identified a lot of the burglaries with because there was no other group using that kind of method to break into homes.

[01:01:32] [SPEAKER_00] So we break into our house, James, and we're going through it. We're grabbing electronics, and we find a safe in the closet. And we pop the safe. We break into the safe. And inside that safe is a diamond ring. Now, we're dope fiends. We take the diamond ring. Dustin, I take the diamond ring. Actually, he takes it. And we leave with it. What we didn't see in that apartment, James, was the tri-folded American flag on the wall. We didn't see the killed in action plaque that was next to that flag.

[01:02:03] [SPEAKER_00] That ring belonged to her dead fiancé who died in Iraq. He stepped on the IED in Iraq in 2007 fighting for my rights as an American. Even the scumbag that I was, this guy was defending my rights to live in this free world where I'm violating everybody around me. Her deceased fiancé gave her that ring before he went to Iraq and stepped on the IED. The flag was his. The killed in action plaque was his. We didn't see all that.

[01:02:31] [SPEAKER_00] And so when I go to trial, this victim is the first witness of my trial. Because who better to start the trial off than this person that was violated so... I mean, we took from her the most important thing in her life, right? And this is the person I think about, James, the whole time I'm in prison. I mean, I think about her daily in there. And it's almost like this resentment I carry around against me for the... She became the face of all my victims. Let's put it that way.

[01:03:01] [SPEAKER_00] Because that was the person I violated the most. It was almost like a toxic companion that I'm bringing around with me, right? Because it's a reminder of how bad of a guy I was. But I never wanted to forget the pain that I caused this person because I took something so valuable. And so fast forward to whenever I get out of prison. I see the parole board in 2015. The parole board comes to meet with me. And the lady from parole was like, look, you didn't just change yourself. You changed the entire prison around you. And they let me go in 2015.

[01:03:31] [SPEAKER_00] Now, I walk out of prison on November 16, 2015. I'm on parole until the year 2073. So when I walk out, I've got 58 years left on parole, supervised release. And every month I see a parole officer. And I start working in my new life. And I start speaking, start going around, sharing the coffee bean message. And eventually I do an interview with this news station in Dallas. And after that TV interview came out, that night there were two emails that I got.

[01:04:00] [SPEAKER_00] I opened up the first email and it was one of the detectives that took me down. And this detective's email was not a positive email, James. And this guy, he represented society when he took me down. And I violated the social contract. And, you know, he basically thought, he said, you were a bad guy then, you're a bad guy now. I'm not buying any of it. I don't believe in you. And I sat with that email for a second. I thought to myself, you know what? He's entitled to his opinion. But here's what I know about opinions too, James. And other people's opinions of you are none of your business. It's none of your business what other people feel about you. And I let the email go.

[01:04:30] [SPEAKER_00] It's a hard lesson though to internalize. It's very tough to internalize. Look, I say that. Does it mean that I can live that every day? No. I'm into spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection, man. So I'm a work of progress every single day. So I did not respond to his email. Besides, I'm not a criminal anymore. He has no power over me. But the second email, it was from a name I didn't recognize. And the subject line of the email says, Damon, I forgive you.

[01:04:59] [SPEAKER_00] James, I opened the email up and it was her, the victim. I was like, oh my God. And she told me this story in the email from her perspective of how she walked into her apartment that day, her condo that day. And she runs straight for the safe, right? And the ring is gone. It's gone forever. It's gone for good. And she's telling me about the pain that she went through.

[01:05:23] [SPEAKER_00] And man, I'm like, it's all coming back, man, how bad of a guy I was and what I did. And this self-loathing is coming back. This stuff I thought I worked through already about forgiving myself. It's all coming back. And she gets to the last part of the email. Do you mind if I read the last part to you? No, no. Go ahead. This is in the six times and nickel. So she says with that, I need my glasses, man. I'm not going to make it through this.

[01:05:55] [SPEAKER_00] With that, I'd like to say, I forgive you. I'm moving on in the hope that you're a genuine person with a good heart. And the hope that you put others before money or fame as you share your story. And the hope that you and your family never experienced great loss or violation. Most importantly, in the hope that you feel peace in knowing that we are saved from the mistakes we make in this world. Thanks to the unfailing love of Christ.

