How a Prison Sentence, 7 Rejections, and 1 "Yes" Changed the World | Damon West

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The last words he ever said to me in Dallas County Jail when the prison bus is getting ready to come pick me up, he said, Hey, West, be a coffee beam.

Those four words, be a coffee beam, were the four words that changed my life because those four words put the power back inside me.

And if the power is inside me, it cannot be in the world around me, right?

The criminal justice system, the guards, the other inmates, it's in me.

And if I keep the power inside me, I won't survive prison.

I'll thrive in that prison.

And I want everybody listening to know that the power is inside you.

It's not inside all those no's that you get.

It's not inside that time you quit before you got to your dream.

It's not inside all the difficulties you're facing every day in life.

It's not inside the idea that you haven't been able to make that business deal work or that dream with your family work because it just hadn't happened yet.

But if you keep the power inside you, you don't survive the adversity.

You thrive in the adversity.

What if your biggest breakthrough is waiting on the other side of your biggest breakdown?

After getting fired from my third executive position, I realized God didn't create me to work for someone else.

So I founded my own company, bootstrapped it, and sold it for seven figures in less than four years.

This podcast is for unreasonable people seeking unreasonable results.

My name is Ryan Hanley, but most people just call me Hanley.

And if you're ready to stop making excuses and start making moves, you're in the right place.

This is the way.

I wanted to start with something that I saw on your website that just caught me.

And

you write on your website,

there's a little bit of preamble, but the last sentence is, do not quit before the miracle happens.

And the question that hit my brain was,

how do you know when the miracle happens?

Like, how do you know you've hit that point?

Yeah, I think that's a very good question, a good place to start this thing.

And I'll tell you the answer.

And I'm going to tell you a story behind this, how I know this to be the answer.

The answer to when the miracle happens, it's when you've not only achieved the goal you're trying to achieve, but it's something bigger than you could have ever imagined, right?

There's the miracle, right?

Like, I, we have everybody's got goals in life, things they want to set out to do, but it's when you stand up and you say, Oh my God, I didn't just hit the goal, I hit way past the goal.

How did I get here, right?

Like, I tell my wife every day, I can't believe this is my life.

Um, and the story behind this is

back in 2017,

I had been out of prison for two years at this point, about 14 months, this date I'm going to tell you about.

The date's January 11th, 2017.

I know the date, like it's my birthday.

January 11th, 2017, I've been out of prison for 14 months.

I live in my parents' spare bedroom in a town called Port Natchez, Texas.

And, you know, living in my parents' spare bedroom at 41, 42 years old, you know, I'm on parole for the rest of my life because I committed a bunch of crimes crimes in Dallas back when I was a meth addict.

I was the leader of an organized crime ring.

We broke into homes all over Dallas.

And a jury in Dallas back in 2009 sentenced me to life in prison or 65 years is what the sentence was.

And

so the jury sentenced me to life in prison and I went to prison and transformed myself in there.

And after I got out of prison on early release, which is parole, I knew I wanted to share this story because I had an incredible story, the message of the coffee bean, and we'll talk about the coffee bean later, but I didn't have a lot of place to share this story when I got out in 2015, 2016, even 2017, because I'm an ex-con and so many ex-cons that have come before me have burned the bridge to the ground, right?

I mean, how many ex-cons in the history of ex-cons have gone back out and messed up again?

A lot of us, right?

I mean, the list is so long.

So I'm...

I've got this story to tell, and I know that the right audience at the time is going to be college football because I played Division I college quarterback back in the day.

I was a starting quarterback at the University of North Texas in the mid-90s.

In fact, at 20 years old, I was a starting quarterback on a Division I team.

So I've got this great cachet to spend with college football teams, but I don't have any coaches.

I don't know any coaches 20 years later in 2017.

But a buddy of mine in Houston, Texas calls me up.

Houston is 90 miles away from where I live.

He said, hey, get to Houston right now.

He works in the media.

He said, get to Houston right now.

It's the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Award.

They're going to name the best college football coach in America.

The eight best coaches in the country are in this room right now.

I've got an extra press pass.

I'm going to sneak you in.

So, man, Ryan, I drive the 90 miles from Beaumont to Houston.

He sneaks me in the back door of Toyota Center and he hands me a press pass.

And so there I am in this room.

And all these coaches are there.

USC, Wisconsin, Penn State, PJ Fleck, they're all in this room.

And I'm in this room too with my dream and my pitch that I'm going to pitch to these guys of why they should bring me in to talk to their team.

So I'll go around that room that night, Ryan, and I meet every one of these coaches.

I shake their hand.

I give them my pitch, and I tell them why they should bring me in to talk to their team.

And every single coach I meet that night slams a door in my face.

They all tell me no.

It's a bloodbath of no's.

In one hour, I got seven no's from eight coaches.

It's a no every eight minutes.

So now I'm standing in the corner of Toyota Center.

I'm 10 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.

The voice in my head is telling me things like, you don't belong in this room.

The dream was too big for you, Damon.

The voice in my head is calling me an imposter.

And I know every single person listening to this podcast right now knows the imposter voice.

But I'm going to tell you something I quit doing a long time ago, Ryan, listening to myself.

And I found out why I started listening to myself.

Sometimes the voice in my head that was talking to me that I was listening to was fear talking to me.

And you don't want to listen to fear because fear's a liar, right?

So instead of listening to myself, I talk to myself.

