From Quarterback to Crime Boss to Keynote Speaker: Damon West’s Unimaginable Story of Hope

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SPEAKER_01: So my friend, you can say there's a lot of different ways I could choose to start off today's episode.

How I could hook you, grab your attention, convince you that today is gonna be quite possibly the most impactful podcast episode you've ever listened to.

But the thing that I want you to know more than anything else is that today you're about to hear a story of hope.

A story of hope that I believe can leave a lasting impact on you and in your life.

Now, ironically, when you hear the story of today's guest, hope is going to be the last thing you can possibly think of.

Because today's guest sat through a six-day-long trial.

At the end of six long days, the jury they deliberated for 10 short minutes.

At the end of 10 minutes, they came back with a verdict.

65 years in prison.

65 years for Damon West in a maximum security prison in the state of Texas.

Again, where is hope when you're handed down a sentence like that?

That is what makes today so powerful.

Now, what makes today's conversation so powerful?

My friend, maybe you've not been given 65 years in a prison.

But maybe you're living in a prison in your own life.

Keeping yourself held back from the dreams that you want to achieve, the things that you believe in.

You're keeping yourself locked away from living the life that you're meant to live.

Well, my friend, today, I pray more than anything else that today can be the spark of hope you've been needing.

This is an interview with Damon West.

And yes, if you caught our last episode, this is the guest I was talking about.

A guy who I first learned about on an ordinary morning while listening to the Ed Milette show.

Today, Damon West is a man who is one of the most in-demand motivational speakers there is.

A guy who's absolutely phenomenal.

But more than anything else, he's just a guy.

A normal person, just like you or me, who he's been through some stuff.

But more than anything else, he's come out the other side.

And he's proof that you can make a difference in your life and in the lives of everyone around you.

So, my friend, if you need some encouragement, if you need to be inspired, motivated, and of course, if you can use a little bit of hope in your life, well, my friend, this is exactly where you were meant to be.

My friend, I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and I welcome you to episode 390 of Grit Grace and His Free.

SPEAKER_03: I got grit, grace and inspiration on my mind.

SPEAKER_01: What's going on, and welcome back to Great Racing Inspiration.

Today, I have the absolute pleasure of being in the studio today with none other than a guy named Damon West.

Damon, man, what a pleasure to have you here.

Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_04: Kevin, dude, I'm so excited to be here with you, brother.

Your story inspires me.

And when you reached out to me about doing your podcast, it was an honor, man.

I jumped at it.

And uh yeah, I'm ready, I'm ready to do this today, brother.

SPEAKER_01: Oh man, well, I I appreciate you making it clear that I did not have to threaten you or twist your arm or anything.

SPEAKER_04: So no, sir.

Just being an inspiring human being is all you had to do.

And usually that's enough in life, right?

We need we need inspiration.

Everybody needs it.

Even the motivators need motivating, and so you do that for me, brother.

SPEAKER_01: Oh man, well, I appreciate that.

Well, well, David, I'm excited to get to dive into your story.

And and I think what I what I want people to understand as we we get started here is that as much as we're gonna care about your story, it's really the the honestly the life lessons that you literally have to share, which is what I think makes you so powerful.

And and so where I would love to start is honestly by asking you, from somebody who's gone through hell and back, where do you feel like your story really begins?

SPEAKER_04: Good question.

I think the best place to start my story is somewhere right, we'll say in the middle.

And I got a date we'll start with.

The date is July 30th, 2008.

So 17 years before this recording right here.

On July 30th, 2008, I'm sitting around this little rundown apartment in Dallas, Texas, and I'm sitting on this little ratty old couch.

And sitting next to me on the couch that day is my meth dealer.

This guy named Tex.

Because 17 years ago, I'm not the clean cut, polished looking guy that everybody knows today.

I'm a full-blown meth addict.

I'm the head of an organized crime ring that operates throughout the entire city of Dallas.

I'm the top criminal in this criminal enterprise, the shot caller, the boss.

So I'm on the couch that day with my dope dealer, Tex.

And I'm telling my Tex, we're passing this pipe back and forth, you know, Tex, you don't want to be here, man.

The cops are closing in on me.

The end is near.

Ten days before this, Kevin, my partner in crime was a guy named Dustin.

Dustin knew everything about our criminal enterprise.

And Dustin was in the custody of the Dallas Police Department.

They picked him up ten days before.

So they've got my partner in crime in custody, which means it's only a matter of time before they're gonna have me in custody.

Because here's the truth about crime, Kevin.

Everybody talks.

Everybody talks.

And just as I pass the pipe back to Tex, the window on my right blows out and shatters.

And then tumbling across my living room floor was a little canister going end over end, and it was smoking on one side.

Kevin, I've seen that movie before.

I know what that canister is about to do.

And I tried to get out of the living room as fast as I could.

Too late.

Boom! The flashbang grenade blew up my face.

Bright white light, loud noise, blows me back on the couch.

