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The Coffee Bean Man - Be the Change: Damon West · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:02
  When your worst fear becomes your reality.
• 0:04
  Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy, welcome to the Nightmare success in our
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  podcast where we explore how to overcome your fears and
• 0:10
  nightmares that set yourself free.
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  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:15
  Buffalo with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:19
  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes sad.
• 0:23
  There's some humor, but hopefully you can come away with
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  a nugget of something that'll help you knock down some of the
• 0:28
  prisons you built up in your own mind.
• 0:33
  All right, welcome back nightmare success and not
• 0:35
  listeners. This is where you come for what
• 0:37
  happens when your worst fear becomes your reality.
• 0:39
  How do you adapt survive, overcome, set yourself free.
• 0:42
  Don't forget if you like this, anything, anything you got in
• 0:46
  this thing, follow, subscribe, share like comment.
• 0:49
  I love it when everybody does that so much helps the show.
• 0:52
  So I got to tell you guys. I, I am so excited to be
• 0:57
  interviewing my guy here, Damon W you know, every once in a
• 1:01
  while I, I feel very lucky that I had this show to be able to
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  share and, and these stories on this platform.
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  But Damon W I, I listened to him.
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  I, I found him on the Ed my last show and, and he's told some
• 1:15
  stories on there that I was like, man, I, I would love to
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  interview this guy sometime. Well, Jeremy Larson, I want to
• 1:24
  give a big shout out to Jeremy because he connected Damon and
• 1:28
  me and I so much appreciate that.
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  Jeremy, so high five to you. So who in the world is Damon W?
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  I'm sure some of you have heard of him because he's been all
• 1:41
  over everywhere speaking. USA TODAY says Damon West is the
• 1:45
  modern day Shawshank Redemption for those who listen to the show
• 1:49
  quite a bit. I missed I mentioned Shawshank
• 1:52
  quite a bit and it's one of my favorite movies and it it's it's
• 1:57
  got so many different layers of me and I when I really got it
• 2:02
  was when I was watching Shawshank when I was 11 worth
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  and I really got all the layers of the meaning of that movie.
• 2:07
  But wow. Let me give you a little bit of
• 2:10
  rundown on Damon W. He was sentenced to 65 years in
• 2:15
  prison, Texas prison. But what he has done since he
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  has been out. I'm going to give you some
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  background, Daniel W. He's a college professor,
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  professor of criminal justice, internationally known keynote
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  speaker, three time Wall Street Journal best selling author.
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  His best selling business book, The Coffee Bean, a simple lesson
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  to create positive change was listed by Forbes in the top 20
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  books you need to read. The Crush 2020.
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  His autobiography, The Change Agent, How a former college QB
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  sentenced to life in prison transformed his world, bitterly
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  tells how he transformed the pot of boiling water that is a Texas
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  Maxim Security prison into his pot of coffee.
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  At 20 years old, he was a Division One starting
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  quarterback at the University of North Texas when he suffered a
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  career ending injury and he turned into hardcore drugs to
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  cope with disappointments of his life.
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  When he was introduced to methamphetamines, he became
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  instantly hooked and the lives of so many innocent people would
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  be forever changed by the choices he made in order to feed
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  his insatiable meth habit. After a fateful discussion
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  during his incarceration with a seasoned inmate, Damon had a
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  spiritual awakening. Damon emerged from over seven
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  years of prison a changed man. His story of redemption and grit
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  and determination continues to inspire artists this day and
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  listen to the people that he's spoken to with his coffee bean
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  message. He he's spoken to Walmart State
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  Farm sports teams like the Dallas Cowboys in Minnesota
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  Timberwolves, Clemson, Alabama, Georgia.
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  The US Army has has even incorporated be a coffee bean
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  mindset and to their resilience training his Wall Street Journal
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  best selling book, the locker room.
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  How great teams heal, hurt, overcome adversity and build
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  unity is being optioned for film adaptation.
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  Wow, I can't wait to unpack all this with Damon.
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  Before we do, I just want to recognize our show sponsor, Auto
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  deserve Auto Plaza direct telling Brett from nightmare
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  success sent you Damon W welcome in my man, how are you doing?
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  Brent, I am doing so well and like the conversation we had off
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  air, it's like one of the so many times this happens to it,
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  maybe I'll learn from it. All right.
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  I wish we were recording that because we had a great back and
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  forth. I learned some stuff about you
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  and I always want to learn about the host.
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  And man, I just love your story because you've overcome the most
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  what I think is the most serious adversity you can face, and
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  you've become a better version of yourself as a result of it.
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  So I love being around people like that and I'm excited to mix
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  it up with you today, brother. I love it man.
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  I can't wait to jump into this. I I know a lot about the stuff
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  that happened with you from your college forward.
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  What can you tell us a little bit, Damon, about growing up at
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  the old, the young Damon W How you know your mom, dad,
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  siblings, all that? Yeah, absolutely.
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  So, and this is in this story. This actually comes up when I'm
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  in my parole interview and this is in 2015.
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  You know, I've done, I've been in prison for seven years at
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  this point and we'll, we'll get into the whole thing.
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  I got sent this to life in prison for engaging in organized
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  criminal activity. Rico.
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  I went down for a Rico case in the state of Texas and I was
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  the, the mastermind, the ringleader of the entire Rico
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  organization. So I, I took the hit hard and I,
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  and I was guilty of everything they said, right?
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  So I get it. The way the law is written, I'm
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  guilty of everything. And I'm at this parole
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  interview. And the lady from parole is
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  she's flipping through my, they call it your jacket.
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  You know, your jacket's got everything about you.
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  She's flipping through my jacket, this file.
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  And after about 20 seconds, she closes the file.
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  She pushes away from her and she says, yeah, you know, Mr. WI
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  really came here today to ask you one question for this parole
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  hearing. But the answer to my question is
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  not in the file about the guy that I'm reading about who
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  committed all those crimes in Dallas, TX all those years ago.
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  And the crimes that I committed, Brett, were property crimes.
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  I mean, I was a meth addict breaking into people's homes and
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  I was the leader of a bunch of other meth addicts breaking
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  homes. And, and none of these crimes
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  are, are physical aggravated crimes, meaning there was no
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  physical victim. I never never saw my victims.
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  They never saw me. No one was physically hurt.
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  No weapons were used. So these are not violent crimes.
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  And but she's saying that the answer to the question I want to
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  ask you today isn't in this file.
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  She said we honestly don't see a lot of Damon W come through the
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  Texas criminal justice system because you had it all.
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  You had every advantage, every privilege, every opportunity
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  over everybody else your entire life.
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  She said, honestly, you're the you're the definition of a
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  privileged person in this country.
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  And she read that file correctly.
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  Brent. I mean, I had it all, brother.
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  I mean, I grew up in this little Southeast Texas town called Port
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  Arthur, TX Port Arthur is down where Louisiana and Texas
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  touched down to the Gulf Coast. Little blue collar town.
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  Little Refinery Town came from a great family.
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  My mom was a nurse. My dad was a sports writer.
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  My dad, my dad, he made history in Texas in 1971.
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  He was the first sports writer in Southeast Texas to put black
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  athletes on the front page of the sports page 1970.
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  One first time. It ever happens, man.
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  And when my dad puts a black running back from Port Arthur
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  Lincoln High School on the covered sports page, people lose
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  their minds over that. Back in 71, man.
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  They're breaking my dad's windows out.
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  They slit his tires. They send my dad hate mail.
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  But let me tell you what my dad did with all the hate mail when
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  I was a little boy growing up in the 80s.
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  He comes down one day from the attic.
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  He's got this box. It's got all these envelopes,
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  all these letters in it. It was all the hate mail that he
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  received from back in the 70s. And he sits me down on the couch
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  as a child and he makes me read every letter of hate mail, every
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  nasty negative word that people say about my father and my
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  mother because my dad puts a black guy on the cover of sports
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  page. But my dad told me this.
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  He said, Damon, I want you to see what it looks like to take a
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  stand and do the right thing because he said sometimes day
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  men in life taking a stand and doing the right thing means
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  you're going to stand alone. But he said it's always OK to
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  stand alone as long as you're standing on the right side of
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  history. And this is a, you know, you get
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  this because you've been to prison.
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  This is the principle. I'm going to rebuild an entire
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  life 1 standing on the right side, standing alone, right?
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  But it's 7-8 years old. I'm not really understanding
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  what the the principle is here. But 25 years later, it comes
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  into full play. I was a good student growing up,
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  but I was a great athlete. God blessed me with a cannon for
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  a right arm. And down here in Texas, we got
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  this little thing y'all may have heard about called high school
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  football. Friday Night Lights, Friday
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  Night Lights, brother. And it's, I mean, it is no joke.
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  I mean, if anything, the movie downplays a little bit.
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  It is intoxicating to grow up in.
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  It's it's over the top. I'll give you that.
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  It's way over. Damon, I can't imagine 'cause I
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  was thinking about your life, you know, reading up on you and
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  what is it like to be a guy with a rifle cannon arm as a
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  quarterback in Texas? And I mean, what?
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  Because that's everybody goes to high school and a lot of guys,
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  you know, are pretty good, you know, and, and different sports.
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  But being a quarterback in Texas in high school, what, what does
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  that feel like? Honestly, it was like touching a
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  live wire and for a guy like me, man, I loved the attention it
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  got. I mean, honestly, to be totally
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  candid, I don't know if I've ever said this on the podcast.
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  The only reason I started playing quarterback in junior
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  high was because I meant the quarterback was the guy that got
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  all the attention and all the girls.
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  Like the? Quarterback, right?
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  So I was like, that's what I want to be when I grow up.
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  And I started working really hard at it.
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  And, but I, I saw that, you know, the quarterback is the
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  leader, man. He's the smartest guy on the
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  field. He's the, you know, he's, he
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  knows what all 22 people are doing right.
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  If you're really doing it the right way, It's a very cerebral
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  position. But honestly, growing up in
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  Texas and being the quarterback of a, of a high school football
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  team, football is everything in the state of Texas.
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  I mean, and on Friday nights, the town they come to worship
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  really, I mean, in, in, in these stadiums are like cathedrals
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  that you're in. Texas high school football has
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  two $300 million stadiums in it, man.
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  They passed bonds in Texas to build stadiums that colleges
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  don't even have. And you're growing up in that.
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  And the whole town's attention is on you, the coach's attention
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  on you. But I'll tell you a side effect
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  from this thing that wasn't good for me is that, and I knew it
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  too, and I would play into it is I was Teflon, brother.
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  There is nothing that I could do to really get in trouble.
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  The consequence of my decisions, I didn't have to fill those.
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  That was the quarterback. I'm the man.
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  What are you going to do? You going to bench me?
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  I mean, it's like, so I was arrogant.
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  I was cocky, full of myself. Three-year starting quarterback
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  for a 5A school right and 5A was the biggest division.
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  That's huge. You have to be a three-year
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  starter. It's it's unheard of.
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  It's not unheard of. It's hard to do not heard of
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  people do it, but I got a scholarship to play football at
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  the University of North Texas Division One college football.
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  And by the time I'm 20, I'm the starting quarterback brand.
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  I have shown that I can do it at the high school, at the highest
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  level, Texas high school. Now I'm in Division One college
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  football. And by the time I'm 20, my red
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  shirt sophomore year, I'm the starting quarterback for a
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  Division One team. And then my head was this big
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  man. Sure.
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  But life and life has a way of giving us these days that I call
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  fork in the roads. Yeah, fork in the roads are
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  different, right? Those are the hard days.
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  You get knocked down, you get back up, you dust yourself off.
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  But you got a choice to make it to fork in the road.
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  You either make the right choice to go the right way or the wrong
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  choice to go the wrong direction.
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  My my fork in the road. And my entire life happens.
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  Brent. On September 21st, 1996, we're
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  playing Texas A&M that day. I'm.