It's a technique I picked up while I was in prison.

And I remind myself that night, Damon, you survived prison.

This is going to hurt you like prison.

You came to talk to eight coaches.

You're not leaving until the last coach in the room tells you no.

And the last coach, Ryan, hardest guy to get to in the room.

His team had just beat Alabama two nights before for the national championship.

Everybody is in line to talk to this coach.

But I'm relentless.

So I stalk Dabbo Sweeney around this room, the head coach of Clemson.

And I look like a crazy person, Ryan.

I'm hiding behind fake plants.

I'm pushing people out of the way.

Dabbo sees me, and security sees me too.

They're going to throw me out of the Toyota Center.

But I get in front of Dabbo, I give him my pitch, and I come up for air, and Dabo looks terrified.

He's like, Man, you got a card on you?

It looks more like a stick-up than a pitch, right?

Oh, man, I was like, I've seen that look before.

You know, inside the wheels are just spinning, man.

This is terrible.

I give him my card.

He looks at it.

He said, He said, I'll check you out.

He takes off.

He's a nice enough guy, but that's a no.

But I would tell you what I felt good about that night was that final no, because that final no meant that I left it all on the field.

And that's one of the biggest takeaways I got from playing sports all my life.

Or, like this old guy that told me the story about the coffee being in county jail, he said, you don't, you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights.

And so that night I fought my fights.

I lost them all and I went home and I slept like a baby because I did everything I could in my power to make that dream come true.

And I just kind of resigned myself to maybe the dream's not going to happen.

Well, four months later, I got an email out of the blue.

It's the director of football operations at Clemson University, a guy named Mike Dooley.

Mike Dooley's email said, hey, Damon, Coach Sweeney met you at a board show in Houston.

He'd love to have you come talk to his team.

Do you have August first 1st open?

And I'm like, brother, I got every first open, man.

I got nothing going on, man.

The only thing I'm doing at 2017, when he emails me, is the entire time that I've got this presentation I want to do in front of people, but I don't have a lot of options.

I practice my presentation every night in my parents' spare bedroom.

They got a mirror in there, a little vanity mirror my mom had when I moved in.

So for two years, I've been practicing my presentation, getting myself ready, getting into my reps.

Because anything you want to be good at in life, you got to practice at in life.

There's no such thing as an overnight success.

It doesn't exist.

It's not real.

So that day I told Mike Dooley, man, look, you can have any Monday you want in 2017, man, because I'm just talking to a mirror at this point.

He said, well, let's set the date for August 1st, 2017.

August 1st, 2017, I go speak to the Clemson Tigers, the defendant of National Champs of College Football.

And when I get to my presentation that night, Dabbo's in my face now.

And Dabbo's a high energy guy, man.

He's like, damn, that's the most amazing story I've ever heard.

I've never seen my players respond like that to a speaker.

He said, have you been to Alabama to talk to their football team?

And I'm like, no, man, I hadn't been anywhere.

I've been to Clemson.

He said, well, we're going to see about that, Damon.

He said, I just texted Nick Saban from the back of the room.

Ryan, the next day when

my flight lands in Houston for my trip to Clemson, I turned my phone on.

There's a voicemail and a text message from the director of football operations at the University of Alabama.

The whale.

The biggest program in America with the best coach to ever do it.

And here's what the voicemail said.

Hey, Damon Dabo called Coach Sabin last night.

Coach Saban cannot wait to hear your story.

He said, how does August 21st, 730 p.m.

work for your calendar?

And I'm like, man, I'm laughing out loud.

I don't even have a calendar at the time, Ryan.

And I was like, man, I'll be there.

So just like that, Dabo Sweeney just kicked open the biggest door to college football and Dabbo didn't stop there because Kirby Smart's calling, Lincoln Riley, Chip Kelly, Lane Kiffin, Ryan Day.

Every coach in America starts picking up the phone and calling me because Dabo becomes the friend, the client client that turns the whole Rolodex over to me.

So the dream is real, Ryan.

I mean, this is it.

Man, I wanted to be a speaker.

Now I'm a speaker.

I'm speaking in all these rooms of college football.

I mean, I'm going everywhere at this point.

But the biggest event hadn't happened yet.

The dream was way beyond,

the reality was way beyond what I had even dreamed it could be, you know, what you were asking the original question.

The biggest event hadn't happened yet.

I hadn't met this second servant leader.

You know, Dabo's the first servant leader.

This other guy's the second.

So it's August of 2018, one year after that first presentation of Clemson.

I get a phone call out of the blue that day.

And on the other end of my phone is a guy named John Gordon.

Now, John Gordon is one of the biggest speakers and authors in America.

This is the energy bus guy.

And I'm like, John, I follow you, man.

I know who you are.

How do you know who I am?

He said, Dabbo Sweeney.

He said, Damon, I just got done speaking to Clemson's team.

And Dabbo brought up in the office for 30 minutes to tell me your whole life story.

And John said this before the pandemic.

John said, Damon, the world needs the coffee bean message, Damon.

Let's deliver this message to the world.

He said, will you write a book with me?

We're going to call it The Coffee Bean.

And in the summer of 2019, the book, The Coffee Bean, came out, and it took the whole world by storm, the whole planet.

It starts off in America first.

Four to six weeks, it's riding high at the top of every bestseller list.

Gets a global publishing deal attached to it.

Ryan.

