Joe Grover: 0:01

Welcome to the Real F Word. Today, I have an incredibly special guest here. He's our first guest that needed permission from the state of Texas and his parole officer to be here, and I am so honored to have Damon West here, who is going to share the details of his miraculous story and how he's gone from a life sentence in prison to impacting millions of lives, and I think the application of his experience to entrepreneurship is going to be something you're not going to want to miss. So, damon, thank you so much for being here. We're honored to have you here, and you were here speaking at a big event with several hundred executives yesterday, and we're just grateful that you're here in Salt Lake City sharing this really profound message.

Damon West: 0:50

Joe thanks for the opportunity, man, and like look, I mean, the cool thing about this life that I have is, like you know, getting to come speak. I get to. I got to come speak to your group yesterday, but it also put me in the state of Utah where I had an extra day on my hands and I got to go into a prison system and go talk to the men and women inside the prison system.

Joe Grover: 1:14

So thank you for the opportunity to serve. I love that and that's why I'm so grateful to have you on the podcast today. You know Damon is an incredible author, he's an incredible speaker and today I really want you to take some of these coffee bean principles, which you'll talk about, and and share those with entrepreneurs that are in their own journey and they might feel like they're in prison some days and how they can apply those to really work their way through a really difficult kind of navigation of the entrepreneurial journey. I also am so excited to to really have you share some of your entrepreneurship story, because it's an incredible success story, and I want you to share the things that were hard in the early days and how you've kind of built your business. So thank you so much for being here.

Damon West: 1:57

Thanks for having me, joe, and I love what you keep saying. Story. What I've learned is that people in America we love stories that have certain elements right, we love the story, the underdog journey, the overcoming adversity, the redemption story, the person that wins in the end. But people really love prison stories. Prison stories are something that people are fascinated with because there's only two ways to go into a prison. Right, you can get sent to prison, you can work in a prison, and I happen to have one of those stories where I was sent to prison my story. We can really start the story off in 2008. The date is July 30th 2008. And at the time, on July 30th 2008, I was the mastermind the criminal mastermind of an organized crime ring that operated throughout the entire city of Dallas. We were a bunch of meth addicts breaking into people's home. And on July 30th 2008, I was in this little old apartment I was living in and the Dallas SWAT team comes in. They take me down Dramatic SWAT team raid. They take me to Dallas County Jail. They book me in. They set my bond at $1.4 million. So there's no way I'm getting out of jail.

Damon West: 3:00

My trial takes place 10 months after my arrest. The date is May 18, 2009. On May 18, 2009, after a six-day criminal trial, a jury in Dallas County sentenced me to 65 years in prison that's a life sentence in the state of Texas. The charge was engaging in organized criminal activity RICO. I went down for the RICO and I was the boss of the whole ring. Went down for the RICO and I was the boss of the whole ring.

Damon West: 3:23

I violated the social contract, joe. The social contract says if you go out and obey the laws of society, you can have. You know all the trappings of it. You can enjoy your life in society. But I violated all those rules. I became a drug addict. I became a criminal. I became a thief. I broke into people's homes. I didn't just steal property from my victims, I stole their sense of security. When I broke in their homes, no one was ever home, thank God. I never aspired to be a crime boss and I never aspired to be any of those things. I just told you, heck, when I was growing up, I wanted to be Jerry Maguire before there was a Jerry Maguire. I wanted to be a sports agent. I wanted to play pro football, you know.

Joe Grover: 3:55

And you were a heck of a football player.

Damon West: 3:57

I was a great football player in Texas. I mean Texas high school football man. This is, like you know, a quarterback quarterback. I played division one college football at the university of North Texas starting quarterback by the time I was 20 for a division one team. I excelled at that. I was always a leader. I was always a great athlete.

Damon West: 4:11

I got away from all those things in life that I wanted to be because I was an addict and addicts addicts give up their goals to meet their behaviors. That's the very definition of addiction, joe. When you're you give up a goal to meet a behavior, you're an addict. And listen in America our minds tend to go right to drugs and alcohol when we think about addiction, but the truth is you could be addicted to anything right Food, money, clothing, shopping, sex, pornography, the Internet, social media. If you find yourself in life giving up goals to meet behaviors, that's addictive behavior and you need to check your addictions. Giving up goals to meet behaviors that's addictive behavior and you need to check your addictions. When I was playing college football, I got injured. When I was 20, my red shirt, sophomore year and my career was over, and that's when I got into the hardcore drugs the cocaine, the ecstasy, the pills, because I could not live life on life's terms. That's the hallmark of being an addict when you put in chemicals to change the way you feel. I was a functional addict, though.

Damon West: 5:09

I graduate college, I move off to Washington DC, I work in the United States Congress, I work for a guy running for president of the United States 2004,. I moved back to Dallas to be a stockbroker for UBS United Bank of Switzerland, and it was at that job, as a broker in 2004, that my life and the lives of a lot of other innocent people are forever changed. Because that was the day I tried meth for the first time. Another broker introduced me to it. They saw me sleeping at work, didn't want me to get fired, so he brings me to the parking garage, he gives me my first hit of meth and I was instantly hooked. Just like that. I couldn't give everything away fast enough for that drug Cause. Remember that's what addicts do we give things away. I gave away my job, my home, my car, my savings account, my family, my tethering to God. In 18 months, I go from working on Wall Street and I'm living on the streets of Dallas, and that's when I became the criminal that they took down in 2008.

Damon West: 5:51

The burglaries went on for about three years. They called them the Uptown Burglars. They called me the Uptown Burglar and after the Dallas SWAT team finally took me down, I realized that they didn't just arrest me that day, they rescued me. That day the Dallas SWAT team saved my life. My angels don't have wings, joe. They have assault rifles and shields and helmets. They come through the windows. They bust the door off the hinges to pull me out of that world that I was in. Didn't see it at the time, but I understood it when I got to prison and I got on my journey.

Damon West: 6:22

The real big key to the message that I go around sharing is what happened after I got sentenced to life in prison. My mom and my dad had this conversation with me. She said debts in life demand to be paid. This is right after the sentencing man. This is five minutes after my trial was over, in a little side room with a bulletproof glass. Between us. They're giving my parents this one last visit because I mean I just got life. I mean people were shocked in the courtroom.

Damon West: 6:45

My parents were shocked, the DA was shocked. They actually got the life sentence. Everybody was shocked. Right, this is 65 years, a life sentence for property crimes. No one was ever home during the burglaries, joe. No one got hurt, no weapons were used. I mean there's no physical victim to these crimes. These are property crimes around a bunch of drug addicts, I mean, I was locked up with people in prison that for murder charges they got eight years, ten years and they took a person off the planet.

Damon West: 7:13

So after the trial was over, my mom is telling me you know she's saying debts in life demand to be paid. You just got hit with one heck of a bill Damon from the state texas, but you did the things they said you did. So you have to go and pay that debt to society. She said you owe texas that debt, but you owe your father and I debt too, and she's reminding me we gave you all the opportunity, love and support to be anything you want to be in life and that's how you repaid us. It's not going to work. So here's the debt you're going to pay to us.