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  Dude, I'm 20. We're playing in College
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  Station. Great place to play a football
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  game. College.
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  Oh, God, Yeah. And I've played.
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  I've played. LSU at.
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  This point, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arizona State, you know, Jake
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  Palmer was a quarterback. You know, Pat Tillman was on
• 13:01
  defense on that team. Yeah, but there I am driving my
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  team, my team down the foot against the Aggies 3rd play of
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  this game in 1996. I go down, it's a career in an
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  injury, never play college football again.
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  And when I get up to this fork in the road in life and football
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  is gone, my identity was gone with it.
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  You know, I made the mistake of wrapping my identity up into
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  something external. And that's when the really the
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  the chemicals start happening. The drugs come into life because
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  the hallmark of being an addict is you can't live life on life's
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  terms. And I start putting in the
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  chemicals to change the way I feel.
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  It's cocaine as ecstasy as pills.
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  But I was a functional addict. Yeah, I function.
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  I mean, I was highly functional. I graduate college.
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  I work in Congress, in Washington.
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  DCI work for. I work for a guy running for
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  president of the United States. 2004, I moved back to Dallas to
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  be a stockbroker for UBS, one of the biggest banks in the world.
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  And it was at that job as a broker in 2004 that another
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  broker turns me on the methamphetamine one day when he
• 13:57
  sees me sleeping at work. And you know, honestly, after
• 14:00
  that, my life and the lives of so many other innocent people
• 14:03
  would forever be changed. It's so incredible how you just
• 14:07
  told that story because I interviewed a guy, Kyle Kilasen,
• 14:12
  he was in as a teenager, he was number 2 to Tiger Woods, He was
• 14:16
  the number one player in Hawaii and and he had everything.
• 14:20
  And he tells almost the exact same story on the maths part of
• 14:24
  it 'cause it was all over the island and he never touched it.
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  And it was that one day and it changed his life forever.
• 14:31
  And it's it that's such a powerful that drug can can
• 14:35
  absolutely talking about forks in the road.
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  I mean it changes everything. And it's, and it's, and, and
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  when I'm doing my presentations, 'cause that's, I mean, I speak
• 14:44
  all over the world telling my story and the story, the coffee
• 14:47
  bean, which we'll get to in a little bit.
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  But when I get to this part of the story, it's another fork in
• 14:52
  the road, right? Because the football game where
• 14:55
  I look, my, my career ends as a fork in the road because my
• 14:57
  identity is wrapped up in being a football player.
• 14:59
  I've lost my identity and in in order to cope, I get into drugs
• 15:03
  and I become an addict. And when I try meth for the
• 15:06
  first time, it was like touching a lot of wire, you know, I'm
• 15:09
  instantly hooked just like that. And, and I couldn't give
• 15:12
  everything away fast enough for that drug.
• 15:14
  And that's what meth is one of the most evil, most destructive,
• 15:17
  most addictive drugs ever created by man.
• 15:19
  It's made in a lab. It's made to chemically get you
• 15:22
  hooked. It's made to do it.
• 15:24
  Right. Yeah, I smoked it one time.
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  Boom, Instantly hooked, and I start giving everything away.
• 15:29
  Because that's what addicts do, Brent.
• 15:31
  We give things away. The addicts addiction in a
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  nutshell. I, I work a 12 step program
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  recovery today. I go to my meetings all the
• 15:39
  time. I got a sponsor, work the steps.
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  I'll do this for the rest of my life.
• 15:43
  But addiction in a nutshell is this addicts give up their goals
• 15:48
  to meet their behaviors. That's what addicts do.
• 15:52
  We give up our goals to be our behaviors.
• 15:54
  Driven people focus people successful.
• 15:56
  Such a strong statement that that is powerful.
• 15:58
  That's but and that's like, you know, people will say, well, I'm
• 16:02
  not an alcoholic, Rod. Well, it just depends.
• 16:04
  I mean, do you give up your goals to meet your behaviors?
• 16:06
  You know, and if if you're giving up goals and you could be
• 16:09
  addicted to anything, Brent, I mean, we're not just talking
• 16:12
  about drugs and alcohol, food, money, clothing, shopping, sex,
• 16:16
  gambling, pornography, Internet, the Instagram, the Internet,
• 16:19
  whatever it is. Addicts give up their goals to
• 16:22
  meet their behaviors. Driven people focus people,
• 16:24
  successful people. They'll give up a bad behavior
• 16:27
  to meet their goal. But not addicts.
• 16:30
  What a great way. What a great nugget of wisdom
• 16:32
  there. That's that's, that's strong.
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  And I gave it all away. I gave up my job, my home, my
• 16:38
  car, my savings account, my family, my tethering to God.
• 16:41
  And 18 months I go from working on Wall Street to living on the
• 16:44
  streets of Dallas. Homes, living in dope houses,
• 16:48
  sleeping in cars become a criminal at this point.
• 16:51
  And it's petty crimes. At first it's, you know, it's
• 16:53
  shoplifting, breaking into cars, breaking the storage units.
• 16:56
  Then eventually I'm breaking into people's homes and this is
• 16:59
  a serious crime too. I don't want to, I don't want to
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  under score this at all. This is the ugly part of the
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  story. We have to talk about my
• 17:06
  victims. When I broke in to my victims
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  homes, I didn't just steal property for my victims, Brent.
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  I stole something way more valuable for them.
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  I stole their sense of security and that's something they'll
• 17:18
  never get back. And I can't replace it.
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  I can't fix it, I can't change it.
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  I can't even apologize to the state of Texas told me it's a
• 17:25
  felony to apologize to the victim of one of your crimes.
• 17:28
  They will send you back to prison if you make an apology to
• 17:31
  your victims. So my victims live with that for
• 17:34
  the rest of their lives. But after three years of
• 17:36
  committing property crimes against the people of Dallas,
• 17:39
  TX, a Dallas SWAT team on July 30th, 2008 puts an end to the
• 17:45
  Uptown burglaries. The day that SWAT arrested me or
• 17:50
  a shift in mindset. You know, you talk about the
• 17:53
  nightmare scenarios and going through it, a SWAT team coming
• 17:57
  through your living room is definitely a bad day.
• 18:00
  But I look now in life, I'm always looking for the
• 18:03
  opportunity and the adversity. What's the opportunity that life
• 18:06
  has given me through this adverse situation?
• 18:08
  And the SWAT team coming in now, after all these years, looking
• 18:11
  back, I realized that the Dallas SWAT team did not just arrest me
• 18:15
  that day. They rescued me that day.
• 18:19
  They pulled me out of a situation, Brent, that I can't
• 18:21
  get myself out of. And in fact, the angels in my
• 18:24
  story don't have wings by angels have assault rifles, Shields,
• 18:29
  helmets. They're coming through the
• 18:30
  window. They bust the door off the
• 18:32
  hinges to pull me out of that world that I was in.
• 18:34
  The Dallas SWAT team saved me that day, Bram.
• 18:37
  What were you thinking, Damon? I mean, having something like
• 18:41
  that happen, you know, with the guns drawn, breaking the door
• 18:45
  down, I mean, did, first of all, did you think anything like that
• 18:48
  was getting ready to happen, or was it just a total surprise and
• 18:52
  your world changed forever from there?
• 18:54
  Knew it was coming, in fact. It was coming.
• 18:56
  I'm sitting on the couch with my dope dealer, this guy named Tex.
• 18:59
  And I'm telling Tex you got to get out of here.
• 19:01
  He's coming to bring me some dope, right?
• 19:03
  But I'm telling Tex man, drop the dope off.
• 19:05
  Get out of here. Go.
• 19:06
  The cops are are closing on me. The end is near 10 days before
• 19:10
  this July, July 20th, July 21st, they pick up my partner in
• 19:15
  crime, this guy named Dustin. Now Dustin was my right hand
• 19:19
  man. Dustin knew everything about the
• 19:20
  criminal operation and Dustin is in the custody of the Dallas
• 19:24
  Police Department for 10 days. You know what I know about
• 19:28
  crime? Everybody talks.
• 19:30
  Everybody talks, brother. That's I mean, if, if, if if
• 19:33
  people didn't talk, the crimes wouldn't be solved.
• 19:35
  The, the, the law enforcement have such a difficult job of
• 19:38
  doing their job, but their job is made easier because everybody
• 19:42
  talks. It's human nature.
• 19:44
  You know when prosecutors start throwing out a bunch of years at
• 19:47
  people. Scares them to death.
• 19:49
  Everybody. Oh, it's human nature.
• 19:51
  And so just as I'm telling Tex to get out of here, man, I'm
• 19:54
  passing the pipe back to him in the window on my right blows out
• 19:57
  and shatters and then tumbling across the floor.
• 20:01
  And that living room is a little canister going end over end and
• 20:04
  it's smoking on one side band. And I mean, it's like, and it's
• 20:09
  almost like things slow down to like a slow motion scene because
• 20:12
  I've seen this scene in. The the.
• 20:14
  Brain can instantly react to something and say Oh my God, oh
• 20:18
  shoot, I know what this is. And the flashback grenade was up
• 20:21
  in my face. And when I when I could see and
• 20:23
  hear again, there's a cop standing over me in full SWAT
• 20:25
  riot gear, his booted on my chest, the barrel of an assault
• 20:27
  rifle in my eye socket and he's screaming don't move, don't
• 20:30
  move. And I'm like, man, don't worry,
• 20:32
  don't. Worry I'm not moving.
• 20:34
  Yeah, I I knew it was over. I knew they finally had me.
• 20:36
  In fact, one of the officers screamed out loud.
• 20:39
  We got him. We got the Uptown burglar.
• 20:43
  That was what they called me the before.
• 20:45
  They knew exactly who I was. I was the Uptown burglar.
• 20:48
  And, and they did, they had me, man.
• 20:49
  That was the end of the crime spree.
• 20:51
  And, you know, that day they, they brought me to justice.
• 20:55
  But I mean, like I said, they didn't just arrest me that day.
• 20:57
  They rescued me that day. I don't know what version of
• 20:59
  myself I'd be 16 years later right now if I was out of the
• 21:03
  streets. I mean, if I wasn't dead, I'd be
• 21:06
  a version of myself not worth living.
• 21:08
  I'm curious, Damon, at that that time period that you were in,
• 21:12
  were your parents aware of what was going on in your life and,
• 21:17
  and how you were living your life?
• 21:18
  Or was it were you just living isolated, doing your thing and
• 21:23
  no and disconnected from everyone else that you were
• 21:26
  close to? Man, that's a great question.
• 21:28
  So yeah, you've got a little little expertise in this field,
• 21:31
  you understand So when we are doing not we I'll use an I
• 21:36
  statement when I was doing things, I knew they were wrong.
• 21:40
  That goes against the norms, the, the, the, the social norms
• 21:44
  that I was raised with. When I'm doing those things,
• 21:47
  well, I want to keep doing those things.
• 21:49
  So I'll remove myself from the people around me that would not
• 21:53
  be normally associated with those kind of bad behaviors
• 21:56
  because I had bad belief systems.
• 21:59
  My parents, you know, they live six hours away.
• 22:02
  And so most of the time they get their information from me when I
• 22:05
  would either answer the phone or call them.
• 22:09
  But I lied a lot. That's that's one of the things
• 22:11
  about being an addiction. You lie, you're a manipulator,
• 22:13
  you're a liar. You, you do whatever you have to
• 22:16
  do to keep your life going. And my parents knew something
• 22:20
  was wrong. They just didn't know what it
• 22:22
  was. They couldn't put their finger
• 22:23
  on it. And what I mean, the only other
• 22:26
  option, I guess, is to kidnap me.
• 22:27
  They sent someone, a family friend, to have an intervention
• 22:30
  with me. And I didn't show up for the
• 22:31
  intervention. This is months before I got
• 22:33
  arrested. But, you know, and my dad, my
• 22:37
  dad passed away last summer and he was funny because he didn't
• 22:41
  really understand the, the disease of addiction.