Global publishing deals are rare.

That's when your book gets reprinted in every language in the world.

The book starts popping up in Chinese and Spanish and Arabic, French, Italian, German, Vietnamese, Korean, just in time for the year 2020.

And everybody remembers the year 2020.

You'll never forget when a global pandemic hit, right?

The entire world became a pot of boiling water, and the entire world was searching for the right message.

And that's when the entire world discovered the coffee bean guy, Damon West.

And man, my life went from this horizontal to straight up vertically, and it hadn't stopped yet.

Since the year 2021, I've gone around the world sharing this story.

Every month, I'm on the road 20 to 25 days of every month sharing the story somewhere on the planet.

But it all goes back to one night in Houston, Texas, January 11th, 2017, the night I had seven no's in the first hour.

And I was, remember, I was 10 feet from the door getting ready to walk out and leave.

And if I walk out that door that night, I mean, we're not having this conversation today and the world doesn't have the coffee me message.

So, you know, I guess what I'm telling you is this, that you know the miracle happens whenever it's it's bigger than what you could ever dream, you know, and that's what I tell everybody in life.

You know, you can't quit because life gets tough.

You don't give up on your dreams because life gets hard.

You don't not ask your questions in life.

The only question you know the answer to in life, Ryan, is the one you do not ask.

That answer is no every time because you never ask your question.

I think Wayne Gretzky said it best.

Wayne Gretzky said you miss 100% of the shots you do not take.

So you got to go take your shots in this life.

You can't quit before the miracle happens.

But so many do.

How do we,

what's something we can wedge into their brain?

The people that are listening to this show, who, who've, who've, who got the seven no's and did give up, right?

But are willing to try again.

Got the seven no's and quit, but they're willing to try again.

What can we wedge in their brain today, listening to this show, wherever they are, so that when they do, when they do go after those eight coaches again,

they get all eight and you know, in their world, whatever that is.

What's a thought or an idea that they can hold on to when they walk into that room so they don't stop at seven?

They get all eight and they go home and they sleep like a baby.

Yeah, so here's

a great place to introduce the coffee bean because that's what I think is the thing that everybody can take with them.

And, you know, anybody from five to 95 years old can pick this message up.

So in 2009, the jury sentenced me to life in prison for organized crime.

And in the little intermediate period between the time that I'm been sentenced and the prison bus comes to get me, I'm in Dallas County jail.

And I'm asking all these people in Dallas County jail, how am I going to survive?

What am I going to do?

And everybody's telling me the same thing.

You got to get into a gang.

You can't survive without a gang.

But my mom and my dad had made me promise I wouldn't get to a gang.

So I run into this old black Muslim man named Muhammad.

Now, Muhammad's a career criminal, in and out of prison his entire life, but he's the most positive guy I've ever met in my life.

And Muhammad comes every morning, he comes by my cell, and he picks me up.

You know, he checks on me.

So, this particular morning, he comes by.

He's like, hey, listen, West, I've been watching how you're dealing with these knuckleheads and these dummies talking about you got to get into a gang.

He's like, man, don't listen, these fools, but let me tell you what prison is really going to be like.

And that's when he tried to, he tells me what prison is going to be like, the racial dynamic in there, the fact that I'm going to have to fight.

That's when he tells me you don't have to win all your fights, but you got to fight all your fights.

But he sees the fear in my eyes, and that's when he shares with me.

He says, listen, let me break this down in a different way.

He said, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of boiling water.

He said, anything we put into a pot of boiling water will be changed by the heat and the pressure inside this pot.

He said, I'll put three things in this pot of boiling water and watch how they change.

A carrot, an egg, and a coffee bean.

So here's where I first heard the story of the coffee bean.

It was the summer.

When life brings the blah, add more Yabba-dabba-doo with some tasty, fruity pebbles.

Early morning meeting, blah.

Someone brought the pebbles, Yabba-dabba-doo.

Run errands?

Blah.

Head to the store for pebbles.

Yabba-daba-doo.

Fruity pebbles, less blah.

More?

Yabba-dabba-doo.

Pick up pebble cereal today.

Yaba-daba-doo and the flintstones and all related characters and elements.

Copyright and trademark, Hanna-Barbera.

Of 2009 in a jail cell in Dallas County Jail, 10 years before John Gordon, I wrote that book in 19.

So he said, first things first, he said, if I put a carrot in the pot of boiling water, he said, what happened to the carrot?

I'm like, like, the carrot's going to turn soft.

He said, that's right.

He said, but the carrot goes in the water really hard and firm, but the water, the prison, will turn the hard carrot soft and mushy and weak.

He said, you don't want to be a carrot.

He said, what about the egg?

What happened to the egg in the pot of boiling water?

I'm like, the egg is going to turn hard like a hard-boiled egg.

He said, that's right.

He said, the egg has a shell that could protect it physically on the outside.

But inside that shell, that soft liquid core, that yolk,

that heart becomes hardened.

He said, now,

if your heart becomes hardened, you become incapable of giving or receiving love.

He said, if you are incapable of giving or receiving love, you've become institutionalized and you do not come back as someone your parents recognize.

Then he asked me the question, Ryan.

He said, what about the coffee bean?

What happened to the coffee bean in the pot of boiling water?

And Ryan, I didn't have an answer for Muhammad on that one.

I didn't know what happened to a coffee bean in a pot of boiling water.