Damon West: 7:41

When you go to prison, you will not get one of these white hate groups, one of these Aryan Brotherhood type of gangs, because you're scared because you're the minority in there. You weren't raised to be a racist. You're not starting that now. And that's when she tells me no gangs, no tattoos. But my mom told me that day. She said, damon, you come back as the man that we raised, or don't come back to us at all. And Joe, I'm stunned, man. And then just imagine your mother. Man, everybody's got a mom, right, not everybody has a dad. Everybody's got a mom. Imagine mom telling you that man, you got to do, you got this. Here's the line in the sand. You did it. Go, pay that, come back to us. Here's your debt. So, um, I'm waiting in Dallas County jail. I've got two months before the prison bus comes to get me.

Joe Grover: 8:23

And man.

Damon West: 8:24

I'm frantically asking every guy that's been to prison before how do I survive this? What am I going to do? And every guy is telling me the same thing you have to get into a gang. That's like the prison culture in there, especially with the lifers, and I'm going to the worst part of prison, where the life sentence people live Supermax, Supermax prison. You have to live with lifers. If you get a life sentence in Texas, you don't live with general population that guy sends to 10 years, 20 years, even 30 years. You don't see them. You see the guys that are never going home again. It's the edge of the earth and that's what the guys are telling me in county jail. You're going to the edge of the earth. Man, you need help. The gang is your help.

Damon West: 8:58

But there was this one guy that was very different in there. There's this older black man named Muhammad. Muhammad's what you call a career criminal too, man. He's been in and out of prison his entire life, but he was really the most positive guy I've ever met in my life. He had a smile on his face everywhere he went. You know this guy would come up to my bunk every morning and Muhammad would come up and he would pick me up like a ray of sunshine.

Joe Grover: 9:18

Was it Jackson.

Damon West: 9:21

In the book the Change Agent. I changed everybody's name. I called him Mr Jackson in the book, but his name was Muhammad. That's the only name I knew him by, and I would find out later on in life that that was his Muslim name, not his real name. When I tried to go find him after prison and there's a good story about that we can tell at the end about finding Muhammad but he's telling me, you know he said hey, if you want to survive this thing and come back as someone your parents recognize, let me tell you what prison is really going to be like, and he's telling me the dynamic of it. Like everybody separates out by their own race and that's how everybody stays and that's how they keep the peace in there too, by the way, because if everybody's in their own racial group, you have less chance of a racial war breaking out.

Damon West: 9:58

And the way that works in prison is the gangs run the prison and the gangs are made up of races. That's prison, and that's what he's telling me that day in 2009. So he's telling me, you'll fight the white gangs. If you survive that, you will fight the black gangs. The white gangs send the black gangs after you. If you survive, that you earn the right to walk alone. He said the strongest man in prison always walks alone. But he told me the truth about fighting. Now this is the truth, joe. That saved my life back then and it saves my life now. He said you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights. He said some days you win, some days you lose. He said it's okay if you lose, get back up.

Damon West: 10:37

And after that conversation he shared with me one of the greatest lessons I've ever learned in my life. He said I want you to imagine prison as a pot of boiling water. He said you have three choices how to respond to this pot of boiling water. You can be like a carrot that goes in hard but becomes softened by the water. You can be like an egg that has a soft liquid inside a heart, but a few minutes inside the boiling water the egg turns hard on the inside. Your heart becomes hardened, he said. Or you can be like a coffee bean, which changes the pot of boiling water to a pot of coffee. And that's what he said. If you want to come back on the other side of this thing, you got to be like that coffee bean. The power was inside the coffee bean. To change the water around the coffee bean, it turns the water to coffee. He said the coffee bean is the change agent. He said the coffee bean's the change agent. You have to be the change agent. Title of my first book the Change Agent right, but the last words he ever said to me too, when he leaves Dallas County Jail that summer he bonds out. The prison bus is getting ready to come pick me up.

Damon West: 11:36

He said be a coffee bean, joe. Those were the four words that changed my life. They put the power back inside me, and if the power's inside me, it's not the world around me anymore. There's a parallel there with Shawshank, right, I mean, because, like you have one guy showing the other guy the way to hope, you know, and my story is just different. You know, I run into this black Muslim man in Dallas County jail that's been in and out of prison his entire life, different dynamic than Shawshank. But he also gives me the tool that I need to envision myself in a better place. I can be a coffee bean. I've got to find a way to keep the power inside me. But if I find a way to keep the power inside me. I don't survive prison. I thrive in prison, and that's what I did, joe.

Joe Grover: 12:15

I became a coffee bean, those four words that changed your life. What's a prison story? What's an experience that you had in prison? That is, there's an entrepreneurial lesson.

Damon West: 12:26

Yeah. So in prison, in order for me to change myself, I had to change the way I think. Right, your thinking is everything. I had to tell myself that prison, a real physical prison, this is a super max prison. This is the most dangerous place in the world you can imagine living in. You're living around people that want to kill you in some way or another. You're you're living in a, in a place that is there by design. It's a punishment. Prison is a punishment. Right, they're very suffocating places. The walls close in on you in a prison. You know it's hard to think inside of a prison. You're separated out from the rest of the world out there. Your deprivation of time, all these things hit you, but you have to get up every day with a good attitude. You have to.

Damon West: 13:15

I had to stop looking at prison as a punishment and start looking at prison as an opportunity. I've got a good friend named Lee Brower. I think Lee actually lives out here in Utah. He's one of these life coaches and Lee has an acronym for what I was experiencing in prison. His acronym was big B-I-G means begin and gratitude, and that's what I was doing years before I met Lee Brower. I was getting each day with gratitude, I'd get up, I talked to God and I had a prayer that I got into. You know I'd say, hey, god, put in front of me what you need me to do today for you and let me recognize it when I see it, because I don't want to miss whatever that is. But it's that attitude getting up every day that I think on the entrepreneurial journey has helped me out a lot, because you don't get so bogged down in the negatives of life.

Damon West: 13:57

Another thing I would say that prison taught me about the entrepreneurial journey is that life is going to throw you certain days about perspective, perspective of what a bad day looks like, right. But you have to define a bad day right On your journey in life. What is your bad day? Let's talk about some things that are universally bad days. A marriage fails, a bankruptcy happens, a job is lost, a business is lost, something happens to one of your kids or your pets. My pet, my little dog Lottie, is like. It's like a kid man I love. I love Lottie. Someone dies in your family. Death is a part of life. You know these are bad days. Most of your bad days aren't going to be one of those days. Most of your bad days that you call bad days are just not so good days, but you've got to be able to pull yourself out of that and apply the perspective and say, hey, is this one of those days? And if it's not, I'm not going to let this day pull me back today.

Joe Grover: 14:45

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

Damon West: 14:58

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

Joe Grover: 15:12

Wow.

Damon West: 15:12

Unheard of inside of a prison. The wardens didn't know what to think about it. The majors, the chapel volunteers everybody was like man. I've never seen a guy had this much support on the outside.

Joe Grover: 15:22

They didn't give up on you, they're like if this much support on the outside. They didn't give up on you. They never gave up on me.

Damon West: 15:28

They would have come to visit you every week, every week, and it was a God thing. I got sent to a prison that was right by where I grew up, 10 minutes from where.