• 22:43
  My mom got it. My mom was a nurse.
• 22:45
  She understood the disease part of it.
• 22:47
  But my dad would ask me, man, Damon, why didn't you just come
• 22:50
  home, man? Why didn't you just leave Dallas
• 22:52
  and come to? Come back to.
• 22:53
  Florida and just come on home and I was sitting in the
• 22:56
  presentation day room, I mean presentation visitation room.
• 22:58
  The first time I asked me and I'm looking at him like he has a
• 23:00
  second head. I'm like, man, dad, I don't
• 23:02
  know. I can't believe I didn't think
• 23:04
  about that. But the truth is, man, I'm not
• 23:07
  leaving my dope dealers. I'm not leaving this lifestyle
• 23:10
  and and Brandon it was it was crime.
• 23:13
  I mean you get addicted to the crime too be lying if I tell you
• 23:17
  I didn't get. High had his own adrenaline
• 23:19
  rush. The own adrenaline rush right of
• 23:21
  the, the procedure you go through the, the ritual, getting
• 23:26
  ready to, to break into a play. I got really good at that too.
• 23:30
  You know, I had a fifth grade teacher tell me, Damon, you're
• 23:32
  going to be a leader one day. You're going to, you're a
• 23:34
  natural born leader. You're going to lead people in
• 23:36
  the right way or the wrong way, but you're going to be a leader
• 23:39
  one day. Actually saw, actually saw her a
• 23:41
  few months ago and her name is Miss Greenberg.
• 23:43
  I was like, hey, Miss Greenberg. I did it both ways in life.
• 23:49
  I did the bad way and now I'm doing the good way so.
• 23:52
  I can't. What a great meeting that would
• 23:54
  have been. Yeah.
• 23:57
  So, OK, so Damon, they they take you away, You're you're in
• 24:01
  custody. What happens from here on out?
• 24:04
  I mean, because now you're in the world of the unknown.
• 24:08
  Yeah. I mean, I mean, it's like, so
• 24:11
  first of all, when I get into Dallas County jail, all I want
• 24:14
  to do is get out and get high again, right?
• 24:16
  I'm being driven by the fact that I'm scared this new
• 24:20
  environment that I'm in, I've never been in before, but I'm
• 24:23
  also coming down off of meth and for 3-4 years I haven't gone
• 24:29
  more than a couple of days without it getting high.
• 24:31
  You know, I'm, I'm doing meth every single day for years at a
• 24:35
  time. Now I'm detox, I'm, I'm just
• 24:38
  coming off cold Turkey. So one of the things I tell
• 24:43
  people all the time is that criminals are stupid.
• 24:45
  We do a lot. Of stupid, right?
• 24:48
  Yeah, and, and I want to tell you that I got good at the
• 24:51
  burger game. I did and I and I had ways of
• 24:53
  like going undetected. One of the first burglaries ever
• 24:57
  did. I broke into AUS Post Office and
• 24:59
  stole a mailman uniform. Oh my gosh, now it's.
• 25:02
  Just like a mailman, right? I could go around with impunity
• 25:04
  to these condo buildings in these neighborhoods because no
• 25:07
  one knows what their mailman looks like.
• 25:08
  And a mailman gets up close and he can see a lot of here, he can
• 25:12
  see a lot of stuff. So, but criminals are stupid.
• 25:16
  I'm in Dallas County jail and I want out now.
• 25:21
  I'm calling everybody from the dope world that owes me money.
• 25:24
  My bond at the time when I first got arrested was 1/4 of
• 25:27
  $1,000,000. They were holding me on the bond
• 25:29
  for this one organized crime charge.
• 25:32
  And they're trying to put together all the evidence and,
• 25:34
  and, and people are talking, Dustin's talking about text that
• 25:39
  was there that day of the SWAT team.
• 25:41
  He's talking, he's been to prison before.
• 25:42
  He don't want to go back, right. So they're trying to put it all
• 25:46
  together. The biggest witness against me
• 25:49
  at my trial was me. And I didn't take the stand.
• 25:53
  Those jailhouse recordings, ma'am?
• 25:56
  Oh, man, I'm on the phone, man, in that jail.
• 25:58
  And I'm like Jerry Lewis holding a telethon, brother.
• 26:00
  I'm calling everybody that owes me money in the dope world, man.
• 26:04
  You owe me money from this job that we did, man.
• 26:06
  I need you to bring it down here and bond me out like there's no
• 26:10
  honor among thieves. There's nobody in the dope world
• 26:12
  that's going to come to the police station and come to drop
• 26:14
  off 10,000. Dollars connecting all the dots
• 26:17
  for the phone calls. I'm, I'm being a fundraiser.
• 26:21
  Ironically, in my past life, I was a political fundraiser.
• 26:27
  But man, the cops, the cops are listening to these calls and all
• 26:30
  they're doing. Every time I talk to one of
• 26:32
  these people, they're going and picking up that person off the
• 26:34
  street that I was talking to. They're going to plucking them
• 26:36
  because I'm leading them and I'm giving them probable cause they
• 26:39
  need. I'm, I'm the dumbest criminal in
• 26:42
  the world at this point. And when I get to my trial,
• 26:45
  before each one of these people would come take the stand
• 26:48
  against me because I LED them to all the people that testified
• 26:51
  against me, they would play the phone recording.
• 26:54
  I sound like this mob boss man. And that's what Dallas County
• 26:58
  really put this. I mean, when they put this
• 27:02
  together, they thought it out really well because they wanted
• 27:04
  to leave drugs out of the conversation and make it look
• 27:07
  like I'm just this sinister mob. They're calling me the Al Capone
• 27:11
  of Dallas, Tony Soprano, you know, And if you listen to the
• 27:14
  tapes, I sound like that, you know, hey, you owe me this money
• 27:17
  for this hit. I've done all this stuff for
• 27:19
  you, you know, where are you now?
• 27:22
  But all these different people are coming and testifying
• 27:25
  against me because while I'm in Dallas County Jail, I'm stacking
• 27:27
  up the evidence against me. And, you know, that's what I did
• 27:31
  for a long time in Dallas County Jail.
• 27:33
  When a long time, first couple of months and finally I realized
• 27:37
  that there's no help. No one's coming to Get Me Out my
• 27:39
  bond. It was, it was crazy.
• 27:42
  After those phone calls and being in jail for about a month,
• 27:46
  I got, I got woken up in the middle of the night.
• 27:49
  They bring you more. They can bring you indictments
• 27:50
  anytime, right when you're in county jail.
• 27:52
  They know where to find you. They know how to go serve you.
• 27:55
  I got like 15 indictments in one night.
• 27:58
  And what these indictments are for, and this is what people are
• 28:02
  the hard way, but the criminal justice system is every
• 28:04
  indictment has a bond attached to it, my bond.
• 28:07
  And these indictments are like for theft charges, stuff that
• 28:10
  they found on Dustin at Dustin's apartment when they raided him
• 28:13
  ten days before me. They're putting all that on me
• 28:16
  because it's organized crime now.
• 28:17
  It's the law of parties. Anything he's done, they can
• 28:20
  stack on me. So I'm getting hit with all
• 28:22
  these little theft charges, stuff like that.
• 28:24
  But my bond goes from 1/4 of a million to 1.4 million and
• 28:30
  actually did that. That's a no bond, man.
• 28:31
  There's no way I'm getting out. I mean, I was trying to raise
• 28:34
  $25,000 at 10% of a quarter, $1,000,000 bond.
• 28:38
  But I mean, I don't even know how you get to 1.4 million man.
• 28:41
  So there I am sitting Dallas County jail.
• 28:44
  I'm, I'm coming off the dope. That means I'm eating a lot, I'm
• 28:47
  sleeping a lot. I'm depressed putting on weight.
• 28:50
  In fact, when I would check into prison a year later, I was 130 a
• 28:54
  135 lbs, about 65 lbs I put on in Dallas County jail just
• 28:59
  coming off the dope, putting on weight, being depressed.
• 29:01
  The trial. Look, man, Dallas County, they
• 29:06
  made me one offer right before trial and that that offer was
• 29:09
  for 50 years. Now, Brad, you can't sign for
• 29:12
  50. Years.
• 29:13
  In Texas, the maximum sentence you can get is 60, and juries
• 29:16
  don't understand that because they don't want juries doing
• 29:19
  calculation if they're going to sentence you right.
• 29:22
  But 60 years is a life sentence in the state text.
• 29:24
  That's a natural life. Sentence.
• 29:26
  Oh yeah. And so there may be an offer of
• 29:29
  50 right before trial. Of course I turn it down because
• 29:32
  if you sign for your time, which 95% of the people in state
• 29:37
  criminal cases sign for time, they take it, take a plea deal,
• 29:41
  and in federal cases it's more like 98%.
• 29:44
  Exactly. That means 95% of the people in
• 29:47
  the state, 90%, ninety 8% of the people in the federal system,
• 29:50
  never under, they never get to realize their 6th Amendment
• 29:54
  right to counsel. It's one of your constitutional
• 29:57
  rights. You give up.
• 29:58
  And that's the way the system works, like a machine with
• 30:01
  teeth. You just grind people out all
• 30:03
  the time because prosecutors here's and we'll get back to
• 30:08
  this a little bit, but prosecutors in the American
• 30:10
  criminal justice system have way too much power.
• 30:13
  And this is something I learned whenever Look, I'm not just
• 30:16
  saying this for some ex-con that got out and said, hey, man, the
• 30:18
  system's broken. I did everything they said I
• 30:21
  did. All right, I got my time and I'm
• 30:22
  doing my time. I got it.
• 30:24
  But I went back to school and got a master's degree in
• 30:26
  criminal justice, and I've become a professor at the
• 30:28
  University of Houston teaching a class called Prisons in America.
• 30:32
  I wanted people to take me more serious when I talked about this
• 30:35
  stuff, so I went and got a master's.
• 30:36
  Degree. I love that.
• 30:37
  Yeah. And, and so now it's Professor W
• 30:39
  instead of like inmate West, right.
• 30:42
  But that's a long way away. We we got to get to the we got
• 30:44
  to get to the to the trial. So the trial takes place ten
• 30:48
  months after my arrest. Now, Brent, if they can get you
• 30:51
  in a courtroom for a trial. Yeah, ramping up for trial is
• 30:54
  tough. There's a lot of moving parts
• 30:56
  for a trial, 10 months. That's called the rocket docket.
• 30:59
  That means they want you in that courtroom.
• 31:01
  They've got so many so much of the goods on you And my trial
• 31:05
  for organized crime last six days and six days is a long
• 31:10
  criminal trial for property crimes.
• 31:12
  Man, no one was hurt physically. There wasn't anybody that can
• 31:15
  detest to like me physically hurt them right.
• 31:18
  But evidence was just so overwhelming. 1 confession after
• 31:23
  another from everybody in the organized crimes free and, and
• 31:26
  you know, the victims of the burglaries are up there on the
• 31:28
  stand and they're telling their stories and it's just, there's I
• 31:32
  know it's going to be bad, but I when, when I realized it, it was
• 31:37
  so late in the game, how bad it was going to be.
• 31:41
  It was during jury deliberations.
• 31:42
  It's interesting because we're having this conversation the day
• 31:45
  after ex President Trump just got convicted in New York and
• 31:51
  he's now a convicted felon like you and I, right?
• 31:53
  But jury deliberations for him lasted what, two days?
• 31:58
  My jury deli deliberations, Brent, lasted 10 minutes.
• 32:02
  Oh my God. Oh man, 10 minutes, man, dude.
• 32:06
  And it like, I don't know how much law and order your audience
• 32:08
  watches, but if a jury's gone for 10 minutes, it means they
• 32:13
  smoked you. Like they said around the last
• 32:16
  half of that trial, just waiting for it to be over.