And when I came to, when I can see and hear again, there's a cop standing over me in full SWAT riot gear, his boot is on my chest, the barrel of an assault rifle, it's sticking in my eye socket.

And he's screaming at the top of his lungs, don't move, don't move.

And man, I looked up at the cop and I was like, man, don't worry, don't worry, right?

So the cops, the Dallas SWAT team, they flooded in my apartment.

And one of them screams out loud, we got him.

We got the Uptown Burglar.

The Uptown Burglar, Kevin.

That's a name I live with for the rest of my life.

About a dozen other meth addicts and myself, young and old, male and female, black and white, and everything in between.

We indiscriminately and without reservation broke into the homes of dozens and dozens of people in the uptown neighborhood of Dallas and beyond to feed our insatiable meth habits.

But on July 30th, 2008, the uptown burger and crime spread comes to an end because they've got their man.

They've got the mastermind of the entire thing, zip tied on the floor of a dirty old apartment.

They took me, they took me to Dallas County Jail that day, Kevin.

They processed me in, fingerprints, mugshot.

They throw me in a holding cell, and they set my bond at$1.4 million.

This was the biggest bond in Dallas at the time, Kevin.

There's 9,000 people in Dallas County Jail.

No one's got a bond this high.

The trial takes place about 10 months later.

The date is May 18th, 2009.

On May 18th, 2009, I'm standing in front of a jury in Dallas.

And the jury, these 12 men and women's jury box, they've just set through a six-day criminal trial.

And Kevin, six days for a trial and crimes where no one got hurt, it means the evidence in my guilt is overwhelming.

And at the end of that long six-day trial, the jury goes to deliberate for 10 minutes.

10 minutes, Kevin.

That means you're in serious trouble because a jury coming back that fast, it means they smoked you.

And the crime that I'm standing trial for this whole six days, it wasn't a burglary case anymore.

It was the highest level case a prosecutor can bring against you.

It was an organized crime case.

It was a RICO.

And they brought me back in the courtroom, and the judge read my sentence out loud.

He said, Damon Joseph West, you are hereby sentenced to 65 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

65 years in Texas is a life sentence in Texas.

Or as they say in prison terms, six dimes and a nickel.

The jury gave me life that day, Kevin.

So that's where I think we should start this story off.

This guy that gets sentenced to life in prison in 2009, but is sitting on your podcast in 2025.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

Now the question that came to mind when you started to share this story you had this premonition, this the smart is about you to realize that things were about to end.

Did you ever think about running?

Getting out of town?

SPEAKER_04: It's a great question.

Here's the answer like here's the answer to why I did not run.

I stayed in Dallas, Texas, because I was a meth addict.

And my meth dealers, every one of them that I knew, were in Dallas, Texas.

I didn't have another meth connection.

And the fear of being separated from my meth, the addiction part of that stayed me, it kept me grounded in Dallas, Texas, where the most danger was to my life.

Yeah, if I run, you know, I'm not arrested that day.

There's no doubt about that.

I don't know how long I last on the run, but I certainly have a better chance at evading capture if I run, but I can't run, Kevin, because my dope is in Dallas.

Very good question.

SPEAKER_01: You were already imprisoned by the judge.

SPEAKER_04: That's a good point.

Yeah, I tell people, you know, this is uh this is a fact about prison.

And look, I we're gonna hear from the story.

You know, I go to a level five maximum security prison, the highest secure-level prison there is.

I do my time, and we're gonna hear the story about how I got out.

And one of the things I did when I got out of prison is I went back to school, I got a master's degree in criminal justice, and and since I got out 10 years ago, I became a professor at the University of Houston teaching a class called Prisons in America.

Like I became the only professor on the planet to teach a prisons class who lived in prison.

So I'm gonna tell you what I understand about prison.

And this is from the guy that spent almost 10 years in the joint, or the professor who teaches about the joint.

The hardest prison to do time in is the prison in your mind.

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 imprisoned by their thoughts, by their things, and by their prejudices than by steel bars and barbed wire and concrete combined.

So, yes, I was absolutely a prisoner.

I was enslaved by my drug.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.

I mean, such a valid point in this realization of what prison can mean in its many different forms and definitions and circumstances and situations.

Yeah, very, very powerful.

Now, before we proceed, uh, I would love to understand uh how did you even get to that point to be in that apartment that day, to even be hooked on math in the first place, because we tend to think of somebody in that situation.

Well, then you've probably always been into drugs or you've always been on the wrong path in life.

But I know for you that wasn't the case.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, I got into substance abuse at a young age.

Uh I was 10 when I had my first beer.

I snuck in the fridge and got my dad's, stole my dad's beer out of the fridge.

I remember watching my dad and his buddies drink beer, and I thought to myself, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get it, I'm gonna get a beer one day.

You know, when I was drinking at a young age, and then I tried marijuana when I was 12, uh, I was touching my toe, dipping my toe into the waters of addiction.

I didn't know it back then.

And, you know, nothing serious had happened in my life, no adversity had ever hit me until I was 20 years old.