Damon West: 15:33

I grew up, there's 100 prisons in Texas. It's a big state. When I was in prison, there were 155,000 inmates at over 100 prisons. Right, I could have been anywhere. I could have been in a prison that's 1,200 miles from where I live. Right, because Texas is a big state, god put me in a prison 10 minutes away from my parents' house, so they came to see me almost every single weekend and that gave me hope. You know, I had hope. I had one foot in and one foot out, you know. So I always had this hope I could lean on. But that's one of the things I tried to do in there with those guys too is instill hope in them. Whenever I was changing myself, I realized that I had the power to change the prison, too. The coffee bean thing, right, and it worked.

Damon West: 16:17

Another thing on the entrepreneurial journey that I think people need to understand is that when you're building this business, this brand, your brand is you, and it's something that you build for a long time. And, like I was building my brand of who Damon West is inside of a prison, right, the guy that the wardens or somebody at medical or somebody at the chapel or other inmates met, the guy they met. There is the same guy that's here today. You know I was building that brand and it's what do people see when they see you. Because you are a brand, you've got to be working on your brand, always be branding. But that was one of the things I realized early on that the guy I want to be out there has to be born inside this place. And if I could grow that guy, if I could become that guy in this difficult place outside, that guy, if I could become that guy in this difficult place outside will be a lot easier because some of the trappings are different on the outside as they are on the inside right.

Damon West: 17:09

I mean, there's very few decisions you have to make in a prison. Most of the decisions are made for you when are you going to eat, what are you going to wear, what are you going to do. These things are all covered for you every single. You don't have to think about stuff. You just go through this rote day if you want. But I would pack my days in with things that would grow me spiritually, mentally, physically. I'd make it a point to work out in those three areas every single day. Did I have bad days in there? You bet I had bad days in there, but I always try to remind myself about perspective, man, I still had an opportunity at life. I was getting up every day.

Damon West: 17:40

I was living life, and it's like traffic, joe. Sometimes you sit in traffic and the traffic bothers you right. Other times you sit in traffic and it doesn't bother you at all. Is it the traffic or is it you? It's you, it's how you see the world around you, and I understood that. The mental side of it, the spiritual side too, though, joe. What happened in my life was a spiritual awakening. A human being's not capable of making the kind of changes that have happened in my life by themselves. We just aren't built like that. You have to be tapped into a source, the higher power. I'm a Christian, so mine's Christ, but anybody can pick whatever their higher power is.

Damon West: 18:15

That's one of the things I learned when I got into a program recovery man is that we're all on this journey and we can pick whatever it is we choose to believe in. But when we find that higher power, that source, we have to turn our lives and our will, our thoughts and our actions over to that higher power. And that's a big deal, man. That's because now you're saying that there's a lot of things I don't have control over and I'm going to let those things go and I'm going to focus on the things I do control what I think, what I say, what I feel and what I do. And if you can find yourself at that place in your journey and you can focus on those four things, now you're investing your time, most precious resource you have.

Damon West: 18:55

Once time is gone, it's gone for good. Take it from a guy's done time Once that stuff is gone, it's gone for good. All the money in the world won't buy one more second of that stuff that we call time. But whenever I was in prison and I could focus my time on what I think, what I say, what I feel and what I do, now I was actually impacting my life in the areas I could change, the things I could control.

Joe Grover: 19:13

If you're an entrepreneur listening to the podcast and you're struggling to turn a company around or to keep a company alive, right. There's so many things you can't control and you have to take responsibility and accountability for the things you can. But the way you act, the way you speak and what you do, that's it Right and if you can focus on those things. Sometimes you can't control the macro economy or a shift in the capital markets, right, Right, or a competitive dynamic, but you can control those things and you can also control your perspective. I love this that you woke up having no idea it was going to be seven years. You thought it was going to be 60 years.

Damon West: 19:49

Yeah, I had no idea it's an indeterminate date. They can keep me for the whole time if they want, but I knew that the man that I wanted to be out there had to be born in there and that whenever that release date came wasn't something I could control. But what I could control is the person that they were going to see in front of them when I did come up for parole one day. You know and that's that's what I did years later in life, this guy named john gordon. He and I wrote, uh, the coffee bean together. John's my best friend, I'm a mentor, and john told me this years ago, when the coffee bean was getting ready to come out. He said, damon, this book, the coffee bean, is going to be an incredible book. He said the world needs this. It's right before the pandemic. Right, we write this book. He said the world needs this message. It's going to be one of those books like who Moved my Cheese. In fact, he said it'll be the next who Moved my Cheese. He said it's going to sell millions of copies.

Damon West: 20:41

He said you are going to be known as the coffee bean man, the coffee bean guy, he said if you stick with your brand. He said your brand, your message is the coffee bean, your brand. He said your brand, your message is the coffee bean. He said stick with that forever. He said I don't care if you don't see the results of this thing for years down the line. Give it five years before you even think about changing your message.

Damon West: 21:04

Because he said here's what happens to people all the time. He said they don't see the results fast enough. Some, some of us, we want to. We want to buy into this idea of the overnight success. There's no such thing as the overnight success.

Damon West: 21:12

Joe, the guy that corporations bring in to speak to their people right now with me, that guy was born in the Supermax prison a decade ago. There's no such thing as the overnight success. John said you have to keep the same message because if you keep the same message over and over again the compounding interest of you going out and sharing your story in that message people will understand that's this guy's message. He's the coffee bean guy. But if you change your message midstream now, you confuse people. Is he the coffee bean guy? Is he this other guy? He said but if you'll do that, you will be known as a coffee bean guy and that'll be a pretty big thing to be known for one day. Always stay focused. Whatever your brand is, whatever your message is, stick with it If you don't see the results right away that's okay.

Joe Grover: 21:51

This is a great. I mean, this is an essential marketing lesson and, as a chief marketing officer, like I see this so often something doesn't work. Give it three months, we give it six months, then we change it.

Damon West: 22:02

Yeah.

Joe Grover: 22:02

Right, and it may not be the message that was broken. It may just be your consistency and execution of saying the same thing over and over in really compelling ways that people can understand. I love that You've told this story. How many times you think the coffee bean? Your whole prison story, your conviction story.

Damon West: 22:18

Thousands, thousands, thousands, man, thousands of times you know.

Joe Grover: 22:22

And every time you tell it, there's another 100,000, 10,000 people that hear this for the first time.

Damon West: 22:28

Absolutely, and today, like this audience you're giving a. I get to speak to your audience today. This is an audience that would probably never have heard it before, they didn't hear it on your podcast, but it's essential for us to come out there and stay focused on what our brand is. Don't leave your brand, don't abandon your brand because you don't see the results fast enough. You are closer to your success than you even know, and I think that's true about a lot of people in life, but we pull back, we give up, we stop doing the things that made us great, out of fear and doubt.

Joe Grover: 22:57

What's up, phil fans? You know, as we've listened to so many guests on this podcast, that the road to success is often paved with failure, with a lot of challenges and even full-on face plants. But there's a thing that you could do to help skip some of those bumps and bruises, and that's really where the consultants at Amplio come in. See, amplio offers fractional executives in finance, marketing and HR, and these are people who've experienced a lot. They've been in the trenches, they've built businesses, they've failed. But here's the kicker They've learned from those failures and now they're applying all that wisdom to your business to support you.