• 32:18
  They knew what their verdict, They knew what they were going
• 32:20
  to sentence me to. And when they brought me back in
• 32:23
  the courtroom, the judge read the sentence out loud and he
• 32:25
  said, Damon, Joseph W, you are hereby sentenced to 65 years and
• 32:29
  the Texas Department criminal. Oh man.
• 32:32
  And 65 years, as we know, is a life sentence in the state of
• 32:35
  Texas. So the jury gave me life rent,
• 32:37
  first felony conviction ever. That's another thing those
• 32:40
  teachers told me growing up. You're going to do things big,
• 32:42
  Damon. What, what went through your
• 32:46
  mind with that 65 years standing there hearing that?
• 32:51
  Honestly, the first thing I thought about is crazy what you
• 32:53
  think about when something's going on, like the trauma, your
• 32:56
  brain, how it deals with it. The first thing I thought about
• 32:59
  was like, oh man, my mom and my dad heard that they're in the
• 33:01
  front row. Next thing I thought about is
• 33:03
  I'll never vote again. Like oh man, like I'm suddenly
• 33:07
  worried about being able to vote again.
• 33:09
  And but then, you know, everything slows down.
• 33:13
  The shock is wearing off. And then you're realizing I just
• 33:16
  got life in prison and I don't even know how to process it.
• 33:19
  But the first, second time, like my parents heard that I'm not
• 33:22
  voting again. You're thinking about all the
• 33:24
  things that happened when you become a convicted felon and
• 33:26
  you're going to prison, but fast, very quickly.
• 33:29
  It's like, wait, they said life. They said, like, I'm going for
• 33:33
  life. And I was shocked.
• 33:36
  I was stunned. I knew I was going to get
• 33:38
  hammered. I just didn't understand how
• 33:41
  bad, you know, and I found out, Brent, from going to become a
• 33:47
  professor and getting a master's degree in criminal justice, that
• 33:52
  the jury system in America, it's not a perfect system, right?
• 33:56
  But it's the system we have. And I, and I would, I would
• 33:59
  argue that it's, it's better than what you find in most
• 34:02
  places. I'm not going to say it's the
• 34:05
  best there is, but it's better than you find in most places.
• 34:08
  And this is the system we have. And then, and the system does
• 34:11
  work, but juries in America, when they sentence people to a
• 34:15
  lot of time like that, it's usually for one or two reasons,
• 34:19
  or maybe both of these reasons. One is that they're really
• 34:22
  afraid of the person that's at the defendants table.
• 34:25
  Or two, they're really mad at the person at the defendants
• 34:29
  table. The jury wasn't afraid of me,
• 34:31
  Brent. They were mad at me, mad because
• 34:34
  we're back to where the story started, sitting across from
• 34:37
  them as the most privileged guy you can imagine.
• 34:40
  And this guy chose this path. And, you know, the drugs weren't
• 34:44
  really a big part of the trial. They didn't want that to be a
• 34:47
  big part of the trial. But the truth is, Brent, I would
• 34:50
  never do the stuff I did to my victims if it wasn't for being
• 34:53
  intoxicated, being on meth and into people's homes.
• 34:57
  I've got a family now, Brent. I've got a, a wife.
• 35:00
  I've got a stepdaughter, I've got pets.
• 35:02
  I've got, I mean, my mom. Was the guy.
• 35:05
  Yeah, I'm just, Oh my God, I can't imagine somebody doing
• 35:07
  the. Breaking into your house.
• 35:09
  What I did to so many people. Yeah.
• 35:11
  And it's it's a real like it is. I get it while the jury sends me
• 35:17
  and I accept it. And it's it's mine to carry with
• 35:19
  me. But it's one of those things,
• 35:21
  you know, it's the nightmare. You know, if you're talking
• 35:24
  about when the night when I realized the nightmare started,
• 35:27
  it's that day. In fact, in my book, The Change
• 35:29
  Agent, it starts out with that chapter.
• 35:31
  That chapter is called Rock Bottom.
• 35:33
  Because when I was sentenced to life in prison on May 18th,
• 35:36
  2009, that was the rock bottom moment for me.
• 35:40
  But Rock Bottom Brand is also a good place to build a new life
• 35:43
  from. It could be a great foundation.
• 35:45
  And I think that's such a big point, Damon, because I, I often
• 35:49
  say most people think hitting rock bottom is the end.
• 35:53
  And I, I remember my rock bottom moment like, you know, vividly.
• 35:57
  And there's two places to go with rock bottom.
• 36:00
  You, you curl up in a fetal position and, and never come
• 36:04
  back. Or it's your new beginning and
• 36:05
  you, you start figuring out how to climb out and, and you, and
• 36:09
  you know what rock bottom feels like.
• 36:11
  And some people never hit rock bottom, But you know, rock
• 36:15
  bottom is a place where that's, that's like you were talking
• 36:18
  about. There's a real fork there.
• 36:20
  You get busy living, you busy dying.
• 36:22
  Yeah, the words of Andy Dufresne, Right.
• 36:25
  You know, it's interesting you bring up Shawshank, and I
• 36:27
  remembered this from your introduction, how you talk about
• 36:29
  it sometimes. I didn't.
• 36:32
  And it makes you realize that most people don't have a full
• 36:35
  grasp of Shawshank, probably just watching it as a movie.
• 36:38
  It's a great drama, great story, but there's really something
• 36:42
  bigger going on in Shawshank that I didn't understand either
• 36:45
  till I got out of prison. And I'm sitting watching
• 36:47
  Shawshank with my dad. My dad, my dad recorded every
• 36:50
  prison movie while I was in prison.
• 36:51
  And when I got out, I lived with my parents for two years, man.
• 36:54
  And, and for the first couple months, we watched a different
• 36:56
  prison movie every night. He recorded them all.
• 36:58
  He's like, hey, man, tell me who got it right.
• 37:00
  And I always come back to Shawshank because Shawshank got
• 37:02
  it right. And here's what they got right
• 37:04
  about prison. Prison is a hopeless place,
• 37:07
  right? And when you remove hope,
• 37:09
  there's a void there. And in that void, negativity,
• 37:13
  evil and darkness usually fills that void.
• 37:16
  That's why prisons are so dangerous, Brent, because
• 37:18
  there's no hope inside of a. Exactly.
• 37:20
  You can do a lot of things when you don't have hope.
• 37:22
  Oh yeah, and. It's and it's, it's, it can be a
• 37:24
  very dangerous world, and you don't want to live in a world
• 37:27
  where there's no hope. And the movie, The title, The
• 37:30
  Shawshank Redemption, the redemption part of the title
• 37:33
  Redemption wasn't for the character named Andy Dufresne.
• 37:37
  And he didn't need redeeming and he needed escaping, right?
• 37:40
  He needed man. He needed to get out, man.
• 37:42
  He wasn't. He wasn't supposed to be in cage
• 37:44
  like be caged like that for over 10 years.
• 37:47
  He tunnels his way through a wall.
• 37:48
  He swims through a sewer. To get to his freedom.
• 37:51
  But the redemption part of the title, the story is about the
• 37:54
  guy named Red Morgan in character and and why I think
• 37:57
  it's Red's movie not Andy's movie.
• 37:58
  Because Red are narrated when we meet him.
• 38:00
  Red is a dead man walking. Red has no hope.
• 38:03
  All those men in Shawshank were dead Brent.
• 38:04
  They all had no hope. Like Brooks.
• 38:07
  Remember Brooks? He killed himself after he got
• 38:09
  out. He was after 15 years, he
• 38:12
  finally makes parole, but he lasts 2 weeks.
• 38:14
  Brent, he hangs himself, but he. But he wrote a letter back to
• 38:17
  the boys in Shawshank, told him what he did and why he did it.
• 38:19
  And as Andy was reading that letter out to the boys in
• 38:21
  Shawshank Prison, every man in Shawshank Prison, they nodded
• 38:25
  because they. Understood the.
• 38:26
  Same mindset that Brooks because they all share that same
• 38:29
  hopeless mindset, but it was read our narrator that explains
• 38:33
  it for us when he when he says I wouldn't make it out there
• 38:35
  either. I'm an institutional man now he
• 38:38
  says the words out loud for us to really understand.
• 38:41
  Hope is a dangerous thing. Now, Brent, you've lived in this
• 38:46
  world. I've lived in this world where
• 38:47
  people believe hope. The thing you have to have
• 38:49
  survived is dangerous. But Andy Andy told Red, he said
• 38:53
  get busy living or get busy dying it.
• 38:55
  And by the end of the movie, when Red family gets out, you
• 38:58
  know Red, We don't know if Red's going to make it either.
• 39:01
  He walks on the pawn shop, sees the guns in the window.
• 39:04
  Same. Track.
• 39:05
  Same track, same room that Brooks and he sees where Brooks
• 39:08
  was here on the on the wall up there, but he makes it to that
• 39:11
  Rockwall that Andy told him to make it to.
• 39:13
  And then he finds the note that his buddy left him behind.
• 39:16
  In that note are those powerful words he said.
• 39:19
  Hope is a good thing, Red. And if you go back and rewatch
• 39:22
  the movie Shawshank I, I challenge people to do this all
• 39:25
  the time. Go back and watch the last scene
• 39:26
  in that movie listens to the dialogue of Red, the character
• 39:30
  at the end versus read the care at the beginning.
• 39:33
  Every single sentence, Brenda starts out, it read, saying.
• 39:36
  I hope for this and. I hope that and he says I hope.
• 39:39
  That's it. You got it.
• 39:40
  You nailed it, brother. The last words of the movie are
• 39:43
  I hope, and that's a statement. You could put an exclamation
• 39:45
  point on that brother. So powerful and and you know the
• 39:49
  other thing that I think that people you know the fact that he
• 39:53
  that Andy has they want to Neo in his head.
• 39:55
  I even like the names they want to Neo, just a cool name, but 19
• 40:00
  years of chipping away at a wall in a prison cell to get to your
• 40:03
  freedom. And then every day he had, he'd
• 40:05
  let that wall out as his daily victory.
• 40:07
  That he was staying on task, that Zaywantaneo kept him being
• 40:12
  Andy. It kept him being who he didn't
• 40:15
  become institutionalized. Zaywantaneo stayed in his head
• 40:18
  and he was getting to that. And I think it's so important
• 40:22
  for people to have that Zaywantaneo.
• 40:23
  As hard as it is to take time to figure out what it is, that's
• 40:27
  your Zaywantaneo. What would make you chip
• 40:28
  through? 19 years prison wall to get to
• 40:32
  your freedom and with that daily victory of letting that wall out
• 40:35
  there. There's so many deep meanings in
• 40:37
  that movie, but I think we hit on some here, there, there, it,
• 40:41
  it's, it's it's a powerful, powerful statement of how to
• 40:44
  live your life. Brent, I found my Zebwantaneo
• 40:47
  moment in Dallas County Jail. So right after the trial was
• 40:51
  over, my parents have a visit with me.
• 40:54
  They give them one last visit with me, right?
• 40:56
  And it's behind the glass and my mom tells me, hey, look, you
• 41:00
  know, you made some big mistakes, but you owe a big debt
• 41:04
  now because you did everything you said you did.
• 41:06
  But here's the debt you owe your father and I.
• 41:09
  You know, when you go to prison, you're not going to get one of
• 41:11
  these white hate groups on these Aryan Brotherhood type of gangs.
• 41:13
  You're not getting any tattoos while you're inside that prison.
• 41:15
  So I mean, like, literally, I came out with none.
• 41:18
  I got no tattoos, man, because my mom told me that day.
• 41:21
  She said, Damon, no gangs, no tattoos.
• 41:24
  You come back as the man that we raised or don't come back to us
• 41:28
  at all. And she was dead serious, man.
• 41:31
  And I'm like floored. And you know, you're talking
• 41:35
  about things slowing down in the moment.