And that is when Muhammad, this man who looks nothing like me, this man who doesn't come from the same America that I came from, the man who doesn't believe the same things I believe in life, this is a black Muslim man from the streets of Dallas, Texas.

I'm a white middle-class Catholic from a little town called Port Arthur, Texas.

But this guy is so different than me.

He's about to share with me one of the most important and transformational messages I've ever received in my entire life.

And there's a moral there too.

Like if you ever shut yourself off to other people because of their differences, different race, different gender, different ethnicity, different religion, different opinions, different political views, if you close yourself off to people because of their differences, you are going to miss some of the most important messages and some of the best friendships in this life because the messengers in life can come to you from anywhere in life.

Muhammad shared with me that day.

He said, if I put a coffee bean in that same pot of boiling water we call prison, he said, now you got to change the name of the water to coffee.

Because he said the coffee bean, Wes, the the smallest of the three things, small like you, has the power to change the entire atmosphere inside that pot because the power is inside the coffee bean.

He said, just like the power is inside of you.

Everything else in life, he said, Ryan, is changed by the waters of life.

Carrots are changed by the water.

Eggs are changed by the water, but not a coffee bean.

The coffee bean is the only thing that can change the water because it's the change agent.

He said, if you want to come back as someone your parents recognize, you got to be like a coffee bean too.

In fact, the last words he ever said to me in Dallas County Jail when the prison bus is getting ready to come pick me up, he said, hey, West, be a coffee bean.

And Ryan, those four words, be a coffee bean, were the four words that changed my life because those four words put the power back inside me.

And if the power is inside me, it cannot be in the world around me, right?

The criminal justice system, the guards, the other inmates, it's in me.

And if I keep the power inside me, I won't survive prison.

I'll thrive in that prison.

And I want everybody listening to know that the power is inside you.

It's not inside all those no's that you get.

It's not inside that time you quit before you got to your dream.

It's not inside all the difficulties you're facing every day in life.

It's not inside the idea that you haven't been able to make that business deal work or that dream with your family work because it just hadn't happened yet.

But if you keep the power inside you, you don't survive the adversity.

You thrive in the adversity.

And when the power is inside of us, Ryan, we understand too that there's, you know, coffee beans know that there's only a few things you can control.

You can control what you think, what you say, what you feel, and what you do.

There's four things, that's it.

What you think, what you say, what you feel, and what you do.

And if it's not one of those four things, you don't control it.

So being a coffee bean means that, hey, if it's something I don't control, that I won't focus my time, the most precious resource I have.

Because once time is gone, it's gone for good.

And all the money the world can't buy one more second of time.

But when you start focusing your time on things you actually can change, the things you can impact, the things you can control, that's when you get closer to your dreams.

You talk a lot about this idea of resiliency.

And what I heard in that message was like almost the core underlining philosophy of what resiliency really is,

is continuing to push through and believe in what's inside here and not allowing the external, right?

Talk maybe, explain a little bit how resiliency plays into this idea.

You know,

I think a lot of people can empathize with, or empathize is the wrong word, understand and appreciate

the pain and the hardship and the difficulty of surviving that prison and coming out.

But I think we also get lost in the mundane of our lives as well.

Completely different, but the day-to-day, easy, comfort, routine of day-to-day can lock us in almost as much as a set of bars can.

How do we break free and create this concept of resiliency in a life that ultimately is almost set up to be convenient at every step.

Yeah.

So I tell people all the time that I meet more people out here in the free world that are locked up than I ever did when I served time in a real prison because more people are in prison by their thoughts, by their things,

by their prejudices than by steel bars and barbed wire and concrete combined.

And that's the prison in your mind.

And that's a very, very serious thing you need to watch out for because when you become a prisoner in your own mind, that's the hardest prison to to ever get out of like whenever i got out of prison run i i wouldn't that wasn't the first time i was free i had already freed myself spiritually and mentally and emotionally i was free even though my physical body was locked up so when i walked out of prison in 2015 it was almost like a trifecta freedom right spiritually mentally now physically i'm a free man but in order for me to hold on to that freedom I've got to practice the same things I practiced when I was inside that dungeon and I freed myself.

And that's kind of the thing I go back to every day is like, hey, listen, man, if you weren't locked up mentally in there, you're not going to be locked up mentally out here, Damon.

So here's a few things that I think you have to do to become free in your mind and spiritually, mentally, is one, you have to have a spiritual awakening.

And I don't mean something religious here because I think religion and spirituality are two very, very different things.

Religion is a man-made concept.

All right.

Spirituality is your conscious contact with whatever you call God.

And you can pick whatever you want to believe in.

I'm a Christian, and I choose to believe in Christ.

But anybody can believe in whatever they want to believe in.

And I learned a lot about this when I was in prison.

I got into a 12-step program of recovery called AA.

Now, I don't speak for AA, but it happens to be the recovery program that I'm in.

And I have found that the principles in AA work really well for just about anybody in life.

You don't have to be an addict for the principles to work.

Because here's what we have when we have these things called the 12 steps.

The first three steps of the 12 steps are when you acknowledge that there's a higher power out there and you admit that you're powerless over whatever it is that's holding you back in life.

And only the higher power can help you get past this blockade in your life, whatever's holding you back.

So that's when you turn your life and your will, your thoughts and your actions over to a higher power.

And then The fourth step of the 12 steps is when you make a searching and fearless moral inventory.