[01:06:25] [SPEAKER_00] Life is such a gift. May you live it to the fullest, Damon. James, I never thought in my life that I would be forgiven by that person. But not only did she forgive me, she gave me permission to go out and live life. And James, I think that's a lesson there for all of us, right? I mean, she didn't want to carry the burden of the resentment and the hate around any longer. Because she told me.

[01:06:54] [SPEAKER_00] She resented me in the email. She hated what I did and the way it made her feel. But she let it go and she forgave me. So she no longer carries it around. And that's a good lesson for all of us, man. Whatever you're holding back against somebody else or whatever you're holding back against yourself, you got to let it go, man. It's only going to hold you back in life.

[01:07:13] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, and I guess it's not like resenting you was going to solve any problems in her life. Like it wasn't going to make her life better in any way at all. Resentments never make anybody's life better, do the James. And it's almost like you have to be, like, clean to move forward. And resentment is like this smudge on that spiritual cleanliness that she was aspiring to. That we all aspire to, but she was aspiring to.

[01:07:41] [SPEAKER_00] 100%. I think you hit the nail on the head. It's a cleansing that has to happen when you let it go. So in recovery, James, we have this saying that we're always trying to keep our side of the street clean. I can't clean anybody else's side of the street, James. You can't clean anybody else's side of the street but yours. But if we can keep our side of the street clean, then our life is cleansed of all the junk we carry around. That's why it's so important to work a thing like a personal inventory.

[01:08:08] [SPEAKER_00] Personal inventory is, like I told you a while ago, when you try to find the role you're playing in your problem. You know, if you had a business, James, and you didn't run an inventory regularly, you'd probably go broke. You don't know what you have in stock, what you're out of stock of, what you need to restock on. And a personal inventory allows us to work through all this stuff in life and get rid of our spiritual baggage and let it go. And that's one of the big lessons I took from her email and her forgiveness of me is that we've got to let things go. We can't hold onto these things.

[01:08:36] [SPEAKER_00] And this is a very important lesson for where we are right now in America, where we are in the world right now. There's a lot of hate out there. There's a lot of evil. There's a lot of dissent. But we can only control what goes on inside of us. You can't control that outside of you.

[01:08:50] [SPEAKER_02] And it's hard to tell this to people because then it seems like you're affecting their identity. Like, let's say someone's feeling hateful because of some issue. And they think life's going to be better once this issue is over. You can't tell them. People have to kind of be ready for the lesson. And I don't know if you ever get really ready for that in most cases.

[01:09:13] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. I mean, you hit the money. You hit me on the head again, James. I mean, I think that every person could use a 12-step program recovery, not just people that are addicts. It's one of the reasons why I wrote the book Six Dimes on a Nickel because the principles I live my life by are principles I think everybody should have access to in this world.

[01:09:34] [SPEAKER_00] And what the 12 steps does is it gives us a way to work through our stuff in life and become the best version of us. And that's the spiritual awakening part. I don't believe human beings are capable of making the kind of gains that I made without a spiritual component. And when I say spiritual again, James, I want to really hit this on with your audience. I'm not telling you to go be a Christian like Damon West. I'm telling you to go out and find whatever it is your higher power is.

[01:10:03] [SPEAKER_00] And that's where you turn the things over to that you don't control in life because there's very few things you have control over. And if you spend your time trying to control things you can't control, you really run the risk of becoming a prisoner in your own mind. And I'm going to tell you something, James. You can take this from the guy that spent almost 10 years in the joint or the professor who teaches about the joint. The hardest prison to do time in, James, is the prison in your mind.

[01:10:26] [SPEAKER_00] I meet more people out here in the free world who are locked up than I ever did when I served time in a real prison because more people are imprisoned by their thoughts, by their things, and by their prejudices than by steel bars and barbed wire and concrete combined. You can't become a prisoner in your own mind. It's the hardest prison to ever get out of.

[01:11:00] [SPEAKER_02] And so, you know, and you mentioned this a little in the book, you know, we are the average of the five people we spend our time with or the average of the thoughts we think. And so on. But when you're in prison, how do you take, obviously you're not surrounded by five good people in prison. Maybe you are because maybe there's other people going through a transformation. But how did you take yourself and, you know, become the coffee bean, transform the prison? Like what did that mean?