• 41:36
  And I'm like, and I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I
• 41:39
  know that I got a promise my mom, I'll do it.
• 41:41
  So I promised her that day. They bring me back to my pod in
• 41:43
  Dallas County jail. I got two months before the
• 41:45
  prison bus comes to get me and I'm frantically asking every
• 41:48
  guy's been to prison before. How am I going to survive?
• 41:50
  What am I going to do? And every guy I talk to, black,
• 41:53
  white, Asian, Hispanic, they're all telling me the same thing.
• 41:56
  You got to get into a gang. You won't survive when you're
• 41:58
  going without a gang. I'm going where the lifers go
• 42:00
  bring they different deal. Yeah.
• 42:03
  You get life in Texas, they segregate you out.
• 42:06
  You go to a supermax prison, the highest security level prisoner
• 42:08
  is, and they move you to a building with all lifers and
• 42:12
  it's about 500 people on the building.
• 42:15
  Every man's got life. Most are never going home.
• 42:18
  Think about how hopeless a war like that is, man.
• 42:22
  Dangerous, too. Everybody's telling me you got
• 42:25
  to get into a gang. But there was this one guy, this
• 42:27
  one guy that was so different, this older black man named
• 42:30
  Muhammad. And Muhammad's what you call a
• 42:33
  career criminal man. He's been, he's been in our
• 42:35
  prison his entire life, but he's the most positive guy I've ever
• 42:37
  met in my life. And this guy has a smile on his
• 42:39
  face everywhere he goes. And every morning he comes up
• 42:42
  and checks on me. So one morning he comes up and
• 42:45
  time is short. He's getting ready to leave
• 42:47
  Dallas County Jail on bond. I'm getting ready to get the
• 42:49
  prison bus, the prison bus getting ready to come get me.
• 42:52
  And he says, you know, I've been, I've been watching how
• 42:54
  you're dealing with these knuckleheads and these dummies
• 42:55
  talk about you got to get into a gang.
• 42:57
  But he said, don't listen, these fools.
• 42:59
  He said, but I'm going to tell you what prison's going to be
• 43:01
  like. And that's when he really laces
• 43:03
  me up and he's telling me everything in there is about
• 43:06
  race. Race runs the entire
• 43:08
  institutions out of prison. This is a black Muslim man
• 43:11
  telling me. This man, he's telling me
• 43:13
  beware, you know, but when you walk in the door, it will be the
• 43:17
  white gangs that get the first dibs on you.
• 43:19
  And he's telling me you're going to fight all the white gangs.
• 43:21
  If you survive that, you fight the black gangs.
• 43:23
  And he even told me the the white gangs will send the black
• 43:26
  gangs after me. And everybody works in unison to
• 43:29
  get you where you're supposed to go because the inmates want this
• 43:32
  to be about race. Everybody in there supposed to
• 43:34
  be in their own racial group. But he said you made a promise
• 43:37
  to your mom. You chose the steepest path
• 43:39
  possible. But here's the deal.
• 43:41
  You can survive this and here's how you're going to do it.
• 43:44
  He told me, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of
• 43:47
  boiling water. And he said anything we put in
• 43:50
  this pot of boiling water will be changed by the heat and the
• 43:52
  pressure inside that pot. He said, I'm gonna put three
• 43:54
  things in that pot of boiling water and watch how they change
• 43:58
  a carrot, an egg and a coffee bean.
• 44:02
  Now, Brent, this is where I first hear the story of the
• 44:05
  coffee bean. Now everybody know, not
• 44:07
  everybody, but a lot of people know the story.
• 44:09
  The coffee bean. Now you know, John Gordon are in
• 44:12
  2019. We write this best selling book
• 44:14
  on the coffee bean right before a global pandemic hits.
• 44:17
  And the book is in every language.
• 44:18
  It's pretty much in every language in the world.
• 44:20
  And the whole world became a pot of boiling water.
• 44:22
  And the whole world. Absolutely everybody got locked
• 44:25
  down. Yeah, and and so the coffee bean
• 44:27
  message became very popular and of course, my life took off.
• 44:31
  As a speaker, I go speak all over the world telling the story
• 44:33
  of the coffee bean. But it all comes from this jail
• 44:36
  cell in Dallas County Jail about this time of year, late May,
• 44:40
  early June in 2009. And he said the carrot in the
• 44:47
  pot of boiling water goes in hard but become soft.
• 44:51
  Some people become the carrot of life.
• 44:52
  They get beat down by life. It makes them soft, he said.
• 44:54
  But you don't want to be the carrots out of the prison.
• 44:57
  He said the egg in the same pot of boiling water will go on with
• 44:59
  that hard outer shell, that soft liquid core.
• 45:01
  The shell, he said, protects the egg on the outside, but the
• 45:04
  inside, the heart becomes hard. That's right, Brand.
• 45:08
  He's now if your heart becomes hard and you're incapable of
• 45:11
  giving or receiving love, and he said if you're incapable of
• 45:14
  giving or receiving love in the world you want into, you don't
• 45:17
  come back, as some of your parents recognize.
• 45:20
  But then he told me the story, The coffee bean, the smallest of
• 45:23
  the three things, the coffee bean that goes in the pot of
• 45:26
  warm water. And it changed the pot of warm
• 45:28
  water into a pot of coffee. It was the change agent.
• 45:31
  It was the only thing, Brent, he said they could even change the
• 45:33
  water. Everything else has changed by
• 45:35
  the water because the power was inside the coffee bean to change
• 45:39
  the world around it. And he told me, he said the
• 45:41
  coffee bean can't even do its job to the water gets the
• 45:44
  hottest when the pressure is the highest.
• 45:47
  That's when the coffee bean performs.
• 45:49
  He told me if you want to come back on the other side of this
• 45:51
  thing like you told your parents you would, you have to be like
• 45:54
  that coffee bean. In fact, the last words he ever
• 45:56
  says to me, man, he's getting, he's bonding out of Dallas
• 45:58
  County Jail. The prison bus is getting ready
• 46:00
  to come get me. 4 words on the way out the door, he said.
• 46:04
  Hey W be a coffee bean. Wow.
• 46:08
  Be a coffee program. Those were the four words that
• 46:11
  became as he wants, an AO moment.
• 46:13
  Because that was the message. That was the thing that I
• 46:15
  thought about every single day inside that maximum security
• 46:18
  prison. That is that is just so powerful
• 46:21
  day when that you hearing you say that again, that story, the
• 46:27
  way that you tell it is just and, and for that to be that
• 46:31
  moment that you realized I'm going to be the change.
• 46:34
  And, and you know, let's take a break here 'cause I want to
• 46:38
  recognize the white collar support group because I want to
• 46:40
  talk about how and what happened to you after this 'cause you
• 46:44
  don't have anything good coming this way.
• 46:47
  You're getting on a prison bus going to prison.
• 46:49
  Before we do that, I want to recognize the White Collar
• 46:51
  Support Group Niner Success Podcast is sponsored by the
• 46:55
  White Collar Support Group. It's the world's first support
• 46:57
  group devoted to people navigating the white collar
• 47:00
  justice system. I'm a member of the White Collar
• 47:03
  Support Group and I can tell you that this is a bunch of people
• 47:05
  who help each other through the criminal justice journey for
• 47:08
  free, for free. Whether you're just starting a
• 47:11
  journey or you made it through to the other side, this is a
• 47:13
  great space for you. You can join us on Zoom Mondays,
• 47:17
  7:00 PM Eastern Time, 4:00 PM. Specific for information, go to
• 47:20
  prisonist.org. That's prisonist.org.
• 47:23
  Start here. OK, David.
• 47:25
  So when you you get on that bus, but you, you're, you're changed
• 47:31
  in the in the moment of this coffee bean being the coffee
• 47:34
  bean, what happens next? It's a baptism by fire, brother,
• 47:40
  this prison bus ride. And you know you've been on the
• 47:42
  bus, man. Yeah.
• 47:44
  You've chained. I don't know how the Fed.
• 47:45
  Shackled. Yeah, and and.
• 47:48
  The funny thing was, David, I didn't get shackled until I had
• 47:51
  a civil trial a year and a half after I had been in prison, and
• 47:55
  I had to go back to that in Saint Louis from Leavenworth.
• 47:58
  I had never been. I I voluntarily surrendered.
• 48:02
  It was the first time, and I didn't know that it was going to
• 48:04
  happen. I didn't know that they
• 48:06
  transferred to people like this. They didn't say anything to me
• 48:08
  about it. I got shackled up from my ankles
• 48:11
  to my waist to my hands and and I got to tell you there, there
• 48:15
  was nothing more dehumanizing or making me feel like I'd hit the
• 48:20
  IT felt like I was a, a zoo animal.
• 48:23
  It was, it was really something. It's it's a hell of an
• 48:27
  experience. I, I think that the bus ride to
• 48:33
  prison would probably be enough to scare most people straight.
• 48:36
  And in Texas, these buses, there's no air conditioning on
• 48:39
  these buses. And it's like a school bus from
• 48:41
  hell. It's just, I mean, it is, it's
• 48:44
  a, it's a refurbished school bus.
• 48:46
  Every seat has two men sitting in it.
• 48:48
  They're handcuffed to each other.
• 48:50
  They handcuffed you to another man.
• 48:51
  And Mohammed, the guy that told me the story of the coffee bean,
• 48:54
  he also told me what to expect. And, and he said when they get
• 48:57
  ready to transport you, they take everybody to this room
• 49:01
  that's going to be catching the bus that, that, that day.
• 49:04
  And he said they're going to pair you up with somebody.
• 49:05
  Unless you pair yourself up with somebody, they'll let you pick a
• 49:08
  bus mate to ride with, right, Because it's, it's beneficial
• 49:12
  for them too, because there's fights that break out on this
• 49:14
  bus. There's, there's fear going, you
• 49:15
  can smell the fear on these buses.
• 49:17
  And, but he said you, what you're looking for is you're
• 49:20
  looking for someone that's smaller than you and you're
• 49:23
  looking for someone that's the same hand as you, like you're
• 49:26
  right-handed. You want to find a right-handed
• 49:27
  person and he said the way you're going to find out which
• 49:30
  hand they use is they're going to give you all a sack of food.
• 49:33
  They call it a Johnny Sack. The Johnny sack is your last
• 49:37
  meal before you get on the bus. He said you're going to
• 49:38
  sacrifice some of your food to that guy that you find.
• 49:43
  And you find him and you go and offer him one of your
• 49:46
  sandwiches. They got two sandwiches in
• 49:48
  there. Give up one of your sandwiches,
• 49:49
  offering some of your food and ask him, can we ride together on
• 49:52
  the bus trip? Now you know that he's going to
• 49:55
  be shackled up next to you. He said you get paired up with
• 49:59
  him on his right side and all you're going to do is walk up
• 50:02
  two by two and they're going to handcuff your left arm to his
• 50:05
  right arm. Now, if this guy wants to make a
• 50:08
  move on the bus, you've just taken away his dominant arm and
• 50:11
  you've got your dominant arm to fight with and survive with,
• 50:15
  man. And I'm like, I've still got to
• 50:16
  get over that bus, dude. I'm like, Oh my God.
• 50:19
  And the bus rides are crazy, man.
• 50:21
  I mean, because I mean, they're 10 hour bus rides.
• 50:23
  You're going around the state of Texas going to county jails,
• 50:25
  You're picking up people in different county jails 10 hours.
• 50:27
  And it's a long time. You know, you just eat.
• 50:30
  You know, there's bathroom, everybody's going to go to the
• 50:32
  bathroom in 10 hours. But you're, you're checking up
• 50:34
  to somebody. He goes to the bathroom, you're
• 50:36
  going to the bathroom number one or two.
• 50:38
  And it's a bucket in the back of the bus man.
• 50:41
  And you still got to do some time after that.
• 50:43
  So it was a wild, it was a wild experience.
