REAL AF with Andy Frisella - 547. Q&AF Ft. Damon West： Fear Of Confrontation, Power Through Difficult Challenges & Business Highs And Lows

00:00:00.000 What is up guys, it's Andy Priscilla and this is the show for the realist's sake, goodbye 0.99

00:00:20.340 to the lies, the fakeness and delusions of modern society and welcome to motherfucking 0.98

00:00:24.380 reality guys. Today we have Q and AF. They're very special Q and AF today. Got one of my 0.99

00:00:30.100 really good buddies sitting down with us going to join in the conversation. I'll intro him

00:00:33.160 in just a second. This is your first time listening. This is where you get to submit

00:00:37.140 questions and we give you the answers. Okay. You could submit your questions a couple of

00:00:41.320 different ways. And these questions can be about anything. It can be about personal development,

00:00:44.780 entrepreneurship, what's going on in the world or anything else. First way you could submit

00:00:50.380 your questions is. Guys, you can email those questions into askandy at andyfriscilla.com.

00:00:55.280 The second way is if you go on YouTube, uh, after eight years of audio exclusivity, uh, we

00:01:01.120 did start posting on YouTube. So if you're on the audio platforms and you haven't checked

00:01:05.220 this out on YouTube, go do that. Uh, click subscribe and go down in the comments on the

00:01:09.760 Q and AF episode and drop your question right in there. And then we'll pick some from there

00:01:13.180 to answer as well. Now, if you're new to the show, we have shows within the show. This is

00:01:17.160 Q and AF. Like I just said, other times we have CTI, CTI is cruise the internet. That's where we

00:01:22.780 talk about what's going on in the world. We throw some headlines up on the screen over here.

00:01:26.380 Talk about what, what they're lying about, what we think we're telling, what we think they're

00:01:30.640 telling the truth about. It's a lot of speculation, but, uh, we try to draw our own conclusions and

00:01:34.460 then talk about how we, the people can be the solution to these problems going on in the world.

00:01:39.120 Other times we have real talk, real talk is just five to 20 minutes of me just giving you

00:01:43.360 some real talk. Uh, that is the stuff that I think needs to be said and heard. Uh, and then we have,

00:01:49.080 uh, 75 hard versus 75 hard versus where someone who has completed 75 hard, uh, which is the first

00:01:55.880 portion of the live hard program comes on and tells us, you know, how it changed their life,

00:02:00.660 what they learned from it, how they grew from it and what it's done for them. And then what it can do

00:02:05.300 for you, for you as well. If you're interested in this live hard program, which is 75 hard as well.

00:02:10.060 Um, you know, a lot of people don't understand that live hard is a program that is a comprehensive

00:02:15.920 year program. That's meant to be repeated over and over and over again, every single year.

00:02:20.260 75 hard is the bootcamp, the initial 75 days of that program. It's the part that went viral,

00:02:25.380 but I always got to talk about it because it's part of a bigger program called live hard.

00:02:29.580 If you want to know about the live hard program, it's episode 208. It is free. There's no purchase

00:02:34.220 required. You'll get everything you need to know for free at episode 208. So, uh, and then we have

00:02:39.000 this thing called the fee. The fee is very simple. If we bring a good value, please share the show.

00:02:43.400 I don't do much social media. The reason I don't do so much social media is generally because I get

00:02:49.380 shut down immediately for what I have to say. All right. So the algorithm is against us. They

00:02:53.960 don't like me on social. You guys know that. And I ask you guys to share the show because, uh,

00:02:58.720 without that, the information doesn't get out. So if you want to follow me on Instagram,

00:03:02.460 you can follow me. I do some stories sometimes, but for the most part, I don't really do social media.

00:03:06.460 So it all, the messaging and everything that we've got on the show, if you want it to get out,

00:03:10.180 if you think it's important, if you think it's someone or something that people need to hear,

00:03:13.540 you got to share it. So we have this thing called the fee and that's what we mean when we say,

00:03:16.920 pay the fee or don't be a hoe. Share the show. All right. No ho zone over here. No ho zone. 1.00

00:03:23.140 That's right. Hashtag no ho zone. What's going on? Oh, nothing much, man. We got our special buddy here.