[01:11:31] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, so that's a very good question, James, because this is the whole application of like when I go speak. And, you know, the back half of the presentation is about, you know, how I became a coffee bean, the ways of being a coffee bean. So one of the main ways about being a coffee bean was having positive body language everywhere I go. Muhammad told me, he said, you either infect the room you walk into with negative energy or you affect the room with positive energy. Infect, affect. You're the disease, you're the cure. However, another way about being a coffee bean was serving other people. Servant leadership, James.

[01:12:00] [SPEAKER_00] I believe servant leadership is helping other people reach their goals in life, helping to raise other people to a different station in life. Because when we help other people grow, we grow too. Servant leadership, it brings out the best in us when we help other people grow. When I was in prison, I learned about servant leadership. I asked myself, how do I serve these guys around me? Well, the answer came to me. You know, I had a very privileged life, James. The lady from parole that interviewed me, she mentioned this. She's like, you're the most privileged person I've ever seen to come inside this prison with a life sentence. I had a bachelor's degree when I went to prison, James.

[01:12:30] [SPEAKER_00] Most of the guys around me, their education stopped in the seventh grade or eighth grade. So I opened a free tutoring service in prison. I taught guys how to read and write. I would get these men ready for the GED test so if they ever get out of prison one day, they could become a better husband or a better father. Now, what this did is it gave me an opportunity to teach these other guys about community. I believe that when we have a healthy community, a healthy community, James, is where everybody comes together and they say, hey, this is my talent that I have to offer to the community.

[01:12:59] [SPEAKER_00] And if anybody can use this talent, I'm over here and I've got this talent for the community. A healthy community is a place where everybody takes pride in where they live. I walked around prison when I first got there, James, and I'd pick up trash when I saw it on the ground. There's a lot of trash in the prison, James. Man, these guys would laugh at me, man. What are you doing, white boy? It's not your trash. This is in front of my home. This is, if it's trashed in front of my home, I don't want my home to look like trash. And they would say, this isn't your home, man. This is a prison. Man, this is where I get my mail.

[01:13:27] [SPEAKER_00] Anywhere you get your mail is where you live, man. And so I eventually got these guys to understand this is home and we got to make this home the best place possible. In prison, they got to rule, James. Nothing's free in prison because everything has to have a cost to it. Everything is transactional in prison. You can't accept anything for free because there's predators in there, James. There's predators in there that say, hey, I gave you this thing the other day. You didn't give me anything back. I'm going to take something from you. So you always want to make sure it's transactional.

[01:13:53] [SPEAKER_00] So these guys that I'm teaching to read and write, they're asking me, how do I pay you for this? Because I can't take it for free. And that's what I told them. You can't pay it back to me, but you can pay it forward to someone else. This is where it got really good, James. James. So a guy I'm teaching how to read, right? He's a real good prison artist. They got some really good prison artists in there, man. They got some really talented people in prison, too, by the way, James. They've got MacGyvers. They've got mechanics. They've got all kinds of stuff. But this guy was a prison artist. And I saw him one day.

[01:14:22] [SPEAKER_00] And this other guy that is an indigent inmate. Indigent means you have no money. This guy's indigent. And this guy really wants to send a card home to his family at Christmastime. These artists are the ones. That's the busiest time of year is around holidays and birthdays and stuff like that. Because that's when the prison artist can sell you their wares. So this guy that's a prison artist that I'm teaching how to read, he sees this guy over there asking around for someone to make a Christmas card for him, but he has no money to pay. And everybody's slamming the door on this guy.

[01:14:50] [SPEAKER_00] I watched this guy go up to that guy and said, hey, man, you want a card for your family? Well, guess what? West over here is teaching me how to read. He told me I had to pay it forward. So I'm going to draw you the best card you've ever had. And I want you to give it to your family. And the guy's like, well, I can't pay you for that. Don't pay it back. Pay it forward. Man, I watch a week later, this guy that got the card. He's now, he's pushing the handicap inmates to chow. They got a lot of guys in wheelchairs and guys that can't make it around in there.

[01:15:17] [SPEAKER_00] He didn't have money, but he saw that he could use his, he could use his ability to walk to help another inmate out. And you just saw this stuff spinning around. These guys learn about a community. And another thing I would do to change the world in there, I tell them these four words that you usually hear from a coach or a teacher, maybe a parent. I believe in you. And those four words are magical, man. When you hear someone tell you they believe in you, man, it's not your voice in your head. It's someone from the outside confirming it, man.