Joe Grover: 23:35

So you don't have to learn the hard way. I mean, think about it. Instead of stumbling around in the dark and hoping you don't hit the wall, you could bring someone in who's already mapped out that room right. Amplio consultants and experts have worked with and for numerous companies of all sizes and they've gathered insights on what works, where to focus and how to actually grow your business efficiently. So while we embrace failure on this podcast, there is no rule that says you have to fail at everything yourself. So check out Amplio and see how their fractional executives can help your business move forward and avoid those painful learning curves. Sometimes the smartest move is learning from someone else's failure. Visit Ampliocom to learn more.

Damon West: 24:19

In the 1920s there were two serial companies in America. There was Post and there was Kellogg's. Really, it was just Post, though Joe Post was a juggernaut. Kellogg's was real small. They had no market share. But in 1929, the stock market crashes, the Great Depression begins and when this happens, Post quits doing the things that made them great. Out of fear and doubt, they stopped marketing, they stopped running radio ads. They fired a lot of people, they laid people off, they quit reinventing themselves.

Damon West: 24:47

Kellogg's, during the same event in time and history, they saw what Post was doing. You know what. They saw Opportunity and they took it. They took the little bit of money they had and they bet on themselves. They pushed it all to the middle of the table. More marketing, more radio Research and development picked up. They invented a new cereal during this time called Rice Krispies. And by 1933, four years into that Great Depression, Kellogg's overtook Post. It's the biggest serial company in America and they've never looked back. I saw so many Post and Kellogg stories happening during the pandemic man. I saw it, man. You could see it happening. You can see it happening even now. Right, People that abandoned their mission lose in the end, and the people that believe in themselves, that truly believe in themselves and that bet on themselves. That's what you see happening.

Joe Grover: 25:34

Oh, I remember when the pandemic first happened, all the investors, everyone Sequoia, all the big investors on the West Coast and Silicon Valley, most of the local investors all said hunker down, lay off your employees, don't spend another dime. This is like we have no idea what's going to and really it was just uncertainty, and that's not a bad recommendation in the face of uncertainty. And there were a few there were just a few that just said maybe we should just pause, let's just let's just 30 days, like, let's evaluate what's going to happen, like are people going to, is the entire economy going to shut down? And there were companies that went and laid off huge, like 20%, of their workforce in an abundance of caution, and I'm not saying that was the wrong decision. But then we saw some tailwinds for a lot of industries and a lot of businesses. Look at the airline industry.

Damon West: 26:27

Man, look, you're talking to a guy that travels 20, 25 days a month. Man. Again, look, you're talking to a guy that travels 20 to 25 days a month. Man, the airline industry is just now staffing up fully with their flight attendants and pilots and stuff like that. I mean, that's a big one. Look, a lot of lessons were learned during that pandemic, and one of the cool things to see, though, was the people that really believed in themselves, and they stuck it out. They figured out a way. That's resilience, you know, a resilient mindset. One of the speakers you were interviewing yesterday it was a bank CEO.

Joe Grover: 26:59

He was talking about the resilient mindset the CEO of KeyBank.

Damon West: 27:02

Yeah, I was listening to his presentation. He talked about the resilient mindset. It's something he looks for when he's you know, when he's hiring, he's looking for someone that has that resilient mindset. That's key.

Joe Grover: 27:12

It may be the most important characteristic of an entrepreneur, especially in the face of failure. Right, absolutely Resilience. So how do you develop resilience? Because you I mean you, could give a masterclass on this. You could have taken a different path. Yeah, could have got tatted up and joined a gang and right, and you might still be in prison.

Damon West: 27:28

Yeah. So developing resilience. I can help you out with this a lot. So, first of all, we need to understand the truth about fear and the truth about adversity. Adversity is never as bad as you think it's going to be. Two things I learned about adversity in my journey through prison. Adversity is never as bad as you think it's going to be, and you are always capable of way more than you think you are.

Damon West: 27:49

But sometimes we let the voice in our head guide us. Can't do that. Do not listen to yourself, because sometimes the voice in your head is fear. Tune that out. Fear is a liar. Talk to yourself. You are the voice that you're going to hear, more than any other voice the whole lifetime that you have on this planet. It's your voice that you're going to hear. Is it the voice in your head talking to you? Is it really you or is it fear? I would question and say sometimes it's fear talking to you. Don't listen to that. But if you talk to yourself, when you hear the words come out of your mouth, it sounds different.

Damon West: 28:20

One of the things we do in the 12 steps is we have this moral inventory, that we work and in the fourth step we write down all of our fears and our resentments and stuff that holds us back a lot in life. And step we write down all of our fears and our resentments and stuff that holds us back a lot in life and in the fifth step we actually tell another human being. This is the 12-step journey that people go through in AA or NA and, by the way, I don't speak for AA. I want to say that because AA people get upset if I don't say that. But in that fourth step we're writing down all these things we fear. And the fifth step is when your sponsor reads them back to you.

Damon West: 28:49

The first time my sponsor ever read back to me the fears that I put down there, half of those things are like that's stupid. That sounds like a kid wrote that. He showed me the paper. You wrote that those are your words. When I heard another human being say it back to me and I felt childish, I felt like why would I ever? Why would I ever fear that thing? That's not even real. Fears aren't real. Danger is real. You have to respect danger. Fear isn't real. It's an emotion, it's a feeling you get in a situation you're in. Fear's not real, Danger is real. So that's one thing I would tell you about the entrepreneur journey.

Joe Grover: 29:22

By the way, I love that insight because we don't talk about fear a lot, but that's really. We have this fear of failure. We have the fear of the perception that people have of us when we fail or if our company doesn't succeed.

Damon West: 29:32

Yeah.

Joe Grover: 29:33

Right, and I think maybe just writing those fears down, if you're an entrepreneur, what's the worst thing that could happen to this business, right? And if you write all those fears down and then you said that you had someone read it back to you, yeah, so that's an interesting thing If you write all your fears down and then you go to a close friend or a partner or a spouse or a mother and say will you read these back to me?

Joe Grover: 29:53

It may help create some perspective and really make those fears more manageable and recognize that a lot of those fears are just in our own head. They're just perceptions.

Damon West: 30:01

Absolutely. Here's an exercise for you. All right, let's say I'm talking to all the people right now that are people of faith, people and I'm not even saying what faith, whatever faith you are but if you're a person that believes in the supreme being, a higher power, here's something you can do. That I did whenever my sponsor got with me when I was working the 12 steps. I already told you I'm a christian, I believe in christ, that's my path. You can pick any path you're on. But he said hey, damon, you got a lot of these fears going around your head and we keep coming back to these sponsor sponsee meetings and some of the fears keep coming back to these sponsor-sponsee meetings and some of the fears keep coming back up. He said I want you to go home tonight, get a shoebox, this old shoebox. He said I want you to take duct tape out and tape up the lid to that shoebox, really good and tight, so you can't get back into the box. Then I want you to cut a hole down the middle of that box, just a slit enough for a piece of paper to go in, and then I want you to write in real big black marker God's box. He said I want you to write down every fear that you have every day and slip that piece of paper that you write it down on inside of God's box, because now you've given it to God, let God deal with that. He said. Once you start putting these fears in there, you can let go of them and trust God to do it. This is for people of faith. Now, if you really believe in God, here's the thing that I know about this and I can share if you're a person of faith.