• 50:46
  The baptism by fire within 20 minutes of being classified into
• 50:50
  the life sentence building. I was in my first fight with the
• 50:53
  guy for the Aryan Brotherhood and, and after that it was just
• 50:57
  fight. It was rock'n'roll for the first
• 50:58
  two months, brother. I mean, I probably got in three
• 51:00
  dozen fights in two months and I lost 75% of those fights.
• 51:04
  But you know what? Muhammad told me something in
• 51:07
  county jail that was like one of those moments where he gave me
• 51:10
  the secret to something and it was this.
• 51:13
  He said you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have
• 51:16
  to fight all your fights. He said some days you're going
• 51:19
  to win, some days you're going to lose.
• 51:20
  He said do. Great life lesson, yeah.
• 51:22
  Don't worry about the losses. Get up and fight again.
• 51:25
  The same is true in life, Brent. No one is counting your wins and
• 51:29
  losses. No one pays attention to you.
• 51:31
  We think people pay attention to us a lot.
• 51:33
  They don't. You keep track of wins and
• 51:35
  losses in your head maybe, but everybody's watching to see does
• 51:38
  he or she get back up when at first he hits.
• 51:40
  That's that's the real win in life.
• 51:42
  Are they still fighting? You just get back up.
• 51:44
  You get knocked down eight times in life, get up nine, just keep
• 51:47
  getting back up. That's the real victory in life.
• 51:50
  And so after two months of fighting, the violence was
• 51:53
  finally over. The threat to my physical state
• 51:55
  was gone. And I started working on myself
• 51:58
  and becoming that coffee bean. And, you know, it was waking up
• 52:01
  every day in a dungeon with that positive attitude that, hey, I'm
• 52:06
  going to become the best version of myself possible today.
• 52:09
  I've got 24 hours today to do anything I want to become the
• 52:12
  best version of me. How do I fill this day up?
• 52:15
  How do I put, you know, put more stuff in my bucket today?
• 52:19
  And I got to work on myself. And I'm telling you something,
• 52:21
  Brent, it was, I had a spiritual awakening inside of there.
• 52:25
  And, and, and that's the only way I can describe this because
• 52:28
  what happened to me inside that prison over the seven years that
• 52:31
  I was locked up, it's hard to describe on terms of what human
• 52:35
  beings are capable of on their own, because I don't think a
• 52:37
  human being is capable of making transformation like that on
• 52:41
  their own. You have to have a higher power.
• 52:44
  I don't know what your higher power is, what you believe in
• 52:46
  and whatever you believe in is OK with me.
• 52:48
  You can believe in whatever you want.
• 52:50
  I'm a Christian, so my my faith is with Christ.
• 52:53
  But there's a lot of different things to believe in out there.
• 52:56
  And I tell people all the time, find a higher power because it's
• 52:59
  a big universe out there and turn over your life and your
• 53:02
  will, your thoughts and your actions to that higher power,
• 53:06
  you know, and that's what I did. I turned it over, man.
• 53:08
  And once I did that, I realized that, you know, there's only
• 53:11
  four things I control in life. I control what I think, what I
• 53:15
  say, what I feel, and what I do. And if it wasn't one of those
• 53:19
  four things inside their prison, I didn't have control over it.
• 53:21
  And I started worrying about it. I started living in the moment.
• 53:25
  And whenever you live in the moment, you're there for two
• 53:29
  things. Every day that happened in your
• 53:30
  life. You're there for obstacles and
• 53:32
  opportunities. Now, if you live in the moment,
• 53:35
  you see an obstacle, you can step over it, step, step aside
• 53:38
  from it. You can dodge the obstacle, but
• 53:41
  if you don't live in the moment, that obstacle, it stays in your
• 53:44
  way and it can get bigger and bigger, become like a wall you
• 53:46
  got to climb over. One of my obstacles was my
• 53:48
  weight. Remember, I put on like 65 lbs
• 53:50
  of fat inside Dallas County Jail, right?
• 53:53
  My body's not made for that. I tell people that are
• 53:55
  overweight. This was a small obstacle at one
• 53:58
  point, right? This is something where you
• 54:00
  looked in the mirror like I might need to lose a few pounds.
• 54:02
  But you didn't do anything about it.
• 54:04
  You didn't have discipline, you didn't work at it.
• 54:07
  And in prison, that was one of the obstacles I had to get over
• 54:10
  and I had to go back and work harder because I didn't pay
• 54:12
  attention to it. But the other thing about living
• 54:15
  in the moment and why it was so important for me to learn that
• 54:18
  lesson in prison is the opportunities.
• 54:20
  And here's what I learned about opportunities.
• 54:22
  If you don't live in the moment and you don't see the
• 54:26
  opportunity that's in front of you, you may never see that
• 54:28
  opportunity again. Because an opportunity didn't
• 54:30
  have to present itself twice, but it never present itself
• 54:33
  again. Great point.
• 54:35
  Oh, yeah. So living in the moment, that
• 54:36
  was a big deal for me. And I started just developing
• 54:40
  these rules about being a coffee bean, having positive body
• 54:42
  language. Your body language is important,
• 54:44
  Brent. I mean, you, the the expression
• 54:46
  in your face can change the energy around you, Muhammad.
• 54:49
  Muhammad told me, He said you either infect a room that you
• 54:52
  walk into with negative energy or you affect the room with
• 54:55
  positive energy. You infect or affect you're the
• 54:58
  disease of the cure in every room you're in.
• 55:00
  And so these ways of being a coffee bean, I go around talking
• 55:04
  about it when I do my presentation and one of them is
• 55:06
  servant leadership. Servant leadership is helping
• 55:08
  other people reach their goals, helping to raise people up to a
• 55:11
  different station in life. And you know, main thing I want
• 55:14
  people to understand about my transformation and being a
• 55:18
  coffee bean is that your past does not define you, right.
• 55:23
  That doesn't matter, man. And, and when I, when I say
• 55:25
  that, I'm not saying it's insignificant, I'm saying it's
• 55:29
  history, it's happened. It's.
• 55:30
  Right. It's already gone, right?
• 55:31
  You can't change the facts, you can't change the past, and you
• 55:34
  can't live in your past either, right?
• 55:36
  It's the reason why your windshield's bigger than your
• 55:38
  rearview mirror. In a vehicle, you need a lot
• 55:40
  more room to look forward than you do to look backwards,
• 55:43
  because you can't do it the other way around, Brand.
• 55:44
  You can't drive a vehicle going forward.
• 55:46
  Look at the rearview mirror. If you did, you get into a
• 55:48
  wreck. Yeah, you wreck.
• 55:50
  You did everything in the road in front of you.
• 55:51
  The same thing happens in life when we live in our past.
• 55:54
  You know you're going down the road of life, You look up in the
• 55:57
  rearview mirror, there's the past good things you've done
• 55:59
  you're proud of. You look up again that rearview
• 56:02
  mirror one day, there's the bad things you've done that you're
• 56:04
  not proud of, right? Get out of the rearview mirror,
• 56:06
  man. All it's going to do is 'cause
• 56:08
  your present, your future, be a bunch of wrecks.
• 56:12
  Yep, so true. So Damon, you doing all this in
• 56:16
  prison, feeling like you're getting it right in your mind,
• 56:22
  when does it come to you that you have an opportunity to get
• 56:25
  out of there? Now we're back to the parole
• 56:28
  interview. The parole interview happened in
• 56:30
  2015. I came up for parole at 7 years.
• 56:34
  And so the reason why I came up for parole at seven years on a
• 56:37
  life sentence sounds absurd, right?
• 56:39
  You get sentenced to life in prison, but you're eligible for
• 56:41
  parole at 7 years. It's because my crimes were not
• 56:44
  aggravated. They weren't violent crimes.
• 56:46
  And nonviolent offenders in Texas have access to good time
• 56:49
  and work time. So I was building up more time
• 56:52
  on my sentence every day that I'm there and I behave and every
• 56:55
  day that I'm there that I work. And so it's seven years.
• 56:58
  I come up for parole for the first time.
• 56:59
  I'd have 0 expectation of making that first parole because it's
• 57:03
  very rare that they're going to let somebody out of prison in
• 57:05
  their first parole. But the lady from parole didn't
• 57:07
  interview me where we started this conversation with the
• 57:09
  beginning. She told me, I have one question
• 57:13
  for you. And the question is not in this
• 57:14
  file. And we went over my entire life
• 57:17
  story, the whole story we just talked about right now, she
• 57:21
  said, Mr. W, there's no doubt about the change you made to
• 57:24
  yourself. She said no one can, No one can
• 57:26
  doubt that you have become a different man in here.
• 57:29
  But the reason why we're having this meeting today is because
• 57:32
  you didn't just change yourself while you were inside this
• 57:35
  prison. You changed the entire prison.
• 57:38
  One man changed his prison. Now we're talking about Andy
• 57:42
  Dufrane type deal, right? That's powerful.
• 57:44
  And you know, and, and Andy, Andy and I are different than
• 57:47
  each other, right? Andy Dufresne and Shawshank, he
• 57:50
  was an innocent man. I was guilty of everything they
• 57:52
  said. But but we were the same because
• 57:55
  we brought hope. We changed the world with hope,
• 57:57
  right? Positive energy, hope being a
• 57:59
  coffee bean. And so she said, you changed
• 58:02
  this entire prison around you. She said, so my question for you
• 58:06
  is this Mr. West? And she said, think really hard
• 58:09
  about this answer because your life depends on it.
• 58:13
  If you could be remembered for being anything in the world,
• 58:16
  anything at all. She said, tell me what that
• 58:18
  would be, but give it to me. And just one word go.
• 58:23
  And Brent, and I've been living that answer for the entire time
• 58:26
  I've been in prison. I became that coffee bean that
• 58:29
  he wants. An AO was right in front of me
• 58:31
  now. And I fired her answer back at
• 58:33
  her without hesitation. And I said, useful.
• 58:36
  I just want to be useful because Brent, I believe that every
• 58:40
  human being, we at the core of being a human being, that's what
• 58:44
  we want. We want to be useful.
• 58:46
  Hell, I think every human being wants two things from life.
• 58:49
  We want to belong and we want to be loved.
• 58:51
  That's what we want at the core, being human.
• 58:53
  That's how I changed that prison and they sent me back that day.
• 58:58
  I didn't get the answer right then, but it that was the answer
• 59:01
  that got me out of prison. November 16th, 2015, I walked
• 59:05
  out of a Texas prison. Now not a free man because I've
• 59:08
  got I've got a little more time. What's on parole in Texas?
• 59:11
  I'm on parole into the year 2000 and 73.
• 59:15
  I'm on parole. Yeah, I'm on supervisor release
• 59:17
  the rest of my life. But man, what a blessing to be
• 59:21
  on parole, right? People ask the time, right?
• 59:23
  Man, how do you do it? You're on parole.
• 59:25
  How do I do it? Every day that I wake up and my
• 59:28
  feet don't hit the cold concert for the pretty Cell, I'm
• 59:31
  winning. Absolutely.
• 59:33
  And so I don't mind being on parole.
• 59:35
  I mean, I got to check in every month.
• 59:36
  I pee in a cup, I pay my fines, I can't make a mistake.
• 59:39
  I've got my second chance. I don't get 1/3, but man, my
• 59:43
  life ever since I walked out has been impactful and I can't
• 59:46
  believe this is my life. Like I got out.
• 59:48
  I knew I was still in this great message, the coffee bean, great
• 59:52
  message of the coffee bean and my story around it.
• 59:54
  I just lived it. But the thing about that is I
• 59:57
  didn't have a lot of places to share this story when I first
• 59:59
  got out of I found out real quick you you can't go knock on
• 1:00:02
  the door of a high school and say I just got out of prison
• 1:00:03
  want to talk to you. They run you down the street,
• 1:00:06
  man. It's.
• 1:00:07
  Chasing. Me.
• 1:00:09
  So I had to have people will believe in me first.