And I had a really good high school football career in the state of Texas.

And as you know, you're in Florida, Texas and Florida high school football is a really big deal.

So I was a real big star quarterback in Texas.

So so good that I got a scholarship to play football at the University of North Texas, Division I college football.

And by the time I was 20, I was a starting quarterback on a Division I team.

But on September 21st, 1996, again, when we were playing Texas AM, I separated my shoulder on the third play of the game.

And it was it was the last game I would ever play in college.

The injury was the last game ever played in college.

And I was at a giant fork in the road in life when football was gone because more than just football was gone that day.

I lost my identity, Kevin.

Everything in my life identified around being a college quarterback or being the star athlete.

And once that was gone, I spun out.

And I got into hardcore drugs at that point.

I got into cocaine, I got into ecstasy, I started popping pills.

But I was a pretty functional addict, Kevin.

I mean, like I graduate college in 1999.

I moved off to Washington, D.C.

I have some of the best jobs you can have.

I worked in the United States Congress.

I worked for a guy running for president of the United States, and in 2004, I moved back to Dallas to be a stockbroker for one of the biggest Wall Street banks in the world, UBS, United Bank of Switzerland.

And it was at that job as a stockbroker at UBS in 2004 that my life and the lives of so many other innocent people would forever be changed.

Let me take you back that day in 2004.

I was passed out of sleep at work.

This other stockbroker comes in, he sees me sleeping, he wakes me up, he's visibly shaken, he's like, Damon, wake up, man.

He said, You can't sleep on this job.

The markets are up.

You're messing with people's money.

They'll fire you if they catch you sleeping here.

He said, Come on down to the parking garage.

I've got something that'll pick you up.

So I follow this guy in the parking garage that day.

We get into his nice little sports car.

He hands me this glass pipe with these crystal rocks in it.

Now I'd never seen a glass pipe before.

I'm like, man, what is that?

He said, Damon, just relax.

It's crystal meth.

He said, You're gonna love this stuff.

Kevin, truer words have never been spoken.

Because I fell in love with crystal meth that day.

Meth is the most evil, most destructive, most addictive drug ever created by man.

It's made in a lab, made to get you hooked.

I smoked it one time and simply hooked just like that.

And I started giving everything away for that drug.

I gave up my job, my home, my car, my savings account, my family, my tethering to God.

And in 18 months, I go from working on Wall Street to living on the streets of Dallas.

And that's when I became a criminal at that point, when I was homeless.

Started breaking into cars, breaking into storage units, and eventually I started breaking, breaking into people's houses.

And these burglaries these are very serious crimes, Kevin, because I didn't break, I didn't just steal people's property when I broke in their homes.

I stole their sense of security.

That's something I can't give back to them.

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

But after three years of committing property crimes against the people of Dallas, Texas, the Dallas SWAT team on July 30th, 2008 put an end to the uptown burgeries.

The day that they arrested me, or as I tell people all the time, I look back, Kevin, at July 30th, 2008.

That's not just the day I was arrested.

That was the day I was rescued.

I got pulled out of a situation in life I couldn't get myself out of.

The Dallas SWAT team saved my life that day, Kevin.

SPEAKER_01: Wow, what a powerful, powerful, powerful perspective.

During this time, and in this kind of leads into the next question I want to ask you.

Your family, your parents, their son, I mean, you just told us Division I quarterback.

You get this injury, you continue, though, on with life, you get involved with crystal math, and everything starts to spiral down.

What is the impact on them during this time?

SPEAKER_04: Oh man, yeah, they're they're devastated.

Like they know something's wrong with me.

They don't know what it is, but I mean, they know something's wrong.

My mom is constantly uh trying to get me to move back home to Southeast Texas where I grew up.

But again, Kevin, I'm not moving from Dallas.

My dope dealers are in Dallas, you know?

So there's absolutely no way I'm gonna move back to Southeast Texas.

My mom, she tries and tries and tries.

She pleases me to come home.

They don't know really what's wrong, but they know something's wrong, but they're so far away that I just lie to them.

Because that's what addicts do.

We lie, we cheat, we steal, we manipulate, we do what we have to do to stay in our behaviors.

Here's what I learned about addiction addicts give up their goals to meet their behaviors.

In fact, that's the definition of addiction, Kevin.

When you give up your goals to meet your behaviors, you're an addict.

And it doesn't have to be drugs or alcohol, right?

It could be food, money, clothing, shopping, sex, pornography, the internet, social media.

But my family knew that something was wrong.

And here's the deal: addiction touches everybody in this country, Kevin.

You know, it touches everybody.

No one is immune from this epidemic of addiction in America.

Whether you're the addict, the victim of an addict, the friend of an addict, the family member of an addict, or you're just a taxpayer paying into an overburdened criminal justice system, addiction touches every single person in this country.

And my parents were not immune from that.

And I'll tell you this even further the cycle of addiction that took me into prison.

No one goes to prison alone, Kevin.