[01:15:46] [SPEAKER_00] And I would go around telling these guys, man, I believe in you. I believe you can be anything you want. Just because you're in prison, you made these mistakes. It doesn't affect your past. It doesn't matter. Your past doesn't define you. And I would tell them all the time, I believe in you. And that had an effect on them, James. And I think all these things culminating together is one of the reasons why parole let me go. Because the lady from parole was like, hey, you didn't just change yourself. You changed the whole prison around you. And she asked me one question at the parole hearing. She said, this will be a one-question test. Here's my question.

[01:16:14] [SPEAKER_00] Determines whether or not you're going to go home or you're staying 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. And James, I knew the one word. I knew the one word because I'd been living the one word. I knew the one word because I learned it in recovery. The one word was useful. And I said, I just want to be useful. Because, James, I believe every human being wants to feel value. We all want to feel like we are useful.

[01:16:41] [SPEAKER_00] And, man, once we feel like we're useful, we feel like we're part of something bigger than us, we feel like we're part of that team, we can become the best versions of us. And that's what I told that lady. I can be useful inside this prison or I can be useful in the free world again. And they opened up that big gate, November 16, 2015. I walked out of prison on parole for the rest of my life.

[01:17:01] [SPEAKER_02] And so, obviously, that was a great feeling.

[01:17:04] [SPEAKER_00] Like, who picked you up? My mom and my dad, man. They were there waiting for me that day. And, man, I'm going to tell you something, man. And it's like you see in the movies, James. They dress you out in some clothes. You have your few possessions in the world. And they escort you to the front gate. The front gate that seemed immovable for all those years, it opens up one day. And you get to step outside two steps. And they slam the gate behind you. And you're standing in the free world again. And, man, when I walked out of prison that first day, I'm going to tell you something, man. The sky looked like it was bluer on the other side of the gate. The grass was greener. The air was lighter.

[01:17:33] [SPEAKER_00] It's a trick of your mind, right? I mean, you're just two feet past where you were standing before. But it's that weight lifted off of you, of the physical confinement that you had. But I tell people all the time, that day that I walked out of prison, it was a trifecta of freedom for me. Because long ago in prison, I had already freed myself mentally, right? Mentally, I was free. I was never locked up in my mind. Spiritually, I had already freed myself. The only thing I couldn't free myself of was physically, right?

[01:18:02] [SPEAKER_00] I had to wait for the state of Texas to open that door. And that day, November 16, 2015, I was now physically free. It was my trifecta of freedom. And I walked out. I found my parents' car in the parking lot. We're hugging. We're crying. They shoved me in the back of the car and they drove me home. And I say home because, James, I lived in my parents' spare bedroom for the first two years I was out of prison. Let me tell you something. I was grateful to have their spare bedroom to live in because there's a lot of people that get out of prison, James. They don't have a home.

[01:18:30] [SPEAKER_00] But let me really paint this picture for your audience. I'm 40 years old. I just got out of prison. I'm on parole for the rest of my life. I got a job making just above minimum wage and I live in my parents' spare bedroom. Which way you ladies swipe on that guy on the dating apps, right? That was a tough dating profile. I went on the dating apps. Not with that profile. But, man, I got out and I was free again, James. And that's when the hard work really began because I had to start putting my life together.

[01:19:00] [SPEAKER_00] And thankfully, I had a program recovery that guided my way and the frustrating days I could deal with because I understand the idea of control. I don't control most of the things that are going around me. I do control the world inside of me. And, you know, I started going around sharing my story. I knew I had a great story in the mesh of the coffee bean, but there weren't a lot of places for me to share my story. But in my parents' spare bedroom, there was a mirror in there. A little vanity mirror my mom had when I moved in. Every night for two years, James, I would practice my presentation in front of that mirror.

[01:19:30] [SPEAKER_00] I'd get in my reps. And I believe anything you would have been good at in life, you've got to practice that in life. You've got to get in your reps. And there's no such thing as an overnight success. I know that. So I lived in prison, and now I'm living in the free world, and I'm practicing in front of this mirror. And a buddy of mine invites – I think the right opportunity, James, is going to be the world of college football because I played Division I college football. But, you know, 2017, it's been 20 years. It took my last snap. The coaches don't know me. I don't know them. But a buddy of mine sneaks me into the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Award in Houston, Texas that year.