Damon West: 31:16

When I learned about what you can and can't control, it was at an AA meeting. It was this beautiful prayer that we start the meetings off, called the Serenity Prayer. You've heard this prayer before. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. So I go to a meeting in prison, an AA meeting. We have them at the Chapel of Hope every Wednesday morning, and that morning the guy that brings the meeting in for the free world we'll call him Ray. To protect his anonymity, ray said hey, damon, today we're going to diagram the serenity prayer. He had a chalkboard behind him, joe. So he draws a line from one side of the chalkboard to the other and he addresses the whole group. He says that line is God's line. He said God's line is bigger than the chalkboard. It's really infinitely long. It's massive. It's one horizon of the universe to the next. You can't fathom how big God's line really is. Right, it's huge.

Damon West: 32:06

He said the first part of the prayer God. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. He said, damon, the things you can't change are on God's line and every time you try to touch them on God's line you hurt yourself and you hurt other people, because you are not God and God doesn't need your help doing his job. He said stay off of God's line because you have your own line. So he turns around, he erases one little inch off of God's line, something we could see on the board. The line's broken by an inch and he held his fingers up an inch apart for the entire chapel to see. He said if God's line's infinitely long, there's your line, you have one inch. That little one-inch line, he said, was called humility. He said, because when we are humble we are right-sized, and when we are right-sized we can be useful to other people. We have to be right-sized for that.

Damon West: 32:55

So that's the second part of the prayer the courage to change the things I can. He said. The things you can change are on your little one-inch line. God gives you four things to work on every day. The four things you can't control are the four things you can actually change what you think, what you say, what you feel and what you do. He repeats them what you think, what you say, what you feel and what you do. He said if it's not one of those four things you have no control over Fears, all the stuff that holds you back in life. Most of them don't fall on your line.

Damon West: 33:25

He said the most important part of the prayer was the last part of the prayer the wisdom to know the difference between the big line and your little small line. Joe, I can't tell you how many times a day in my life, in my entrepreneurial journey, in my family, in the decisions I make every day, I walk up to things all the time and I say that's not on my line and I walk away. Man, I have saved myself so much pain, hurt, suffering, loss, saved other people too, because I just know what's on my line, what's not on my line and it's that trust and that faith I told you at the beginning of this thing. It's a spiritual component. You have to have to turn things around in life and become the best version of you. That's the spiritual side of it. That's the stuff that we can't do as human beings. We have to trust the process to a supreme being, to a higher power.

Joe Grover: 34:12

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

Damon West: 34:33

Ooh, man, you talk about a big—that's a big one, Because now you're putting on your back God's job. You know You're saying I can control these things I can't control. You're not omnipotent, you can't do that, but God can. Whatever you believe, god is, god can. God can take care of those things you can't. But if you focus on the things you can control, give you a good story about this COVID. So let's go the entrepreneurial journey. So I made it out of, first of all, the lady from parole that interviews me in 2015.

Joe Grover: 35:03

By the way, we needed permission from your parole officer for you to come here to Salt Lake. Yeah, and you're going to be on.

Damon West: 35:10

I'm on parole till 2073. So the recording of this podcast. I've got 49 more years left on parole. Not bad, I got again perspective of what a bad day looks like Every month when I go get my travel permits because I have to get permission to travel I always snap a picture at the parole office in front of the big parole seat.

Damon West: 35:27

This is this big scary seal that says Parole Division, texas Department of Criminal Justice. And there I am smiling big in front of the parole seal and people were like man, why are you smiling so much? I'm like because I'm not in prison. I could be serving a life sentence in a supermax prison, but I'm out, I'm on parole. I can't get travel permits but I'm on parole.

Damon West: 35:47

Do you know that every man and woman in prison all over America they want to have just one travel, because that means you're free, you're out, right, you got a chance out there. That's the way I look at being on parole to 2073. I'm not worried about being on parole because I'm a coffee bean. As long as I'm a coffee bean, the only way I'm going back into a prison is how I came into a prison. The other day here in Utah I got to go in there and spend a whole day in one of your prisons here and share this story with the men and women inside there to bring them hope on I love that they actually created a Utah license plate that said coffee bean and gave that to you as a gift.

Damon West: 36:16

It was so cool man, one of the coolest gifts, and you know why to me. I mean I put it out on social media and I get a little emotional talking about this. I put it on social media to the outside observer that's never lived in a prison. It's like that's cool man. You got a license plate that says coffee bean. But I understand.

Damon West: 36:34

You know there's not a lot a man can do for someone that when he's in prison, his kids, his family, you know. I mean you don't. You can't pay for a little league or you know music lessons or dance lessons or karate lessons. You can't pay for that with soups and stamps and cookies from the commissary in prison. You know nobody's taking money out the free world, that they have money in prison. Money in prison is stuff off the commissary, the free world. You need cash money. There's nothing you can do for your family while you're in prison. It's difficult for a man to do something for someone else and when those men in the license plate factory wanted to make me a license plate to give to me because that's the one thing they could give to me, it meant a lot. It meant a lot.

Joe Grover: 37:13

Yeah, I have a friend who was in prison and he's an incredible artist. Prison artists, man, they're great, they've got some talented artists in prison and man, he would create birthday cards and illustrations for a lot of his fellow inmates' families and for their kids' birthdays and stuff.

Damon West: 37:30

I've got a story for you about that and it's going to dovetail perfectly where we're going with this parole conversation. So in 2015, the parole board comes to see me. Now. People wonder if you got a life sentence, how are you eligible for parole at seven years? Here's how Texas does this. Give you a quick lesson about parole in Texas.

Damon West: 37:48

The maximum sentence a human being can receive in Texas prison is 60 years. 60 is life, because you have to be 17 to go to prison. 60 years on top of that is the lifespan of a human being. So when a jury gave me 65, they gave me 60. They gave me life. Juries don't understand this. They don't want juries to understand this, because then they're out calculating well, how do we keep them in there as long as possible, right? So when I got 65, I got 60, basically because 60 is the cap In Texas.

Damon West: 38:15

If you have an aggravated crime, a crime where you physically hurt somebody, you have to do half of your sentence before you see a parole officer. Half of 60 is 30. So on the life sentence building where I live, most of the men probably 97 of the guys there's 432 men on this building I live on called the life sentence building. 97 of those guys are lifers with aggravated time, meaning 30 years before they even see a parole officer Very dangerous place to live in. Most of those guys are going to die in prison.

Damon West: 38:44

I, on the other hand, was a non-aggravated offender. No one was ever home to burglaries. I never saw my victims. They never saw me. We didn't physically hurt anybody. So when you have non-aggravated time, you don't have a physical victim. You only have to do 25% of your sentence. But you get something that the aggravated guys don't have access to good time and work time. Every day that you're in prison and you're good and you don't get any write-ups, you get an extra day. You get day for day good time. Every day that you're in prison and you're willing to work because inmates really do run the asylum you get a half a day credit because inmates really do run the asylum, you get a half a day credit.

Damon West: 39:16

So when I got to six calendar years, I had six good time years and I had three work time years built up. See how that works. Yeah, now I've got 15 years. That's 25% of 60. Now I'm eligible for parole at six years. Seven years in the parole board comes to see me. They finally get to my name on the list.

Joe Grover: 39:36

I cannot imagine this day for you dude?

Damon West: 39:38

Oh, I am. First of all, I don't think there's a way I'm going to make parole, not the first man. No one makes the first parole in life, joe. I mean it's just not no one. It's very rare. I didn't meet anybody that had done it, you know. But uh, I put together this parole packet. My mom helped you all the stuff you've been doing in prison. It gives them a chance to see the guy on the reform side of it. How did you transform yourself?