You take a lot of people with you when you go to prison.

You take your victims, you take your family, you take your friends who believed in you, you take everybody on the ride, the taxpayers, they pay for it.

No one goes to prison alone in this country.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

Speaking about your mom, will you share with us the story of the day that you were sentenced to 65 years in prison and the advice that your mom gave you?

SPEAKER_04: Yeah, man.

This is a very pivotal conversation on my journey.

My mom, you know, my mom is a woman of strong faith.

My mom and my dad were married for 55 years, too.

I had a very privileged life, Kevin.

I grew up with two parents in the home.

I didn't know anything but have mom and dad there.

So my parents are there for the whole trial, and right after the trial is over, my mom and dad are escorted in to this little side room.

There's a bulletproof glass dividing us.

And my mom has this conversation with me that day.

She's like, Damon, debts in life demand to be paid.

And you just got hit with one hell of a bill from the state of Texas.

But she said you did everything they said you did, so you have to go and pay that debt to society.

She said, Damon, you you owe Texas that debt.

But now you owe your father and I debt, too.

You see, we gave you all the opportunity, love, and support to be anything you want to be in life.

And that's how you just you just repaid us what we saw in that courtroom.

She said, That's not gonna work.

So here's the debt you're gonna pay to us.

When you go to prison, you will not get in 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.

She said, That's not gonna work, Damon.

You were never raised to be a racist.

You're not starting that stuff down.

She said, You will not get any tattoos while you're inside that prison.

She said, No gangs, no tattoos.

She said, You come back as the man that we raised, or don't come back to us at all.

And man, Kevin, I was stunned, right?

I'm floored because I don't know how I'm gonna deliver on this promise to my mom.

But my mom told me, she said, Damon, this is the debt you owe to your father and I.

Get to work.

So I'm running around Dallas County jail.

I've got two months before the prison bus comes to get me, and I'm frantically asking every guy that's been to prison before, you know, how am I gonna survive?

What am I gonna do?

And every guy I'm talking to, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, they're all telling me the same exact thing that you've got to get into a gang.

You can't survive without a gang.

The gang is your family now.

But there was this one guy that was so different, Kevin, this older black guy named Muhammad.

Now, Muhammad was what you call a career criminal.

He's been in and out of prison his entire life.

But you know, he was the most positive guy I've ever made in my life, Kevin.

This guy had a smile on his face everywhere he went.

You couldn't knock the smile off Muhammad's face.

And every morning, he would come to my cell, to my bunk, and he would pick me up like a ray of sunshine in that dark place with his positive energy.

So one morning, Muhammad comes up to my bunk.

He's got a cup of coffee in his hands, he had a smile on his face.

He said, Wes, I've been watching you, man.

I've been watching how you're dealing with these knuckleheads and these dummies talking about you gotta get into a game.

He said, Man, don't listen to these fools.

You wanna keep that promise you made to your mom and your dad?

Then let me tell you what prison is really gonna be like.

And so he told me, Kevin.

He said, the first thing you need to understand about prison, he said, prison's all about race.

He said, race runs the whole institution side of a prison.

And that's the way all the inmates want it.

He said, everything's broken down by the racial code in there.

Everybody separates by the races.

So don't tell any of that when you walk in the door, the white gangs get the first dips on you because you're white.

The Aryan Brotherhood, the Aryan Circle, the White Knights, the Woods.

He said, you fight all the white gangs first.

If you survive the white gangs, then you fight the black gangs.

The Crips, the Bloods, the gangster disciples.

They're gonna be happy to tee off on this independent white guy who won't deal with his own race and his own kind where he belongs.

He said, but if you survive all that, and you can survive all that, you will earn the right to walk alone.

He said, the strongest man in prison always walks alone.

He told me the truth about fighting.

He said you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights.

Some days you win, some days you lose.

He said it's okay when you lose as long as you get back up and you keep fighting.

You know, he's telling me, get back up.

But when he's telling me this back in 2009, Kevin, I'm looking back at this guy like a deer in headlights, man.

All this violence and terror I'm about to walk into.

That's when he's like, West, he said, let me break this down for you a different way.

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

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

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

A carrot, an egg, and a coffee bean.

So he tells me the story of the coffee bean given.

He said, if I put a carrot and a pot of boiling water, he said, What happens to the carrot?

And I was like, the carrot turns soft, Muhammad.

He said, That's right.

But the carrot goes in the water really hard and firm, but the water, the prison, turns a hard carrot, soft and mushy and weak.

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

He said, What about the egg?

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

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

He said, That's right.

He said, the egg has a shell that will protect it physically.

But inside that shell, that soft liquid core, the egg's yolk, the heart becomes hardened.

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

He said, if you're incapable of giving or receiving love, you've become institutionalized and you do not come back as someone your parents recognize because your eggshell has swastikas all over it.

Then he asked me the question.

He said, What about the coffee bean, West?

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

And Kevin, I didn't have an answer from Muhammad on that one.