[01:19:59] [SPEAKER_00] Houston's 90 miles from me. And so there's eight coaches in the room that night. I run around the room. I shake every coach's hand. I give them my pitch. And seven coaches tell me no in the first hour. It's a bloodbath of no's, man. I'm getting rejected everywhere. In one hour, man, I'm standing by the door. I'm getting ready to walk out and leave. The voice in my head is telling me to go home. The voice in my head is telling me I'm imposter. I don't belong in the room. But, man, I used the technique that I picked up in prison. I stopped listening to myself, and I started talking to myself.

[01:20:28] [SPEAKER_00] And here's why I don't put a lot of weight in the value of what I hear in my head. Because sometimes the voice in my head is fear talking to me. And I learned a long time ago that fear's a liar. I don't want to listen to fear. So that's when I start talking to myself. And I'm telling myself, Damon, you survived prison. This 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 you in the room, James. He just beat Alabama two nights before for the national championship. Everybody wants a piece of this guy's time. But I stalked Dabo Sweeney around that room.

[01:20:57] [SPEAKER_00] And I finally get in front of Dabo. I give him my pitch. And it falls flat. He asks for my card. I give it to him. And he takes off. It's a no. But I felt good about the last no. Because I left it all on the field that night. And that's one of the biggest lessons I learned from playing sports. Or like Muhammad said, you don't have to win all your fights. But you've got to fight all your fights. So I went home that night. I slept like a baby. And forgot about that night until four months later. The director of football operations at Clemson University emails me. And he said, hey, Coach Sweeney met your award show in Houston.

[01:21:26] [SPEAKER_00] He'd love to have you come talk to his team. Do you have August 1st open? I'm like, man, I got every first open, bro. I got nothing going on. So August 1st, 2017, James, I go speak to the Clemson Tigers, the defending national championship college football. And I get done with a presentation tonight. Dabo's in my face now. And Dabo's a high energy guy. He's like, man, that's the most amazing story I've ever heard. I've never seen my players respond with it to a speaker. He said, have you been to Alabama yet? And I'm like, no, man, I've been to Clemson. Dabo hadn't been anywhere. He said, well, I just text Saban from the back of the room. We'll see what Saban says.

[01:21:56] [SPEAKER_00] The next day, Saban's guy calls me. He's the ops guy from Alabama. Hey, man, Dabo called Coach Saban last night. Coach Saban, can't wait to hear your story. How does August 21st, 7.30 p.m. work for your calendar? Pretty good. I don't even have a calendar, brother. And then Dabo Sweeney starts calling every coach. Kirby Smart, man, right where you are in Atlanta, man. Kirby Smart calls Lincoln Riley, Chip Kelly, Lane Kiffin, Ryan Day. Every coach in America calls me. But the biggest event hadn't happened yet, James. I hadn't met the second servant leader.

[01:22:25] [SPEAKER_00] It was August of 2018. I get a phone call that day out of the blue. And on the other end of my phone is a guy named John Gordon. Now, for those of y'all that don't know who John Gordon is, John Gordon is one of the biggest motivational speakers and authors in America. This is the energy bus guy. And I'm like, John, brother, I know who you are. How do you know who I am? He said, Dabo Sweeney. He said, I just got done speaking to Clemson. Dabo brought up in the 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.

[01:22:55] [SPEAKER_00] Let's deliver this message to the world. He said, well, you write a book with me. We'll call it The Coffee Bean. James, in the summer of 2019, 10 years after I first heard this story from Muhammad in a jail cell in Dallas, the book, The Coffee Bean, comes out, took the world by storm. The whole planet Earth, man. It starts off in America first, right? Four to six weeks, it rides high at the top of every bestseller list, gets a global publishing deal. Global publishing is rare. That's when they repute your book in every language in the world. And the book starts appearing in Chinese and Spanish and Arabic, French, Italian, German.

[01:23:24] [SPEAKER_00] And then 2020 comes. A global pandemic hits. The whole world becomes a pot of boiling water. And the whole world is searched for the right message. And that's when so many people discover the coffee bean and the coffee bean guy named Damon West. James, my life goes from this. And for those of y'all listening, it's a horizontal flat line to this vertical, man. My life took off and it hadn't stopped yet. Since 2021, I've been on the road 20 to 25 days of every month sharing the coffee bean message somewhere. But it all goes back to that one night, James.