Damon West: 39:59

The coffee bean, the coffee bean. The lady from parole is digging through this parole packet and I mean I've got letters of support in there from police chiefs. I've got letters of support from actual captains in the prison that have served my time.

Joe Grover: 40:15

It's like he's never seen a captain write a letter for an inmate Like it's unheard of, and whenever I was, because who we're meeting today, this is who you were in prison. This is who I was then. This is who you are. This is your authentic self. You made a bunch of serious mistakes.

Damon West: 40:26

I was branding myself back then. The brand you meet today is the brand from back then. That's why I tell people all the time your brand takes years to build, Build it, Stick with it. Brand takes years to build build it, stick with it. Regardless of your circumstances right.

Damon West: 40:41

Regardless of your circumstances Success, failure, ipo or bust, it's it. You're building your brand. The lady from parole was meeting me in 2015. She's never met me before. She had a file in front of her, she had my parole packet and she is just amazed at the stuff I've been able to do.

Damon West: 40:52

And you know, we're really talking about the transformation that I made inside that prison. And she said you know, we're really talking about the transformation that I made inside that prison. And she said you know, you didn't just change yourself, mr West, you changed this whole prison around you. This is one of the toughest assignments in tech. Stiles unit is one of the toughest prisons in Texas and remember, I know about prison because I'm a professor of prisons but Stiles is one of the hardest assignments you can get. It's a very tough prison. And she's telling me she's like man, it's astonishing. You know you had it all. You threw it all away, but you didn't just change yourself, you changed the whole prison around you. And she's asking me how did you do that? And I'm telling her these things about being a coffee bean. Like you know, I said I smiled everywhere I went, I had positive body language, because your smile, your body language is important, joe. People see you smile. They action of positive energy. Muhammad told me in county jail.

Damon West: 41:41

He said you know you'll either infect the room that you walk into with your negative energy or you affect the room with positive energy.

Joe Grover: 41:44

You know you infect or affect and I wanted to have a positive effect. That's it.

Damon West: 41:46

You're the disease or the cure Everywhere you go. Disease cure. Which one do you want to be? I want to be the cure, and I told her about some of the ways that I transformed the prison and I learned about servant leadership when I was in prison. Servant leadership is when we help other people reach their goals in life. We help raise other people up to a different station in life. Every successful entrepreneur knows what servant leadership is, because you have to become a servant leader to be great. You know you have to serve to be great. You don't have to be great to serve either. Someone said that Maybe it was John Gordon. You don't have to be great to serve either. Someone said that maybe it was John Gordon. You don't have to be great to serve, but you have to serve to be great.

Damon West: 42:19

So when I was in prison, I learned about servant leadership. I asked myself how can I serve the men around me? And so I was. Like you know, I opened up a free tutoring service in prison because I had I'd been having a very privileged life. I had a college degree, the GED test. They don't have to pay me anything. And they're asking me hey man, how do we pay you, don't pay me, pay it forward.

Damon West: 42:43

So this taught guys about an important lesson about building a community. A healthy community, joe, is when everybody comes out into this community and they say, these are my talents that I'm putting out on the table for the community to use. If someone needs this, that's my talent, come see me. And everybody else says, hey, here's my talent, come see me if you need this, and we'll make this community grow. People invest in the community, right?

Damon West: 43:09

I realize that most of the guys I've been around didn't come from a place where community was taught. Maybe they didn't have the father to teach them Like I had. My parents were married for 55 years. I had a dad in the home. You know, nobody ever stopped to teach them about community. That's what I did. Here's how the community worked. In prison, where I lived, I taught a guy how to read and write. This guy was a prison artist. This guy could draw man. He was great. You got a guy over there, though it's an indigent inmate. Indigent means you have no money. This guy wants to send a Christmas card home to his family this year. You know he's feeling good about it. He wants to do something for remember, you can't do much for your family out there.

Damon West: 43:47

He can't afford the prison artists. Prison artists rates are high. But because he's been shown some love and respect by a guy named Damon West and he's been being taught about servant leadership, he approaches that guy. He says, hey, I know you want to send a Christmas card home. I'm going to do this for you for free. And the guy's like, wow, how can I pay you for that? You can't pay me, but you can pay it forward.

Damon West: 44:06

And then you look up a couple of days later, the guy that received the free Christmas card. He's one of the guys in a wheelchair. He's pushing him to chow one day, you know, pushing him around the rec yard. Then you see the guys being pushed around the rec yard, pulling his wheelchair up to another guy's cell that's depressed or feeling down, and talking to him, being eager to listen. You saw this community change man. The positivity was there, it was real, and the wardens could see it, the majors could see it, the administration could see it, the majors could see it, the administration could see it.

Damon West: 44:36

And that's how the parole board saw Damon West, the change agent, and the lady from parole asked me. She said hey, listen, if you could be remembered for being anything in life, anything at all. She said tell me what that one thing would be. But she said I'm curious, Just give it to me in just one word Useful. I just want to be useful. Remember that little thing, that little one-inch line. You're useful, again. Useful. Remember that little thing, that little one-inch line. You're useful again. So I just want to be useful. I can be useful inside the prison, I can be useful in the free world again. And on November 16, 2015, I walked out of a Supermax prison man on parole for the rest of my life. But man, now I'm out there again and I got this great story. I know I've got this great story that I want to share, but there's nowhere for me to really share it. At first, how many ex-cons that have come before me have burned the bridge to the ground? Most of them.

Joe Grover: 45:19

You can stand on a stage and speak to 500 executives, but those same 500 executives probably don't hire you in a senior role in their companies right, that's right.

Damon West: 45:28

That's right Because I've got this little box I'm going to check that says I'm an ex-con. But I had to get in my reps somehow, Joe. I had to get my speaking out there. I had to understand how to build a presentation and practice it, because practice is everything. Getting in your reps is everything. Whatever your product is, whatever you're trying to sell, you don't go pitch it for the first time in front of somebody. You practice it.

Damon West: 45:48

In my parents' spare bedroom, where I lived for the first two years I was out of prison. There was a mirror in there Happened to be there when I moved in. Well, they had a mirror Every night. For two years I practiced this presentation in front of that mirror. I got in my reps, I was getting good at my craft and I was getting myself ready for the right opportunity, and I believed the right opportunity was going to come from the world of college football, Because I played college football. The problem was I didn't know coaches anymore. They didn't know me. You know, A buddy of mine sneaks me into a coaching award show in 2017, the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Award. I'm out of prison about 14 months. At this point I'm running around the room. There's eight coaches in the room that night In one hour, seven of the eight coaches tell me no. And I mean one hour, Joe. That's a no every eight minutes. I've faced all the rejection, all this big dream of building this speaking. You're asking for a job or asking for a speaking game?

Damon West: 46:34

I'm asking for the opportunity to speak in front of their team and I'm telling them I'll do it for free, just let me come in. Boom doors closed everywhere, man. They don't know who I am. They don't believe in me. Growth follows belief. Joe, you have to believe in yourself before anybody's going to believe in you. And I believe in myself, but none of them are believing in me. That night in one hour I got seven no's from the eight coach in the room. I'm standing in the corner of the Toyota Center that night. I'm ten feet from the door, I'm licking my wounds, I'm feeling sorry for myself and the voice in my head is screaming at me go home, get out. The voice in my head said Damon, you don't even belong in this room. The voice in my head called me an imposter. I know everybody listening to this thing.