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

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

I'm a white middle class Christian from a little town called Port Arthur.

But this man who 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 the moral to that is this 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're gonna miss some of the most important lessons and some of the best friendships in this life.

Because Muhammad told 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 gotta change the name of the water to coffee.

Because he said the coffee bean, West, the smallest of the three things, he said, 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.

And he said, everything else in life is changed by the water in life.

Carrots are changed by the water.

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

He said the coffee bean is the only thing that changes the water because it's the change agent.

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

In fact, the last words he ever said to me, he said, West, be a coffee bean.

And that was it.

That was the message right before I got on the prison bus.

Be a coffee bean.

The four words that changed my life, Kevin, because you know what those four words did for me?

They put the power back inside me.

And if the power was inside me, it couldn't be in the world around me, right?

The criminal justice system, the guards, the other inmates.

It was in me.

And if I can get the power inside me, I don't survive prison.

I thrive in that prison.

And that's what I'm telling your audience today, because I want your audience to know that the power is inside you too.

It's not what goes on around you where you live, the town you're from, the state you're from, or the crazy politics and social problems this country has right now.

It's in you.

And if you can keep the power inside you, you don't survive adversity, you thrive in adversity.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

Wow.

The coffee bean.

What a powerful, powerful imagery that is.

I guess though what I what I wonder though is when you went into prison, did you have any idea that you would not serve all 65 years behind bars?

SPEAKER_04: You know, that is a good question.

The answer to that question is like, I know, because my crimes, Kevin, my crimes were non-aggravated.

And in Texas, they've got two different categories of crimes you can commit.

An aggravated crime is a crime where someone is physically hurt at commission the crime.

Think murder, rape, child molesters, those kinds of things.

Robbery when you put a gun in someone's face.

Non-aggravated crimes are when you have no physical victim.

These are property crimes.

These are crimes that you commit, uh, like theft and stuff like that around drug addiction.

So my crimes were non-aggravated.

And in Texas, if you have non-aggravated crimes, you don't have to do as much time before you see parole as someone that has an aggravated charge.

So I know going into this thing that I'll be eligible for parole in seven years.

But do I think I'm going to make the first parole?

Absolutely not.

No one makes the first parole in prison, not on a life sentence.

In fact, just to get out on a life sentence, most people do about 10 or 15 years, best case scenario before they get out.

So I'm going into this thing.

I don't think I'm doing 65 years, but I think I'm doing about 10 or 15.

SPEAKER_01: And I guess when I think about it, 65 years versus 10 years.

It's in prison, maximum security in the worst place in the world.

And in a place where I think hope exists.

And I can't help but I guess think even thinking, okay, I'll be in here for 10, 15 years, even say seven years.

How do you maintain though uh hope in such a place as prison?

SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's the thing, man.

Hope is the thing you have to have.

You ever seen the movie Shawshank Redemption, Kevin?

SPEAKER_01: Embarrassingly, no.

SPEAKER_04: Well, I didn't know if before before you went blind, if you had ever seen that movie.

But it's one of the most incredible movies ever.

And the movie Shawshank Redemption is about hope.

And in the movie, there's two main characters.

One of them is a guy named Andy Dufrain, the other is a guy named Red.

A lot of people think the movie Shawshank is about Andy, the innocent guy that went to prison and escaped.

But the movie is really about Red.

It's the he's the incarcerated guy that Andy befriends in there.

The reason why the movie is about Red is because Red has no hope.

And Andy represents hope inside the prison.

In fact, so much so that the last scene of the movie, when Red and Andy unite outside the prison walls, because Andy has escaped, and Red has finally made parole after 40 years.

He did 40 years in prison before he walked out.

Red's final sentences, Red's final, he has the final line of the whole movie.

And that last scene of the movie, they're on this beach in Mexico, Zihuatineo, Mexico.

And Red's dialogue at the end is the culmination of the whole movie.

He says this.

He says, I hope I make it across the border.

He's going into Mexico, right?

I hope I make it across the border.

I hope I see my friend again so I can shake his hand.

I hope the Pacific is as blue as it was in my dreams.

I hope.

Every single sentence starts off with the words, I hope.

In fact, the last two words of the movie were one sentence says, I hope.

Prison was the hardest thing I've ever been through because it's the most hopeless world I've ever walked into.

And that's why prisons are so dangerous in America, Kevin.

Because when you have a void of hope, negativity, evil, and darkness fills the void.

And you don't have to live in a physical prison to be in a world with no hope, do you, right?

Because there's a lot of ways to not have hope in this world.

But hope is the thing that we must have because hope gives us the belief that there are going to be better times.

You know, one of the things that I that I found that would bring me hope inside prison, and I still use to this day, uh remind myself of the times when I succeeded in life.

When you're having a tough day and you're struggling, Kevin, do you ever sit back and think about the times you won and focus on those wins?

I mean, that's really kind of a way that a tool that I found even in prison and even out here, that I could get past the moment where I see myself in this bad situation.