A moral inventory is this.

You find all the things that you have resentments against in life.

You put them down.

You find all the things that you fear in life and you put them down because these are the things that hold you back.

Fears hold you back.

Fear is more akin to theft, I think, than anything else because fears rob us of things in life.

You know,

The new book that I just wrote, the book starts off with a question, if someone took control of your life tomorrow, what's the first thing they would change?

And I didn't come up with that question.

I first heard it from James Clear.

If someone took control of your life tomorrow, what's the first thing they would change?

The trick is that we all know the answer to that question.

Then the question really becomes, if you know the answer to what the first thing that changes, why have you not already made the change?

I believe the answer lies in some form of fear, fear of doubt, fear of failure, fear of success.

Fears hold us back and they keep us in that place called the comfort zone.

And nothing big ever happens in a comfort zone.

And so in recovery, I've learned how to put my fears and resentments down and I work this moral inventory.

Here's what I'm trying to get to in life.

I want to keep my side of the street clean.

I can't clean anybody else's side of the street in life, but Damon West can keep his side of the street.

And when I mean my side of the street, spiritually, mentally, physically, I want to do the best version of Damon West every single day.

And so

in a moral inventory, You know, I'm sitting here trying to figure out what role I play in my problems.

Because if I can find the role that I play in my problems, that's the one thing I can change.

That's the one thing I can fix.

That's the only thing I can control.

And so if I start putting my problems down and I start figuring out what I, you know, my fears and the role that I play, the resentments, the role that I play, then I can work on the role, my role.

And that's the only thing I can control because you can't control anybody else.

Another thing I would tell people to do, wake up with gratitude.

Gratitude,

you have so much to be grateful for.

Even when things are spinning out of control, you have things to be grateful for.

Focus on the positive, not the negative.

And whenever you're going through something difficult in life, you know, your days are bad, they're just running a bunch of bad days together, you know, focus on the days that you won.

Remember the successes you had in life.

When I was in that corner of that room, you know, after those seven no's, I started thinking about, man, I survived prison, Damon.

You're a pretty, pretty unique guy to be able to survive prison.

You know, and most people listen to this, you'll never go through a prison experience, right?

Most people listen to this will never have a SWAT team come into their living room.

But I would argue that the SWAT teens of life, the SWAT teams of life come for us in different ways.

It's a bankruptcy.

It's a marriage failing.

It's a family falling apart.

It's something happened to one of your kids.

It's something happened to one of your pets.

These are the SWAT teams of life.

But if you can find this mindset that says, no matter what the adversity is that's going to come in my way, there's an opportunity there for in there somewhere for me to grow and focus on trying to get to that opportunity.

That's when I think we turn our situations around.

But it's a mindset shift.

When I was in prison, my first cellmate was this little guy named Carlos and Carlos was this bank robber from San Antonio neat little guy He's serving 99 years, but not nice guy But Carlos is telling me he said man listen you can't become a coffee bean if you don't stop seeing the way you see prison He said your problem is you think prison's a punishment when you should be thinking prison's an opportunity and I did not understand what he was saying.

How can prison be an opportunity?

But he told me it was very simple.

You have 24 hours a day, seven days a week now to work on yourself.

You could become the best version of yourself possible while you're here.

And so it was a mindset shift to start looking at my obstacle as an opportunity in life.

Gratitude for where you are.

Focus on you and the things that you can change, you know, and that have that spiritual component to your life because it's a big universe out there, Ryan.

We can't do it alone.

For a long time, I completely disregarded the idea of like a gratitude practice.

It felt like huckstery.

It felt like ethereal foo-foo.

Even though I'm, Even though I'm also a Christian, believe in Christ myself,

I felt this

sense that somehow it was nonsensical or unimportant.

You're coming in for it?

You're leaving?

All right, hold on.

I told you one of them might come down.

Yeah, cool, buddy.

Give me a hug, bud.

Hey, say hello to Mr.

West.

Hi.

Hi.

All right.

Have a good tournament.

I love you, and I will be following on Game Changer, all right?

I love you, buddy.

I love you, bud.

My younger son, Colton, is playing a baseball tournament in Connecticut, and my older son is playing a baseball tournament about an hour north of here.

So, I'm going with my older son, and my ex-wife is going with my younger son.

So,

that's that.

Um,

are you a Connecticut fan in basketball?

No, uh, no, I was a Syracuse fan for when it when Bayheim was there, because uh, that's the closest, that's the closest school.

So, we always we always hated Connecticut.

Um, now I just kind of love watching college basketball in general.

Yeah, um, haven't haven't Syracuse is the lost, although um, uh, Jerry Mack is now the head coach, uh, Jerry McNamara from the title run

is now the head coach of Sienna, which I could hit with a driver and probably a five iron from my home.

So

rapidly becoming a Sienna basketball fan.

So this idea of a gratitude practice, you know, it was always like one of those things that I thought like, you know, life coaches taught you as like a five-step whatever.

And I don't know.

And then I started going through some hard times and was searching for things, you know, searching for something that I could grab onto.

And in the mornings, I just started like sitting and I would read.

I've always read.

And after I got done reading, put my book down, I would just sit there for 30 seconds, right?

God, thank you for the home that I live in, the children that I have, whatever, right?

Whatever hit my brain.

And then I'd stand up.

And holy shit, bro.

Like even 30 seconds, even acknowledging one thing changes your perspective on the day.