[01:23:54] [SPEAKER_00] January 11, 2017. That night that I had seven no's in the first hour. And I was 10 feet from the door, about to walk out on all my dreams because the voice in my head told me I didn't belong there. And if I walk out that door that night, James, we're not having this conversation today. And the world doesn't have the coffee bean message.

[01:24:09] [SPEAKER_02] And, you know, I think it circles back to that first book you read in prison also, The Man's Search for Meaning. It's not like he was thinking, or it's not like you were thinking, oh, I need to make a lot of money, so I'm going to do this coffee bean message. You were thinking, this is an authentic message that really helped me, and I want to share it.

[01:24:31] [SPEAKER_00] It can help everybody else.

[01:24:33] [SPEAKER_02] Exactly. And I think it's that authenticity where there's just no BS in the middle smudging it. You know, like, oh, I need money to prove that I can come back from this. No, it's just you had this authentic, pure message, and that's what drove everything that followed.

[01:24:51] [SPEAKER_00] 100%, James. You hit the nail on the head again. At this point when I write the coffee bean, man, I work at a law firm in Beaumont, Texas. I'm making about $30,000 a year, and it's the best job ever because I'm not in prison anymore. The bar was set pretty low, man, about what it needs for me to have a good day. Every day that I wake up and my feet don't hit the cold, crunking floor of a prison cell, I'm winning. And so I'm winning in life, and I'm not making any money. Money didn't matter to me. I already met my wife. My wife is a nurse practitioner.

[01:25:20] [SPEAKER_00] She told me, Damon, I don't care if you stay at this job making $30,000 a year the rest of your life. I was never driven by money. The money came later because of the authenticity, the purity of it. And that's one of the things Dabo told me. He said, your story, your message is so authentic. The world needs to hear it. And James, the world did need to hear it. But here's the lesson for everybody else listening. You know, you don't give up when times get tough. You don't quit because life gets hard. You don't not ask your questions.

[01:25:49] [SPEAKER_00] The only question you know the answer to in life, James, is the one you do not ask. That answer is no every time because you never ask your questions. You've got to put yourself out there. I think Wayne Gretzky may have said it best. He said, you miss 100% of the shots you do not take. So you've got to go take your shots in life, James. You've got to see what happens.

[01:26:07] [SPEAKER_02] Well, Damon, this has been such an inspiring story plus a riveting story. I mean, you've had incredible downs and then incredible ups. And, you know, six nickels and a dime or six dimes and a nickel. Sorry. That's it. Six dimes and a nickel. People should definitely read it. But also the change agent and the coffee bean books. And look, I hope you come on the podcast again. There's plenty more we could talk about.

[01:26:36] [SPEAKER_02] And I really I think it's so great what's happened to you. And I really am encouraging people to read the books and listen to your story and apply it in their own lives. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been such a pleasure talking to you. And you're right. You're a great storyteller, too. I've been riveted the entire time.

[01:26:55] [SPEAKER_00] James, I appreciate the opportunity, man. Thank you for letting me come on and share my story with your audience. I'm a big fan of yours. So it's been a treat to come on here today. And look, just to give you a little teaser in the book, six dimes and a nickel, because the rest of my books left off before I found Muhammad. And so I finally found Muhammad, the guy that told me the story of the coffee bean in a jail cell in Dallas County.

[01:27:16] [SPEAKER_00] And so in the book, six dimes and a nickel, it's a story about me finding Muhammad and what I was able to do to honor my friend with the message he gave me that didn't just change my life, but changed the entire world because he gave the coffee bean message to the world through a guy named Damon West. So six dimes and a nickel, man. It's out on Amazon right now.

[01:27:34] [SPEAKER_02] Well, congratulations. And thank you again. I mean, it's an incredible story. And there's so much more when people read your books, all the little things that happen in between these stories. But thank you once again. And I appreciate incredibly that you came on the podcast. I know you're a busy guy.

[01:27:51] [SPEAKER_00] Thank you very much, James. I appreciate it, man. Thanks for the opportunity today, brother. It was such a great time with you. Thanks.