• 1:00:13
  And here's what I will tell you. Growth follows belief, growth
• 1:00:19
  follows belief. But you have to believe in
• 1:00:22
  yourself before anybody's going to believe in you, before
• 1:00:25
  anybody's going to give you the belief, they got to you got to
• 1:00:27
  believe in yourself. And I just needed an
• 1:00:30
  opportunity, man. And I thought that right
• 1:00:32
  opportunity would come from in speaking in front of college
• 1:00:34
  football teams because I played college football back in the
• 1:00:36
  90s, man, for two years that I was living my parents spare
• 1:00:39
  bedroom, there weren't a lot of place for me to speak.
• 1:00:41
  But in that in that spare bedroom, there was a mirror in
• 1:00:44
  there. Just happened to be there when I
• 1:00:45
  moved in, a little vanity mirror.
• 1:00:47
  I practiced this presentation, the presentation I do in front
• 1:00:49
  of audiences now. Yeah, I practiced for two years
• 1:00:52
  in front of a mirror. I got in my reps.
• 1:00:54
  Brent, anything you want to be good at in life, you got to.
• 1:00:57
  Practice that gives you the reps you.
• 1:00:58
  Got to get the reps in man. So if I don't have a physical
• 1:01:01
  place to speak, I spoke in front of that mirror for two years.
• 1:01:05
  A buddy of mine sneaks me into this coaches award show.
• 1:01:07
  I love this story. Yeah.
• 1:01:10
  You know what's really cool about this story, Damon, 'cause
• 1:01:12
  I was thinking, cause speaking is hard.
• 1:01:15
  You know, it's, it's being on stage and speaking is not nearly
• 1:01:18
  as hard as getting the opportunity to speak on stage.
• 1:01:21
  And and I I love this story that you're getting ready to tell.
• 1:01:24
  Because if you hadn't had the belief that you were good enough
• 1:01:28
  to be in that room with those coaches, you would have never
• 1:01:31
  have gotten the opportunity for one of them to say, God, that
• 1:01:33
  guy, he's awfully confident. He sure has believed himself.
• 1:01:38
  I think I'm going to give him a shot.
• 1:01:39
  You just hit the nail on the head.
• 1:01:41
  And when we come to The Who the coach was, I had a conversation
• 1:01:45
  with him years later and I asked him why did you do it?
• 1:01:47
  Why did you let me in? He said.
• 1:01:50
  I saw the belief in your eyes, man, He said.
• 1:01:52
  There was no denying that. He said.
• 1:01:53
  You know, let me tell you. Got to tell the story.
• 1:01:56
  Yeah, see, my guess is who it is.
• 1:01:59
  So this buddy of mine in Houston, which is 90 miles away,
• 1:02:02
  calls me up one day in 2017. He said, man, it's the Bear
• 1:02:04
  Bryant coach of the year award. They're gonna the the best
• 1:02:07
  college football coach in America is about to be named
• 1:02:09
  that night. The 8 best coaches in the
• 1:02:11
  country in this room, USC, Wisconsin, Penn State, DJ Fleck,
• 1:02:14
  they're all there. And he said, I've got an extra
• 1:02:17
  press pass. I'll sneak you into the Toyota
• 1:02:19
  Center in Houston. He works in the media.
• 1:02:21
  So man, I had to drive an hour and a half to get there.
• 1:02:23
  After work, I practice my elevator pitch.
• 1:02:25
  What I'll tell these coaches when I see him and he seeks me
• 1:02:27
  in the back door, hands me a press pass, and there I am.
• 1:02:29
  I'm talking to all these coaches and I'm shaking their hand.
• 1:02:32
  I'm giving my pitch. You should bring me in to talk
• 1:02:34
  to your team. And every single coach I met
• 1:02:36
  that night slammed the door in my face.
• 1:02:39
  No, they all told me no. It was a bloodbath, Brent.
• 1:02:42
  In one hour I got 7 nose from the 8 coaches in the room.
• 1:02:45
  That's a no every 8 minutes now. Now I'm in the court of the
• 1:02:49
  Toyota Center, second guessing this decision to come here
• 1:02:52
  today. I'm licking my arms, I'm feeling
• 1:02:53
  sorry for myself and the voice in my head is screaming at me.
• 1:02:57
  Go home. What are you doing here, Damon?
• 1:03:00
  Why'd you show up? You don't belong in this room.
• 1:03:02
  You know what? The voice.
• 1:03:04
  Yeah, that's exactly what the voice in my head called me in a
• 1:03:06
  posture. But you know what I quit doing a
• 1:03:08
  long time ago? Listening to myself.
• 1:03:11
  And you shouldn't listen to yourself either because the
• 1:03:13
  voice in your head could be fear talking to you.
• 1:03:16
  You don't want to listen to fear.
• 1:03:17
  Fear is a liar. So instead of listening myself,
• 1:03:20
  I talk to myself. And that's what I'm doing that
• 1:03:22
  night. I'm pumping myself back up.
• 1:03:23
  I'm like, Damon, you survived prison.
• 1:03:25
  You survived something way worse.
• 1:03:27
  You're not even till that coach tells you, till you talk to that
• 1:03:30
  last coach and he tells you no. Yeah.
• 1:03:32
  And the last coach hardest got to get to the room.
• 1:03:35
  His team had just beat Alabama two nights before.
• 1:03:37
  The national championship, everybody else.
• 1:03:38
  Yeah, everybody's trying to get his time, but I'm relentless,
• 1:03:41
  man, and I survived something way worse.
• 1:03:43
  I applied that perspective. What a bad day looks like.
• 1:03:46
  So I stalked Dabo Sweeney, right?
• 1:03:49
  And I look like a nut, man. I'm hiding behind fake plants
• 1:03:52
  trying to ambush Dabo. And I'm pushing people out of
• 1:03:55
  the way. Now Dabo sees me and security is
• 1:03:57
  seeing me, too. They're going to throw me out of
• 1:03:58
  Toyota Center in just a matter of time.
• 1:04:01
  But I get in front of Dabo. I give my best pitch for about
• 1:04:04
  60 seconds. I come up for air.
• 1:04:06
  Dabo's like, man, you got a card on?
• 1:04:08
  You gave my card. And he snatches it from me.
• 1:04:11
  And he's an in demand guy that night, you know, And eventually
• 1:04:13
  we're going to win the award at night.
• 1:04:15
  As he's taking off, he says I'll check you out and he's gone and
• 1:04:19
  I'm like, well, that's the no I was waiting for.
• 1:04:22
  I'm going home. I felt good about that.
• 1:04:23
  No, because I left it all in the field.
• 1:04:25
  Brent. That's what we learned from
• 1:04:27
  playing sports or Muhammad, you don't have to win all your
• 1:04:30
  fights. You got to fight all.
• 1:04:31
  Just keep fighting I. Just fought them all, man.
• 1:04:34
  Anybody that works in Salesman, you know, you knock on the door,
• 1:04:37
  you make every call. That's exactly.
• 1:04:38
  That's when your day ends. You don't work by a clock, so my
• 1:04:42
  day was over. Enough information yet when
• 1:04:44
  they're saying no. Yeah.
• 1:04:45
  All right. But there was no chance to give
• 1:04:47
  him any more information, and so he was gone.
• 1:04:49
  I went home, forgot about that night.
• 1:04:51
  Four months later, I get an e-mail from the director of
• 1:04:54
  football operations at Clemson, a guy named Mike Dooley.
• 1:04:56
  And Mike Dooley's e-mail said this.
• 1:04:59
  Hey, Damon, Coach Sweeney met you at award show in Houston.
• 1:05:01
  He'd love to have you talk to the team.
• 1:05:04
  Do you have August 1st open Mike?
• 1:05:07
  I got every first open. I got nothing going on in my
• 1:05:10
  life. I mean talking in front of a
• 1:05:12
  mirror in my parents spare bedroom.
• 1:05:14
  So August 1st, 2017, I go speak to the Clemson Tigers, the
• 1:05:18
  defending national champions, college football and when I get
• 1:05:20
  done with my presentation at night, Dabo's in my face.
• 1:05:23
  I don't know if you've ever seen Dabo man.
• 1:05:24
  Dabo is as advertised. He's very high.
• 1:05:26
  Energy. Oh yeah.
• 1:05:27
  He's like Damon, That's the most amazing story I've ever heard.
• 1:05:30
  I've never seen my players respond like that to a speaker,
• 1:05:33
  he said. Have you been to Alabama to talk
• 1:05:34
  to their football team? I'm like, no, Dabo, I've been to
• 1:05:37
  Clemson. I've been here.
• 1:05:38
  I've been, haven't been anywhere, He said why just
• 1:05:40
  texting Saban. Let's see what happens with
• 1:05:42
  that. Next day, Saban's OPS guy calls
• 1:05:44
  me. Hey, Damon.
• 1:05:45
  Dabo called Coach Saban. Coach Saban, can't wait to hear
• 1:05:47
  your story. How does August 21st, 7:30 PM
• 1:05:50
  work for you? Pretty good.
• 1:05:52
  I'll see you in Tuscaloosa. I'll be there for that.
• 1:05:54
  Just like that, Dabo Sweeney starts kicking open every door
• 1:05:57
  to college football. And I mean, Kirby Smart, Riley,
• 1:06:01
  Chip Kelly, Lane Kiffin, Ryan Day, they all call my phone.
• 1:06:04
  When are you coming to talk to my team?
• 1:06:06
  But the real big event was yet to happen.
• 1:06:08
  It was August of 2018, one year after that presentation.
• 1:06:12
  Clemson, I get a phone call out of the blue from this guy named
• 1:06:15
  John Gordon. Now, John Gordon is one of the
• 1:06:16
  biggest motivational speakers and authors in America.
• 1:06:19
  Yep, this guy's the energy bus guy.
• 1:06:20
  I followed for Twitter, for Twitter, for my inspiration.
• 1:06:24
  And I'm like, John, I know who you are.
• 1:06:26
  How do you know who I am? He said.
• 1:06:29
  Dabo Swinney, he said, I just got done speaking to Clemson's
• 1:06:32
  football team and and then I'm in the office of Dabo for 30
• 1:06:35
  minutes. He's telling me your entire life
• 1:06:36
  story. He's and he said this before the
• 1:06:39
  pandemic ran. He said, Damon, the world needs
• 1:06:42
  a coffee bean message. Let's deliver this message to
• 1:06:44
  the world. He said, will you write a book
• 1:06:46
  with me? We'll call it the coffee bean.
• 1:06:48
  The summer of 2019. Ten years.
• 1:06:50
  By the way, which by the way, Damon, you told this a little
• 1:06:53
  bit and before we got on, he saw the coffee bean that you had
• 1:06:58
  given for, for thanking Dabo for letting you be there.
• 1:07:03
  And he counted on his key chain and he asking, what is that
• 1:07:07
  coffee bean, that wooden coffee bean on there?
• 1:07:09
  Dabo starts telling the story and Gordon's like, I got, I got
• 1:07:12
  to talk to this guy. All those dots connect it just,
• 1:07:16
  it's, it's incredible by being there, putting yourself in this
• 1:07:20
  situation, win or lose. And and and that's how they
• 1:07:24
  connect. As a gesture of gratitude, when
• 1:07:26
  Dabo brought me to talk to the team that first time in 2017, I
• 1:07:29
  gave Dabo a little wooden coffee bean keychain I found online.
• 1:07:32
  Cost a couple bucks. All I have was a couple bucks at
• 1:07:34
  the time, but it was a gesture of gratitude.
• 1:07:37
  My dad always said, hey, thank you notes.
• 1:07:39
  Gestures of gratitude are. Great old fashioned stuff.
• 1:07:41
  Dabo put it on his keychain, and when he when John got done
• 1:07:44
  speaking to his team in 2018, he pulls his keys out of his
• 1:07:47
  pocket, throws him on the desk. John says, hey man, what's that
• 1:07:49
  little thing in your keychain? Dabo said.