Like one thing, just acknowledging one thing.

And it, you like stand up, up, and there's this weird sensation of like,

everything's not terrible.

I'm going to be able to get through this thing.

It's wild.

You know, and like,

like I said, most people will never go through a prison, but you've, everybody's gone through something difficult in life.

And I wake up every day and I think to myself, Damon, you didn't wake up in a prison today.

Like, how great is your day going to be?

Because my worst day out here is better than my best day in there.

Now, that can apply to anybody, man, because think about your worst day that you're having right now versus the best day you had in that bad situation you were in, right?

I mean, like if you're going, let's say someone's going through a breakup, a bad marriage, they're getting a divorce, you know, tough to find good days in there, but you survive that.

And if you survive that, you can survive other things in life.

I think that it's normal for you to look at some of this personal development stuff and say, that's kind of like rose-colored glasses or, you know, some of that stuff's even so ambiguous.

There's a lot of phonies and fakes in that world, and it's unfortunate because they really taint the whole industry.

Because you've got some really good life coaches out there, but you got some, you got some bad seeds out there.

I would say also to be, be careful, man.

Watch out for these people.

You know, if someone leads with the bling, the shiny, flashy objects, they're probably a huckster.

If someone throws their faith out there so much in your, in your face in the very beginning, Pay attention to that.

I'm not saying they're a huckster, but you want to watch their actions really heavily, right?

Because look, man, when people want to tell me they're a Christian, it makes me want to grab my wallet first because I want to make sure that like if they lead off with that, right?

I'm a Christian, I'm a Christ.

All right, now I want to grab my wallet because it feels like you're trying to pick my pocket.

But now what I'm watching to see with all these people that want to profess their faith publicly, because I see a lot of that.

Public professions of faith.

It's a big deal.

A lot of Christians are susceptible to this.

And I find that with a lot of my brothers and sisters in Christ, that they let their guard down when someone talks about Christ in public, right?

And it blows me away because I'm like, okay, hey, listen, let's watch that person's actions, right?

Because if you want to tell me how much you're a Christian, I want to see all that stuff that shows up in the red ink of the New Testament.

Show me love.

Show me compassion.

Show me some mercy.

Show me empathy.

Show me these things that show up in the red ink of the Jesus' words and the gospels.

And when someone wrongs you, Show me all that stuff in the red ink too.

Show me that thing about he without sin casts the first stone, right?

Grace upon grace.

Yeah, a lot of yeah, show me grace, man, because grace is hard.

Grace always costs the person giving it more than it costs the person who receives it.

So, you know, I would say when you were talking about these, these, some of these people that have tainted that coaching world, and I'm not a coach, I'm just telling you from observation.

Some of the people have tainted this stuff.

Watch people's actions because if your actions don't align with your words, then you're not authentic.

You're not real.

And I think that more people would sit back and say, hey, you know what?

I'm going to just watch and see what you do and take a little more time with this decision for you to be a coach in my life.

I think we'd have a lot of, a lot more mentors and mentees that are better matched up.

Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more.

The unfortunate part about what you just said is that so much of the advice that they would give you is actually correct and is valuable, but the

delivery and the lack of

the fact that, as you said, they don't live it, right?

They'll tell you it, but they don't live it.

And so it gets muddled and it gets mucky and then we don't really understand.

And then it takes me 42 years to realize that gratitude and a simple, very simple and kind of salt of the earth gratitude practice is incredibly valuable to my life.

And I wish that it hadn't taken 42 years to get there, right?

And I think that goes for a lot of these things that I also think there's something to, man, just

test shit.

Like I look at everything as an experiment or a project.

I try not to

put too much too much expectation on anything, right?

So it's an experience.

I'm going to try this gratitude thing because whatever I'm doing today ain't working, right?

I'm not feeling better.

I'm not getting better, whatever it is.

So I'm going to try this.

If it works, awesome.

If it doesn't work, you know, get rid of it.

You know, people give me shit all the time.

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Because I'll tell people that I like the cold plunge, right?

Is it a microcosm?

And they'll be like, oh, you know, oh, you're just another guy talking about cold plunge.

Sure.

I guess I am.

And I guess at face value, I'm just another guy that will say that it works, or at least it helps me.

And I said, but

I don't, it's not like I do it.

I don't sell cold plunges.

I don't have a referral code for cold plunges.

I don't get sponsored by a cold plunge company.

Like,

I have a quasi-makeshift tank.

It's right there.

That's why I'm pointing off the screen for everyone watching on YouTube.

And I get into it for one reason because I fucking hate it.

I hate it

every Every day,

every day for five years.

I've been doing it.

Well, I've been doing it since pre-COVID, so maybe six years, like 2018, 2019.

Every day, Damon, every day I stand in front of it and my body is screaming not to get in because I know how terrible it's going to be.

And every and every day when I do it, I get out and I go, fuck you, bitch boys.

Which, right, I can get through this.

So the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, that day,

I can get through that thing because I did this stupid thing that I hate already, right?

and I don't know it's like little hacks like that But if you don't try stuff if you don't experiment a little bit like you said if you just stay in your comfort zone You never figure out those things that work for you Yeah, my dad had my dad had a phrase for this man He said do things you're afraid of so you can do things you're afraid of and it it's like the most

Yeah, do things you're afraid of so you can do things you're afraid the more you do the more you conquer fears the more you can conquer other fears, right?