And I just remind myself, Damon, you've won before, you've done this before, you've been able to accomplish big things, and you'll be able to get through this thing too.

In every situation of adversity, there's an opportunity in the adversity.

I tell people that all the time, Kevin.

It's important to understand that opportunity is in the adversity.

And on the other side of the adity is the best version of us.

But the trick is this, the catch is this.

You have to go through that adversity.

You have to go through that difficult thing in front of you to meet and shake the hand of the man or woman you're always destined to be.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Wow.

In prison, though, while you're there, you're you're in a world of adversity.

You're in a world of no hope.

You you've been given this powerful message by your mom.

You've been given this amazing life lesson by Muhammad.

But was there a moment in time when you're laying there in the bunk at night thinking, I can't do this?

SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah.

Yeah, man, of course.

I mean, look, I live in a dungeon, I live in a cage.

So, I mean, you're living in a dungeon and it's a very dry place, and there's all this misery around you, right?

So, yeah, do I ever think I can't do it?

Yeah.

Here's what has to happen, in my opinion, for a person to recognize the kind of gains that I recognize in life.

I think you have to have a spiritual awakening.

And I said spiritual, Kevin.

I didn't say religious, right?

I'm not talking about any one religion out there.

I'm a Christian, so I believe in Christ, but I believe anybody can believe in anything they want to.

Whatever it is you believe in, whatever higher power, believe in that, dig into that, and give into that.

Because here's why you have to have a spiritual awakening.

A spiritual awakening allows you to turn this idea of control over to a higher power.

Because there's only four things you can control in life, Kevin.

This is this is it.

This is the whole ballgame, really.

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

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

And it's not one of those four things.

You don't control it.

I mean, so what I'm telling you is the world goes on around you, Kevin.

You can't control the world around you, but you can't control the world inside you unless you allow another person, another group, a political party, a politician to get inside your head.

And of course, when you allow people inside your head, that's when you become a prisoner in your own mind.

So to free yourself, to free yourself from the thoughts that I can't do this or this, that it's too big, it's impossible, you turn the other parts of your life over, the parts you can't control, to a higher power.

And that's when you say, hey, you know, higher power.

In my case, I would say Christ.

Hey, Christ.

I can't fix or control those things that you can control, but I'll go work on the things that I can't control and you work on those things over there.

And while I'm working on my stuff over here, I'll I'll make the best version of whatever I can do with what you give me to work on every day.

And that spiritual awakening gives you the freedom to let go of the things you can't control.

And once you let go of the things you can't control, you start to have a better life.

Because now you're focusing your time, which is the most precious resource there is, Kevin.

Once time is gone, it's gone for good.

And all the money in the world can't buy one more second of that stuff they call time, right?

But once you're focusing your time on things you actually can't control, your life takes off.

And that's what happened in my life.

I had a spiritual awakening and I let go of the things I couldn't control, the worry, the doubt.

You know, I there was a lady in the chapel, a volunteer lady in the chapel, her name was Miss D Duset.

And so Miss D told me one day, she said, if you're gonna pray, don't worry.

But if you're gonna worry, don't pray.

She said, You can't do God's job and your job, Damon.

She said, You're either gonna let God drive the car or you're gonna drive the car.

But the last time you drove the car, you parked it in a maximum security prison.

So choose who gets those keys, but choose wisely.

SPEAKER_01: So you mentioned earlier when we were talking about the coffee being being a change agent, an agent of change.

How do you how do you do that though, inside of a prison?

SPEAKER_04: I learned about this thing called servant leadership.

Servant leadership is helping other people reach their goals in life, helping to raise other people up to a different station in life.

Because I believe, Kevin, when we help other people grow, we grow too.

That's what the secret to life is, right?

Helping other people reach their goals.

And whenever you are struggling and when you're trying to reach your goals, someone's gonna be there to help you reach yours too.

Whenever I learned about servant leadership, I asked myself, Damon, how do you serve these guys around you?

How do you serve men you're doing time with in prison?

And the answer came to me.

You know, I had a very privileged life, Kevin.

I had a bachelor's degree when I went to prison.

Most of the guys around me in prison, their education stops around the seventh grade or eighth grade.

You know, that's the reality of incarceration.

Most people in prison, the lack of an education is one of the biggest reasons they got into prison, right?

So, what I did when I was in prison is I opened up a free tutoring service.

I taught guys how to read and write.

I'd get them ready for the GED test.

So if they ever got out of prison, they could be a better husband or a better father one day.

Through my acts of service in there, through my acts of teaching other people, I was also teaching these men about the importance of building a community.

So many of the people that I was locked up with, Kevin, they didn't come from the same background I came from.

I had two parents in my home.

You know, most of the guys I was in prison with, they had one parent in the home, if they even had one, right?

So they weren't taught the importance and lessons about building a strong community.

A strong community looks like this, Kevin.

In a healthy community, we have this mindset that my success is your success and your success is mine.