Damon West: 47:12

You have felt like the imposter sometime 100 but again, don't listen to yourself, talk to yourself. And that's what I did that night. I'm practicing the same, the same techniques I used in prison. In fact, I'm reminding myself you survive prison. This isn't prison. That's not gonna, that's not gonna hurt like prison.

Damon West: 47:28

That last coach is telling you no to your face and then you go home. So I stalked dabbo sweeney around that room and man, I finally get in front of dabbo and I give him my best stuff and dabo gives me the same reaction. The rest of the coaches like hey, man, look, you got a card on you. I gave him my card. He says I'll check you out and he takes off. Everybody's trying to get dabos time he won the national championship. So I got my last no and I went home and I slept like a baby because I left it all on the field.

Damon West: 47:52

Joe, that's what I learned. I learned from playing sports. Or Muhammad, you don't have to win all your fights, you've got to fight all your fights. Or sales man, anybody has worked in sales. You've got to knock on every door. You've got to make every call. That's when you're dead. You don't work by a clock. So I went home that night, forgot about that night. Four months later, I get an email from theweeney met you at an award show in Houston. He'd love to have you come talk to the team. Do you have August 1st open? I got every first open man. You know like I got nothing going on in my life.

Joe Grover: 48:22

Of all the coaches that would say yes. One Dabo Sweeney said yes, man, and it was four months later.

Damon West: 48:34

And I've spoken to every program in America. At this point, joe, you're talking to a guy that Dabo. After I spoke to Clemson's football team in 2017, he called Nick Saban. Saban brings me in the next few weeks. I'm talking in front of Alabama, then Kirby Smart calls Lincoln, riley, chip Kelly, lane, kiffin, ryan Day. They all call my phone, but Dabo introduced—.

Joe Grover: 48:55

And this has got to be really special for you. You're a college football player.

Damon West: 48:58

Oh yeah.

Joe Grover: 48:59

Right, you like grew up playing quarterback, right? I mean, this was pretty special.

Damon West: 49:03

I've got currency to spend with these guys. You know, and the Coffee Bee message is spread in the world of college football. Man, it's taken off. You know, the media is finding out about it. You know, d Dabo Sweeney became the one client that we're all searching for in life. That turns a Rolodex over to you, and he did it. His Rolodex was the world of college football. But the real big thing Dabo did in my life, bigger than all the college football teams I've ever spoken to because of him, is he introduced me to a guy named John Gordon 2018,.

Damon West: 49:34

I get a phone call out of the blue from the Energy Bus guy, himself John Gordon, and John's one of the biggest motivational speakers and authors in America. I follow John on Twitter for my inspiration and I'm like John man, I know you are. How do you know who I am? He said Dabo Sweeney. He said now this is 2018. It's right before the pandemic. He said Damon, the world needs a coffee bean message. Let's deliver this message to the world. He write a book with me. We'll call it the coffee bean.

Damon West: 49:56

So in the summer of 2019, exactly 10 years after I first heard the story of the coffee bean, and from in a jail cell from a guy named muhammad. The book the coffee bean comes out took the world by storm, and I say the world because it happened in america. First, four to six weeks at the top of the bestseller list here gets a global publishing deal attached to it. Global publishing deals are rare, joe. That's when your book starts appearing in every language in the world. Right, it starts coming out in Chinese and Spanish and Arabic, french, italian, german.

Damon West: 50:21

And then the year 2020, a global pandemic hits the entire world, becomes a pot of warm water. Now on my entrepreneurial journey, the last two presentations I did before the pandemic, before the shutdown happened in March of 2020, I spoke to Walmart, the biggest employer in America. Before the shutdown happened in March of 2020, I spoke to Walmart, the biggest employer in America, and the Minnesota Timberwolves. Those are the last two presentations I did before everything shut down the biggest employer in America and now I'm in the NBA and shutdown happens. I get up every morning, every email I open up, it's a cancellation of a speaking event, everything I've been building towards up in smoke because no one's having presentations anymore, no one's traveling anymore.

Joe Grover: 51:00

The world lives in fear of the pandemic and you had zero control over this. Zero control. This is on the larger line.

Damon West: 51:07

Oh man, this is on the big line. But you knew, this is the moment when we're really tested, when you're in adversity, when the bullets are flying. Do you remember what got you there? You know, do you remember the stuff, the lessons you learned back then? And for about a week I'd forgotten all that. I would get mad.

Damon West: 51:22

I was the egg, I was the egg, the egg, the egg. My wife is even, like my wife's, a nurse practitioner. So she's frontline work, she's going to work every day and she's seeing me, you know, at the house sitting around. She's like you got to figure this out, damon, you can't sit around and mope around like this. And finally I snapped out of it. I was like you know what? I survived prison. This isn't prison. I know what a bad day looks like. This is a. This is bad for sure, but I'm going to find a way out of this because I've got to find a way to serve other people. Serving other people, joe. If we can pour ourselves into other people, we take ourselves out of our own problems and we also realize that our problems are not as great as we think they are. How can I serve other people right now?

Damon West: 52:00

During this pandemic it came to me. I got a friend named Lisa Spain. She's got a big Zoom platform before Zoom was even known. I said Lisa, let's you. She's an educational consultant, so she's at home too. I said Lisa, let's use your Zoom platform. My story, my message the world's a pot of boiling water right now. The world needs my message. No one's spending any money. Remember the pandemic. Everybody's freezing everything. We don't know what's going to happen yet. So uh, I said I'm just going to give it away. She's like what You're going to give it away every day? Let's give my message away. Let's let's reach the world with the message In the next three to four months. I did about 120 free Zoom calls this presentation that I make money for today, going around to all these corporations.

Joe Grover: 52:38

I gave it away.

Damon West: 52:39

Every single. And here's what happened. I got up every morning. I had a purpose again. There's people out there in Australia or wherever waiting to hear the coffee bean message. They need this message right now. I got up every day and not only did I have purpose, I was serving other people again Felt good, joe. I got up every day and I was getting my reps in. I was practicing my presentation. I was keeping it fresh, right. I got up every day and I was getting my message out there to an audience that had never heard it before. Four months into, the pandemic travel starts getting lifted. You know, my people started moving around around August, september of 2020. My DMs start blowing up. Twitter, instagram, facebook.

Damon West: 53:15

Hey, I said- you had just seeded this message, didn't even expect this to happen. Though I'm scrambling around, trying to go around. I'm talking to Lane Kiffin. I remember Lane Kiffin. Let me come talk to the Ole Miss football team. I did it for free. I was like Lane, let's just go, let me do it for free. Let me put it on social media that I'm out there speaking to you and get my name out there again. You know, in public, because no other speakers were speaking. So that's what I was doing.

Damon West: 53:37

I was traveling around on my own dime getting myself out there, but then my DMs start blowing up. Hey, man, I sat through a presentation you did during the pandemic. That message was incredible. My company is starting to bring everybody back in. We want to hire you to speak. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Damon West: 53:52

The Coffee Bee message takes off. The world was looking for the right message and because I put myself out there, because I said you know what, I'm not going to take my football and go home. I'm not going to. You know, just because I'm not getting paid doesn't mean I don't still have a business. You know, I've got to figure out a way around this thing. My life took off and the coffee bean message became so ingrained.