Yeah, the more you do stuff that holds you back voluntary adversity put yourself through some adversity voluntarily, you know, because there's two forms of adversity in life.

There's a kind you find because life is hard.

Life is going to deal you some tough stuff.

But then there's the other kind of adversity that you find yourself in because of the choices that you make.

And that can be voluntary adversity too.

I mean, like you can do something bad and there's a bad consequence that happens to that.

Or you can say like a cold punch, I'm going to put myself in this situation because I need some adversity.

I need to handle some adversity every day that's going to, because you're going to face other adversity in life right do things you're afraid of so you can do things you're afraid of i i love that you do cold punches every day i love the fact that you stated you don't sell cold punches too

there's no financial gain by me guys just so we're clear there's no financial gain by me stating that i do this uh it's just funny but then you get all these commenters online which i love the commenters online and i want to get i want to get to your new book but dude i i one more thing i think is just funny maybe you'll appreciate yeah um so i uh train to box i don't spar i don't want to get punched in the head Doesn't matter.

I played football too.

I would have played football in college, but I got three concussions my senior season.

So it was

no more football for Ryan.

I had to play college.

It's a choice you made.

It's a good consequence of a decision.

I ended up playing college baseball, so it was all good, but whatever.

So I don't want to get punched in the head, but I do train to box a lot because I love the physicality of it.

I love that it's aerobic, physical, you know, whatever.

It doesn't matter.

And for my own,

again,

I make no money on anything related to boxing, but I will post these videos sometimes on Instagram, mostly as like motivation.

Like, look, I'm 44 years old.

I'm out here fucking getting after it.

Okay.

Bro, these guys, and I love them.

I love, they will write me essays on Instagram on how they would knock me out.

It's amazing.

It's the best thing.

Like, people are always like, don't read your comments.

I love the comments because these guys will be like, oh, you jabbed with your right foot there.

I would slip underneath your jab and come up with a hook.

And then I, and like, the amount of time that they took to analyze this guy who knows nothing about who watches YouTube videos and tries to mimic them right like it's amazing and uh it's just one of the beauties of human beings and how insane we are um okay but the the good thing about the comments is that you have a power over that like someone that sends you a comment there's nothing to say that you've ever read the comment and so

you know so many times people that put those out there they want a fight and if you don't respond back to it you don't give them what they want i love i look at the comments too man It cracks me.

I just did a show recently called Soft White Underbelly.

You ever heard of that?

Soft White Underbelly is this guy, he's a this guy's in uh in LA, and he interviews people off of Skid Row, man.

I mean, like people, there's people, there's drug people in active drug addiction, all kinds of stuff.

Sammy the Bull Gravano, someone he's interviewed, you know, and you just sit in front of the camera and you tell your story.

And man, this, I mean, there's millions of people that follow this guy.

And

man, I did it recently, and like I'm it posted like a week ago.

So I go in there every day and I just, you know, check out this video is moving, man.

And there's people saying, oh man, I love this.

This is a great story.

But you got all these haters, you know, oh my God, this guy's, he's full of shit and all this other stuff.

I'm just cracking up.

Like people are like, this guy never did time in a real prison.

I'm like, okay.

But yeah, man, the comments, they don't, they don't bother me, man.

Look, here's, here's another rule I live by in life.

We're talking about these rules and principles I live by.

Other people's opinions of you are none of your business.

Other people's opinions of you are none of your business.

It doesn't matter what someone thinks about you.

And another

like really like foundational principle of my life,

you know, when I started working the 12 steps, and I still go to meetings to this day.

I go to a couple meetings every week.

I'm on the road, so I hit meetings on the road a lot.

But it's this, that

whenever you owe someone an apology in life, you need to make that apology.

You need to own your behaviors in life.

That makes you a better person.

The first thing an apology does is it frees the other person from the harm that you did to them and that's the most important thing because whenever you do something to somebody they don't deserve that this is again about grace and being a good person a person of integrity you know when we wrong people and you're going to wrong people i'm going to wrong people you need to own it and um whenever you own it you free them but but then you free yourself too because you don't have to hold that resentment against yourself and i had that problem in my life too i've got a lot of victims of the crimes i committed i committed a bunch of property crimes ryan and it's important for me to say this: like, I broke into people's houses for three years in Dallas.

And when I broke into people's homes, I didn't just steal their property, I stole their sense of security.

Something I can't get back to them, you know, something I can't replace, something I can't fix.

The damage is done.

I can't change what I did to these people.

I can't even apologize to them.

The state of Texas has a law, it's a felony to apologize to the victim of a crime.

They will send you back to prison in Texas if you reach out to apologize.

So,

my victims have to live with that for the rest of their lives.

But in recovery, I found out that there was this clause that you can do about making amends, and it's called a living amends.

And a living amends is when you go out and do good deeds and you expect nothing in return.

You just wake up every day, look for ways to serve other people.

I got this little prayer that I say.

Now I'm going to give everybody this prayer because whatever faith you are, you could plug this prayer into your life too.

I get up in the morning.

I say, hey, God.

Put in front of me what you need me to do today for you and let me recognize that when I see it because I don't want to miss miss whatever that thing is.

Amen.

That's it.

My life is pretty simple when I live out that prayer every day.

Now, am I perfect about this?

No, man.

I'm in spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection, brother.

I haven't figured out how to perfect this thing yet.

But I do work on myself every day.