And I want to see my community thrive.

And in a healthy community, everybody goes out in their community and says, hey, this is my talent.

This is what I have to offer to the community.

And if anybody can use my talents, I'm here to be a part of this community.

In prison, everybody's always fighting for themselves, man.

I got mine, go get yours.

In prison, I taught people how to have a good community.

So, an example of this.

Whenever I was teaching these guys how to read and write in prison, everything has a price on it, Kevin.

Nothing is free.

You can't give somebody something.

Everything has to be transactional in prison.

So these guys that I'm tutoring, teaching how to read and write, they would come to me with wanting to pay for the tutoring services.

And money in prison is in the form of food that you get from the commissary or stamps off the commissary.

You know, think about coffee, think about pastries, think about stamps, think about soups, things you would pay for stuff with in prison.

So guys would come up to me with these this bag of food, trying to pay me for teaching them how to read and write.

And I'd tell them, you can't pay me for this.

This is my service to you.

So instead of paying me, pay it forward.

Find someone else that needs something in life.

And when you find that person, remember this favor I did for you, do them a favor too.

So now I'm watching.

I'm teaching this guy how to read, right?

He's a prison artist.

This guy can draw really well.

And there's another guy on the pod that's indigent.

Indigent meaning he's poor.

He doesn't have any money.

He doesn't have any access to funds to go to the commissary.

He has no one in the free world that'll help him with his life inside of prison.

But this indigent guy really wants to send somebody on the outside of the free world a Christmas card.

And these prison artists, you know, that's their big time of year.

Birthdays, holidays, stuff like that, when people are requesting them to create art for them.

That's how these prison artists make a living in there.

I watched this guy that I'm tutoring, that's a prison artist, go up to the other guy that's in the gym.

When he found out that this guy was wanting to make a Christmas card but had no money, and he said, Hey, I'm gonna make this Christmas card for you, and I'm gonna do this for you, and you're not gonna have to pay me a dime for it.

And it's gonna be the best Christmas card ever.

I'm gonna put the best work into it as if you paid me full price for it.

But what I want you to do instead of paying me is pay it forward.

Then I watched that guy that received the Christmas card found another inmate that was a handicapped guy that was in a wheelchair.

And you know, a person inside of a prison, you're you live with a handicap, a physical handicap, Kevin.

You're blind.

So a person with a handicap is gonna need help to do certain things inside of a prison.

I mean, just think, and there are there are blind people inside of prison too, Kevin.

So if you think about navigating a world where you have a physical handicap inside of this very difficult world already, and I watched the guy that received the Christmas card go up to this guy that's in a wheelchair and said, Hey, I tell you what, from now on, you don't have to push yourself to the chow hall every day.

I'm gonna be your ride, I'm gonna push you there and back.

So, man, you're seeing this evolution of these guys when they learn about a good community.

And that's how I changed prison, Kevin.

I taught these men how to find the best version of themselves.

And I taught them about a better way of living, and that transferred into like making more coffee beans and making coffee.

So when the prison becomes this more positive place and everybody's got this attitude that we're gonna help each other out, the people in prison took notice of this, Kevin.

I mean, the wardens saw it, the majors, the captains saw it, and the parole board saw it.

I came up for my first parole vote in 2015.

Now, I've been in prison for seven years at this point.

It's my first parole on a life sentence.

Again, I told you before, my expectations that I'm gonna do about 10 or 15 years before I go home.

But they call me up for parole in 2015.

The lady calls me into the interview, and she's got my criminal file in front of her, Kevin.

And it's it's a pretty thick file.

I mean, it's got my whole life story in there.

It's got every arrest, every felony.

They call it your jacket.

So my jacket is sitting in front of this lady and she's flipping through the pages of my jacket for about 20 seconds, and she slams the big file shut.

She pushes it away from her.

She said, uh, Mr.

West, I came here today to ask you one question for your parole here.

She said, uh, this is a one-question test, Mr.

West.

The answer to my question determines whether or not you go home or you stay in this prison.

But the answer to my question is not in the file about the guy that I'm reading about who committed all those crimes in Dallas, Texas, all those years ago.

She said, uh, we don't see a lot of Damon West inside the prison system.

Because you had it all, Mr.

West.

You had every advantage, you had every privilege, you had every opportunity over everybody your entire life.

She said, You're the definition of a privileged person in America.

And she read the file right, Kevin.

I did.

I had it all.

Remember, you know, I come from this incredible two-parent home, middle class background, good student, great athlete, had it all.

Best jobs anybody could have, but no substance abuse.

But that's what she's saying.

She said, You had it all.

But you threw it all away.

You became a drug addict, you became a criminal, you became a thief.

A jury in Dallas gave you life in prison for the things you did.

But instead of letting that license define you, you changed yourself inside this prison, Mr.

West.

She said there's no doubt about the change you made to yourself.

But what got our attention, the reason why we're here today, is you didn't just change yourself inside this prison, you changed the entire prison around you.

One man changed this whole prison.