• 1:07:52
  Oh, that's the coffee bean, He said.
• 1:07:53
  You don't know the story. The Coffee Bean, he said.
• 1:07:55
  We had a guy come talk to team named Damon W for 30 minutes.
• 1:07:59
  Dabo tells him my entire life story.
• 1:08:01
  That leads to the phone call from John because John asked
• 1:08:04
  Dabo for my number. Yeah.
• 1:08:05
  John calls me. We write the book.
• 1:08:07
  The Coffee Bean comes out in the summer of 2019.
• 1:08:09
  Took the world by storm. Yep.
• 1:08:11
  Started off in America. Six weeks in the best seller
• 1:08:13
  list gets a global publishing deal.
• 1:08:16
  Global publishing deals, They're rare.
• 1:08:18
  It's in every language in the world.
• 1:08:19
  Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, French, Italian, German.
• 1:08:21
  And in 2020, a global pandemic is the entire world becomes a
• 1:08:26
  pot of boiling water, and so many people came to the.
• 1:08:29
  Like the connection as the message.
• 1:08:30
  To get them through it and my life takes off vertically.
• 1:08:33
  I can't even tell you the the ascension that happened at that
• 1:08:36
  moment. Oh, I've been on it, damn it,
• 1:08:39
  and and it your your story re inspires a lot of people in our
• 1:08:43
  world and re entry, because you know, a lot of a lot of this
• 1:08:47
  about this show nightmare success is is that you know you
• 1:08:51
  there is hope you can make a second chance work.
• 1:08:55
  The narrative can be broken and and voices like yours that you
• 1:09:02
  didn't give up, you didn't take you know, you took the nose but
• 1:09:06
  kept the fight. That's the thing about being
• 1:09:10
  having that ex felon thing that follows you forever is is you're
• 1:09:13
  not getting rid of that. You're gonna never stops.
• 1:09:16
  You're gonna. Carry that with you.
• 1:09:18
  How do you carry it and make it work?
• 1:09:20
  Yeah, in. America, it's a great thing
• 1:09:22
  about your story. Yeah, in America, punishment
• 1:09:24
  never stops. You know, you're never gonna.
• 1:09:26
  I mean, you could take me, man. I mean, by every metric, I'm a
• 1:09:30
  success story. You know, I'm the guy that
• 1:09:32
  brings hope. But I can't get most jobs in
• 1:09:35
  America. I'm a check box.
• 1:09:36
  I'm a mistake that I made from 2005 to 2008 that I went to
• 1:09:40
  prison for, by the way, and paid for with my life.
• 1:09:44
  But America, punishment never stops.
• 1:09:45
  People are talking about these wonderful ideals of
• 1:09:49
  Christianity. We would forgive everybody.
• 1:09:50
  That's not true that we don't do that in America.
• 1:09:53
  Punishment doesn't stop in this country.
• 1:09:55
  We judge people constantly, man. It's just like when people talk
• 1:09:59
  about that, I mean, it's like, I'm like, what fantasy world do
• 1:10:02
  you live in? Because but you have to live
• 1:10:05
  with the facts that you create your own life.
• 1:10:07
  And I created some bad facts in my life because of the choices
• 1:10:10
  that I've made. They're not going away.
• 1:10:12
  No, Stick your head. You just deal with them.
• 1:10:14
  You put them in the back seat, not in the front seat of your
• 1:10:16
  car and continue to drive and that's that's a big deal.
• 1:10:19
  You're darn right that's exactly what you do.
• 1:10:21
  And you know, I'll close up with this on on the whole story.
• 1:10:26
  The coffee bean. One of the biggest things in a
• 1:10:29
  life for me was to find Muhammad when I got out of prison, the
• 1:10:32
  guy that told me to store the coffee and I'm like this because
• 1:10:35
  I think we all know I wouldn't be here without him.
• 1:10:38
  And I go out, I get out of prison.
• 1:10:39
  I can't find you. First of all, because his real
• 1:10:41
  name is not Muhammad. This is Muslim name.
• 1:10:43
  I don't know his real name. And so for seven years I'm
• 1:10:47
  waiting for him to find me and this is how he finds me.
• 1:10:51
  I get a letter from an inmate, the Texas Department criminal
• 1:10:53
  justice two years ago. I get a lot of inmate male brand
• 1:10:56
  because who I am to every and a woman in prison is what you
• 1:11:00
  talked about. I am Andy Dufrane.
• 1:11:02
  I am hope to those men and women in prison.
• 1:11:05
  I love the mail I get from the incarcerated men and women.
• 1:11:08
  I write them all back. Yeah, but this letter couldn't
• 1:11:10
  be returned. There was no return address.
• 1:11:12
  Had one sentence. Find James Lynn Baker and you
• 1:11:16
  find Muhammad Boom. The clue that took seven years.
• 1:11:21
  So I'll go to Dallas, get a private investigator.
• 1:11:23
  My lawyer and I get this private investigator.
• 1:11:25
  We find his criminal record matched everything he told me in
• 1:11:28
  and out of presents entire life had he been Dallas County Jail
• 1:11:30
  in 2009. So I know this is my friend.
• 1:11:33
  All we got to do is find his current address.
• 1:11:34
  But we never found his current address because James Lynn Baker
• 1:11:37
  the second Muhammad he died in Dallas, TX on May 9th 2017 of an
• 1:11:43
  opiate overdose. He was a drug addict just like
• 1:11:45
  me. But he never got help for his
• 1:11:47
  addiction, never made it to a program recovery.
• 1:11:50
  So now that I know who the guy is, I go out and find his family
• 1:11:53
  to honor him and his family. They live in South Dallas still
• 1:11:56
  where he grew up, the poorest, most inner city urban part of
• 1:11:59
  Dallas. And I told him, I said, if
• 1:12:02
  you'll let me every year for the rest of my life, I'll put
• 1:12:04
  $10,000 into a trust for a scholarship in his name.
• 1:12:07
  We'll call it the James Lynn Baker.
• 1:12:08
  The second Be a Coffee Bean scholarship.
• 1:12:11
  And I would love for your family to pick that winner every year.
• 1:12:13
  So that every year one little boy or one little girl that
• 1:12:16
  grows up in his old neighborhood, they're getting a
• 1:12:19
  better chance of life through an education.
• 1:12:20
  Because these two guys met up at Dallas County Jail in 2009 and
• 1:12:24
  to this date we have picked 2 scholarship winners.
• 1:12:26
  The last two years we picked a winner.
• 1:12:28
  Each year the family picks a winner.
• 1:12:29
  I don't have anything to do with it.
• 1:12:31
  Both little girls from South Dallas, both in situations where
• 1:12:35
  the money means everything to them and they get to go to
• 1:12:37
  college and become a better version themselves.
• 1:12:39
  So. That is awesome.
• 1:12:40
  Yeah, finally found Mohammed. I tell people all the time.
• 1:12:43
  And it also, it keeps him alive, you know, in the neighborhood
• 1:12:46
  and. It changed the memory of his
• 1:12:48
  family. His family doesn't have a lot of
• 1:12:50
  good things to say about this guy.
• 1:12:51
  That wasn't a lot of positive to say, but I was able to change
• 1:12:55
  the entire memory of our human being after they're gone.
• 1:12:58
  What's the value on that and what I learned about the?
• 1:13:00
  Priceless. Yeah, what I learned about the
• 1:13:02
  coffee bean too, Brent, is that one of the reasons he told me
• 1:13:05
  the story, the coffee bean, I truly believe, is that so one
• 1:13:08
  day I could come back and redeem him because I found redemption
• 1:13:12
  right through his message. But what if I could come back
• 1:13:15
  and redeem you too? So you never know who you're
• 1:13:17
  talking to in life. You never know what you're going
• 1:13:19
  to meet and look. That's so powerful.
• 1:13:21
  If I I got to. Ask you a question, Damon,
• 1:13:23
  because I ask everybody, this is your journey is incredible.
• 1:13:28
  I mean, your story is incredible.
• 1:13:30
  What you're doing right now is incredible.
• 1:13:32
  The lives that you're impacting are incredible.
• 1:13:34
  What do you think's your biggest take away from this whole
• 1:13:36
  journey you've been on? Oh man, I can tell you the
• 1:13:39
  biggest take away is that it's all about putting back into the
• 1:13:43
  world. You can't be a taker.
• 1:13:44
  You got to put back servant leadership, helping other people
• 1:13:46
  reach their goals in life. And and look, no matter how long
• 1:13:50
  it takes, you got to just keep getting up every day.
• 1:13:53
  And to become the best version of you, you have to find a way
• 1:13:56
  to help other people. We help other people reach their
• 1:13:59
  goals of life. We help ourselves.
• 1:14:00
  That's how it works as somebody's going to help us out
• 1:14:03
  to. Yeah, and it fills you up.
• 1:14:05
  It fills you up, man. It.
• 1:14:06
  It took me 7 years to find Muhammad.
• 1:14:08
  Yeah. It took me seven knows a night
• 1:14:10
  in Houston to get to the one yes.
• 1:14:12
  I needed in life. The one yes that changed my
• 1:14:13
  life. Took me 7 years to get out of
• 1:14:15
  prison. Brent, some of your goals of
• 1:14:17
  life are going to take long to notice.
• 1:14:18
  But don't give up. Don't before the miracle happens
• 1:14:21
  that night in Houston, TX. If I walk out the door that
• 1:14:25
  night. If you're seven knows.
• 1:14:26
  Yeah, we're not having this conversation today.
• 1:14:28
  The world doesn't have the coffee.
• 1:14:29
  Be a message. Don't give up.
• 1:14:31
  Don't quit, man. That's the take away, man.
• 1:14:33
  No matter how long it takes, keep putting into work every
• 1:14:35
  day. And to become the best version
• 1:14:37
  of you, find ways to help other people.
• 1:14:39
  I love it. God, I love it.
• 1:14:42
  I love it. It's been a great conversation
• 1:14:44
  man, Thank you. It's just it and, and the best
• 1:14:47
  way to find you. I I mean, I there's so many
• 1:14:50
  things that you can put damonw.org.
• 1:14:52
  There's so many things there. There's there's books, there's
• 1:14:57
  going to be a movie. There should be there should be
• 1:14:59
  a movie we're. Working we're working on that
• 1:15:01
  right now and and that like but I mean am I speaking if you want
• 1:15:04
  to get in touch with me for speaking whatever it is
• 1:15:06
  damonw.org Brent said it a while ago Instagram you know Twitter
• 1:15:11
  all that or X whatever they called now at Damon W seven
• 1:15:15
  books are available on Amazon if.
• 1:15:17
  If you want to get on Instagram too, follow him on Instagram.
• 1:15:20
  He's always got something good on there.
• 1:15:22
  Awesome, man. Hey, thanks a lot for today,
• 1:15:24
  Bram. Yeah, Damon and I want to just
• 1:15:27
  quickly say thanks to Homestead Financial for letting me do my
• 1:15:30
  podcast here. That's much appreciated.
• 1:15:31
  If anybody's got home mortgage needs, it's Greg Aftiev.
• 1:15:34
  He's your man. Keep sharing.
• 1:15:37
  Do the hey, do a review. I know it's a hassle on Apple,
• 1:15:40
  but if you can do a review, those really just put the show
• 1:15:42
  on steroids. If you want to find me, it's
• 1:15:44
  Brett cassie.com. I spell it wrong.
• 1:15:46
  It's with ATY, not Ady, as I used to say when I was writing
• 1:15:51
  my emails back and forth from Leavenworth.
• 1:15:52
  Stay strong, I'll do the same. Damon W, you are awesome.
• 1:15:55
  Thank you for today. So appreciate you.
• 1:15:58
  Thanks. A lot.
• 1:15:59
  Y'all be a coffee bean? Diver success in and out.