Damon West: 54:13

My business of speaking today, joe, I mean every year I do a couple million dollars a year. This thing started in my parents' spare bedroom in front of a mirror, joe, in front of a mirror. Let's take the money out of it. I've got a purpose today in life. I've got a mission that I'm on. I'm sitting on one of the best maybe there's five or six messages like this out there on the planet and I'm sitting on like it's like falling in the sewer and coming out with a Rolex. Joe, I mean, I've got this incredible life of impact where I get to go and share a mission with the world that brings people hope, that shows people it can be done, that pulls them out of their rut, and I get to have a thriving business also with it and provide for my family. What more can I ask for in life, joe?

Joe Grover: 54:52

on Life Show every day, you could literally be sitting in Texas State Penitentiary right. Oh, yeah, like today. Yeah, you could still be in prison. Instead, you're impacting all of these lives because you're a coffee bean, because you were in a pot of boiling water and you weren't an egg and you weren't a carrot, and you were a coffee bean. You changed that water into something that Starbucks will charge $10 for that's right.

Damon West: 55:16

Nitro cold brew man, it's almost $10 a cup. But that's the thing too. It's like it wasn't just the coffee bean message, it was my program recovery, the principles I learned that program recovery. One of the principles we live by is you've got to give it away to keep it. Yeah, really think about what I just said. I'm not telling you to give away your business, but about what I just said I'm not telling you to give away your business, but you got to give a way to keep. It means that whenever you start getting some success in life, you got to find ways to spread that out to other people. You got to find a way to put back. I was reading a book. One of my favorite books I read was called the Strength to Love. The Strength to Love was by Dr Martin Luther King Jr A bunch of sermons that he did.

Damon West: 55:50

In this book there was a sermon called the Death of Evil Upon the Seashore, and in that sermon I read about a guy that Dr King talked about named Charles A Beard. Charles A Beard lived in the 20th century. One of the most brilliant historians to ever walk the earth. This guy knew every date and time and event that ever happened in history. You could ask this guy a question. He could name them off where it was anytime in recorded history. Brilliant guy, he said in the sermon.

Damon West: 56:16

He said one day somebody went up to Charles A Beard and said hey, dr Beard, what lessons has history taught you? Now, remember, this is the historian. The academic can tell you dates, places, names and times. His answer became my favorite quote, the quote that I memorized, the quote that I put on. Everything is when I was in that prison. Dr Beard said there are four lessons history has taught me. First, whom the gods would destroy? They must first make mad with power. Second, the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small. Third, the bee fertilizes the flower that it robs. Fourth, when it is dark enough, you can see the stars. Think about this quote for a second. It took me months.

Joe Grover: 57:01

That's a lot going on there.

Damon West: 57:03

That is a lot I'll break down for you what it meant to me, and you can, as you know the listeners whenever you go back and think about what it means to you. It's all interpretation. First, whom the gods would destroy? They must first make man with power. History is littered with people that were in the pursuit of the wrong things, that were in the pursuit of power. When we get off the track in life where we're after the things that don't enrich our lives enrich the lives of other people they eat us up, they destroy us. In the end, you've got to be focused on the positive in life. You have to have pure goals, pure ideas in mind. Don't get obsessed with power. Second, the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small. Life is made up of all these little bitty moments in life. The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small, all these little bitty moments in life. Life's a marathon, not a sprint, and when you have one of these little bitty moments that goes off tracks, don't worry about it, because there's a one of these little bitty moments that goes off tracks. Don't worry about it, because there's a lot of more little bitty moments coming up. Man, keep it in perspective.

Damon West: 57:59

Third, the bee fertilizes the flower that it robs. This is servant leadership In life. In nature, you have to put back. You have to give back. Nature abhors a thief. Nature abhors something greedy the bee that's stealing the pollen from the flowers. He pollinates the other flowers as he flies off. The bee has to give back. Nature demands this of people. It's expected of us to give back and be servant leaders. And fourth, when it's dark enough, you can see the stars.

Damon West: 58:26

That's when you're at your lowest point in life when it doesn't seem like it can ever get any better. You look up and it's just terrible and you think you can't go on. This is your moment. That's when you get the chance to shine your brightest, because when it's dark enough, you can see the stars. That's when the world you get a chance to light up the world. I love that, yeah, so that's my favorite quote.

Joe Grover: 58:47

I love that and that last piece is so relevant in the entrepreneurial journey. You know my favorite quote when I was 17 years old, I started my first business and my dad was given, I think, when he left a company, at this plaque with a Theodore Roosevelt quote that we all know so well, and I sat calling during my summer vacation trying to sell video production services and it was tough, right and just like cold calling. I had literally the yellow pages. This was in the nineties and I just picked up the phone and started calling companies as a 17 year old and I that's not what I wanted to be doing, but I really wanted to be an entrepreneur and so on my toughest days I would look over and I would read this quote and over time I just kind of memorized the quote and now I probably have paraphrased it, man, and that's the quote that I come to when I'm in the arena, the man in the arena when I'm really challenged in life, in work, right, I think about that quote.

Damon West: 1:00:06

But it's full circle. You created a podcast about the man in the arena. That's what this podcast is about. That's right, the real F word failure.

Joe Grover: 1:00:12

And you have spent yourself in such a worthy cause and are making such an impact, and it is, like my, one of my greatest honors to just hear this story again and to hear your insights, your perspective, your enthusiasm and, really, your focus on being the coffee bean and spreading this amazing message for entrepreneurs that are listening today. I want you to look in the camera and I want you to tell them something that you want them to remember the one key takeaway from your life experience and from the principles that you teach that you want them to remember when they're facing adversity in their work and entrepreneurial journey.

Damon West: 1:00:52

The last thing we didn't get to cover today is me finding Muhammad. I found him. It took seven years to find Muhammad. He was dead when I found him, but I found his family. I started a scholarship in his name and we honor him every year. I have to honor the guy that gave me the message. Here's what I'll tell you. It took seven years to find my friend Muhammad. It took seven no's that night in Houston to get to the one yes I needed, with Dabo Sweeney, to change my entire life. It took seven years to walk out of a super max prison. Some of your goals in life are going to take you longer than others. Don't quit, don't give up before the miracle happens. Life's a pot of boiling water. You already know it.

Joe Grover: 1:01:30

You got three choices.

Damon West: 1:01:32

Be like the carrot that turns soft and mushy and weak, or the egg that becomes hard and mad and mean and angry, or you'd be like that coffee bean that changes that pot of boiling water into a pot of coffee. So my call to action to you is the same call to action Muhammad gave me 15 years ago, when a prison bus picked me up to serve a life sentence in a Texas maximum security prison. My call to action to you you go out there and you go, be a coffee bean. Be a coffee bean, joe. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot, man. Thank you.

Joe Grover: 1:02:02

Thanks for tuning in to the Real F Word. The Real F Word is failure, and remember that failure is a stepping stone, it's not just a stumbling block. Join us next time as we continue to explore the journey of resilience and growth, without ignoring the true costs personally, professionally and financially that comes with failure. Keep learning, keep growing and keep embracing the real stories of entrepreneurship. See you next time.