So my question for you is this, Mr.

West, and think very hard about this answer because your life depends on it.

She said, if you could be remembered for being anything in life, anything at all, she said, tell me what that one thing would be, but give it to me in just one word.

Go.

And uh, Kevin, I remember thinking to myself, man, I don't have to think about that answer.

I know the answer to that question because I'd been living that answer the whole time I was in prison.

And I fired her answer back at her immediately, and I said, useful.

I said, I just want to be useful.

Because Kevin, don't we all want to be useful?

Doesn't everybody want to feel like they have a purpose in life?

And that's what I told that lady that day.

I said, ma'am, I just want to be useful.

And I could be useful inside this prison, as you've already seen, or I could be useful in that free world finding more coffee beans.

November 16, 2015, Kevin.

A day I'll never forget.

Because on November 16, 2015, I walk out of a Texas prison, but I'm not a free man.

You know, I remind people all the time, I'm not a free man in front of you right now.

I got a little more time left on parole in the state of Texas.

I'm on parole in the state of Texas, Kevin, until the year 2073.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 48 more years from the day of this recording.

But I'm gonna tell you something, Kevin.

I'm not worried about being on parole because I'm a coffee bean.

And as long as I'm a coffee bean, the only way I'm going back into her prison is when I walk in the front gate of a prison.

Every month, somewhere in America, I voluntarily walk into a prison.

Voluntarily walk in, I share the story, the mesh of the coffee beam with the inmates in there, and I walk out the front gate, a free man today.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

Wow.

Damon, you have one of the most transformative, most empowering stories of anyone I've ever heard.

And when I listen to you getting to tell it to me firsthand, I'm just left literally in awe at what somebody could do inside of a prison to make a difference, not just in their life, but in the lives of who knows how many?

You taught people how to read.

You taught people how to write.

And at the same point, you infused in them this mindset of the coffee bean to help others.

You created a community in the prison.

How can people take what you've done in a prison and do it in their world today, just in their normal life, their neighborhood, their town?

What can we leave with them today that they can start doing?

SPEAKER_04: Man, that's a great question.

Here's the answer to that question.

Look around you.

And I don't mean that like in the sense where I'm talking to a blind guy, tell them to look around you, because you did this too.

You did exactly what I'm about to say to everybody else out there.

Look around you.

Look for ways to serve other people.

Find out what your way is in life to make the world a better place.

How can I best help other people around me and pitch in?

Do that.

Find that path for you.

You found that path.

You're the this is why you're the inspiration for me.

This is why, of all the people that requested to do a podcast with me after Ed's podcast, you're the one I picked because you're the inspiration for me.

You're blind.

You have a physical handicap that would make most people tap out and quit.

But you said, no, I have something more to offer, and I'll put this podcast together and I'll reach people because I have something to give to society, and that's what we all have to do.

Find out what you have to put in.

It's not about you, it's about what you can do for other people.

Help other people reach their goals in life.

And you don't have to do this on a global scale like me going around speaking.

Impact and affect the world around you first and use positive body language to do that.

Positive body language, positive language.

Everything you do, be positive about it because you either infect the world around you with negative energy or you affect the world around you with positive energy.

So I would remind people out there, man, you have three choices every day.

And that's you can be the carrot, let life beat you down, make you sad, and you can be the egg, let life make you hard and make you mad.

Or you can be a coffee bean and change the pot of boiling water into a pot of coffee.

And I believe we all have the power inside of us to change the world around us, Kevin.

SPEAKER_01: Mr.

David West, man, you are an amazing man, a servant leader, a change agent, a freaking coffee bean.

It has been a pleasure to get to have you on the podcast today.

And um, for the person who is in awe as much as I am, and they want to stay plugged in on your world, they would love to read your books.

Where is the best place that we can send them?

SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Damon West.org is my website where people find me for speaking and stuff like that.

And then my uh social media stuff is Instagram and X.

It's at Damon West 7.

D-A-M-O-N-W-E-S-T.

At Damon West 7.

SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.

Well, well, I will be certain that all of that is in the show notes for anybody interested.

Damon, from the bottom of my heart, man, I appreciate your time today.

And uh it's a true, true honor to get to to share a minute of your time today.

So thank you.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah.

Yeah, I appreciate you, man.

Thank you, Kevin.

Thank you so much for the opportunity today.

And like I said, you're an inspiration to me.

And it was an honor to do your show today.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you.

For you, my friend listening today.

I hope you're in awe as much as I am.

And more than anything, I hope today you don't just leave feeling inspired or entertained, but I hope you leave feeling empowered that you know what?

If he can do it, then why can't I?

So take that motivation, that inspiration, and turn it into empowerment to make a difference in your life and the life of someone else.

I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and this is Brit Grace of Inspiration.

Get out there and enjoy this beautiful day.

SPEAKER_03: I will not fear the storm.

I want fear and rising higher every day.

Old doubt left behind the time, I quit.

Grace of inspiration on my mind.