I stumble and I fall and I get back up.

And that's what being a coffee bean is all about.

Do I have some days that I'm the carrot?

You bet, man.

There's some tough days out there that kind of beat you down.

Do I have days that I'm the egg?

I've got a lot more egg days and carrot days, to be honest with you.

I think the egg is a natural evolution of most human beings.

We have a tendency to get angry at a situation before we do anything else.

But I can always snap out of it and always become a coffee bean, no matter what time of the day, noon, 4 p.m., life's not going right, hit the pause button, take a step back, take a deep breath, and just tell life.

I'm not going to live like that.

I'm not going to be the carrot.

I'm not going to be the egg.

And then run and jump back in that pot of boiling water called life and tell life, you know what?

Turn it up.

I got this, man.

I could be a coffee bean too.

Dude, to your point about how you approach negativity in your life, a comment on a social post or otherwise,

whenever someone writes a post about how they would beat the shit out of me or knock me out or whatever, however they phrase it, I always respond, thank you.

I'm going to work on that.

Dude, the next, I'm telling you, and then not everyone, but I'd say three out of every 10.

is then just as long on advice.

They immediately go, oh, bro, well, hey, man well here's what you do you know here's a box step routine or here's a this then they become super nice so they like the first post is like you're you're a jerk you're terrible i beat the crap out of you and then just by going like thanks man like i i'm gonna work on that or like i appreciate the feedback all of a sudden now they're my boxing coach yeah

now they're my boxing coach turn it around on them you flip the screen to them yeah to your point about you know you can only respond how you respond and and and saying you know when you apologize and whatever you know i think there's so much to that.

And we just, I think so many people want to and they hold it in for whatever reason.

And every once in a while, again, like what your dad said, you know, I do things that I'm scared of to do things that I'm scared of.

Like if it scares you to respond or apologize, try it once and see how it feels.

Yeah.

I want to finish with the time that we have left.

I just want to finish with your new book, right?

I highly recommend.

I'll have it linked up.

The coffee bean is amazing.

I have a copy.

I've given a copy to my older son.

My younger son is

working on it right now, the one that came in during the middle of the podcast.

Cool, man.

But love, it's absolutely phenomenal.

But six dimes in a nickel.

Let's talk about that book, where it comes from.

We've got it on the screen here.

If you're watching on YouTube, we'll have it linked up.

Guys, this episode is coming out.

If you're listening to it on release day, the same day that Six Dimes and a Nickel goes live.

So we'll have it all linked up and you can go get the book.

But tell us about what we're doing now.

So Six Dimes and a Nickel is the title comes from the prison slang for 65 years, which is what a jury sentenced me to.

Every 10 years in prison is a dime.

Every five years is a nickel.

I got 65 years by a jury in Dallas, so that's six dimes and a nickel.

And really what it is, Ron, it's all the life lessons from a life sentence.

So I told you the beginning of the book starts off with a question.

If someone took control of your life tomorrow, what's the first thing that would change?

My goal with this book is to give you the principles, the stories behind the principles I live by, and the applications of all these principles in my life that help me to not only answer that question and make that change, but hold on to that change.

I want you to be able to make the change in your life that you're holding back on and hold on to your change too.

Every chapter is a principle in which I live my life by.

The body of the chapter is the story behind how I learned the principle because I believe people learn from storytellers.

We love good storytellers, right?

We love stories about redemption, the underdog journey.

We love stories that have sports.

Sports is the great uniter, but we really love true crime and prison stories.

And I've become a really good storyteller, Ryan.

So every chapter is every title of a chapter is a principle.

The body of the chapter is the story behind where I learned the principle.

And the end of the chapter is the application of the principle in your life too.

I have learned a lot about writing books.

This is my sixth book and probably going to be my final book, to be honest with you, man.

Writing books, it's hard.

I'm on the road.

I'm so grateful for my life.

I've got a lot of demand as a speaker right now.

Like I said, I'm on the road 20 to 25 days every month, speaking somewhere, sharing this story with corporations, sports teams, school districts, associations.

But writing books is hard.

And so I wanted to put it all into one book.

And this book right here, it'll read like a movie because it's a life story that it's the backdrop of, but you're going to get the principles that I've turned my life around and you can use in your life too.

I love it.

Damien, dude, you are your national treasure, bro.

I love that you're out there telling your story.

It's your ability to take

this incredible

experience that you've had that so many would have fallen apart through and to share it in a way that I think, while you said so many won't be able to relate because they won't have spent time,

but you can grab onto it.

That's what I loved about the coffee bean was I was like, I will never.

Hopefully never, I shouldn't say never, hopefully never experience this life.

But I felt like I was there with you, I was learning with you, and it's as meaningful to me today as when I read it.

Dude, please just keep doing what you do, bro.

I love it.

I appreciate it.

Thank you so much for your time.

Brian, thanks, brother.

Thanks for having me on today.

And if anybody wants to find me, my website is damonwest.org.

That's where people find me for speaking.

Appreciate you, brother.

Thanks, man.

What if I told you that your biggest breakthrough is waiting on the other side of your biggest breakdown?

What if the very thing you're afraid of, losing control, facing uncertainty, getting knocked down, is exactly what you need to discover who you're really meant to be?

This podcast is for unreasonable people seeking unreasonable results.

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My name is Ryan Hanley, and after getting fired from my third executive position, I finally realized something.

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