00:03:28.740 Yeah. Mr. Damon West. What's going on guys? What's up brother, man? Not a whole lot. Thanks for having me on,

00:03:33.900 Danny. I really appreciate that. No, it's great to see you, dude. Uh, Damon kind of runs through

00:03:38.260 St. Louis. He's traveling all over the world. He's one of the best speakers in the world.

00:03:41.820 And, uh, he's got an amazing story that he shares and he helps a lot of people and

00:03:45.180 he happens to be here today. So we just say, Hey, let's do a show.

00:03:48.400 Yeah, I know. I was born away that it happened like this. And Emily told me there's like, come on

00:03:53.140 in. Let me tell you something about, about, about your wife, about Emily Frisella, man.

00:03:57.940 Emily has the best grammar of anybody I've ever met on the plane. I'm talking about,

00:04:01.880 I'm serious, DJ, her, her grammar is impeccable. Like she sends text messages and they're like,

00:04:06.040 well, that's why I married her to make up for my grammar. Oh my God. I'm an author. I got

00:04:10.840 bestselling books. And I don't, I was like, I don't even write that well. Emily, like,

00:04:14.000 how do you do that? Like, it's, it's incredible, man. She has great grammar though. But, um,

00:04:18.260 yeah, when she told me like, come on in, I was like, man, that's great. And, and Andy, look,

00:04:21.520 man, we've talked before about this, dude. You, you practice what you preach, man. You're

00:04:25.800 yeah, but so do you. Yeah. But you're the victim. Dude, we're going to talk today a little bit

00:04:29.920 about my story and, and, and the background has to do with crime. You're the victim of

00:04:33.920 a violent crime. And you've got this guy, this, that's, this, uh, reformed criminal on your show

00:04:38.740 today, man. So, I mean, that's, it ain't me guys. Yeah. Yeah. Put that out there. You definitely

00:04:43.920 didn't pay your light bill, bitch. I saw your lights got shut off. Hey, look, bro. I'm a believer 1.00

00:04:51.160 in redemption. You know what I'm saying? Like, dude, everybody, listen, like real talk. And this is

00:04:56.300 just, this is just real. You know why, you know what I understand about people who have done things

00:05:03.260 and then done their time and got released. People are hypocritical. Okay. Like the average citizen 0.98

00:05:11.300 that's out there has done fucking thousand things that they could have went to jail for. They just 0.99

00:05:15.680 never got caught. All right. And then, and then these people do things like, you know, like what

00:05:20.760 happened, what you did and these, we make mistakes and things happen and that you want to be around

00:05:26.680 people that have done things in life because they're the ones that have value to offer you.

00:05:32.500 If someone lives a perfectly straight line, what kind of value do they really have? What perspective

00:05:37.480 do they really have? Right? Right. So it takes, it takes someone who's made multiple mistakes to say,

00:05:42.940 Hey, don't, don't make that mistake. You know what I mean? So like, I just a big believer in

00:05:48.200 redemption, dude. I think that, I think that, you know, when people do wrong and they, and they

00:05:52.080 make it right or they do their best and they live a different way. Um, I think that's how the world's

00:05:57.060 supposed to be. Well, dude. And that's the thing. I want to applaud you on that, man. Thanks for

00:06:00.760 having me. I mean, you, you live by what you, you talk about and, um, me being here today and as

00:06:05.220 example, solely that man, because my backstory, man, it's there, you know, I mean, I tell people a

00:06:11.200 little bit about what you do and how you, how you got here. So Damon is, Damon is an author. He's a

00:06:15.840 seven figure, uh, uh, public speaker. He speaks all over the planet. He's very fucking good. If

00:06:20.460 you guys haven't had a chance to hear him speak, it's amazing. Um, he's an entrepreneur, but it

00:06:26.720 wasn't always that way. No, no, no. So let's, let's get into the beginning of that and kind of

00:06:31.700 give the listeners a reference about your history. Yeah. So we're in July of 2023 recording this

00:06:38.280 episode. We'll go back to July of 2020 in 2008, man, 15 years ago, man, I'm sitting on this little

00:06:43.960 ratty old couch in Dallas, this little rundown apartment. And on this couch next to me is my

00:06:48.580 meth dealer, man. And I'm a full blown meth addict at this point. This guy's name is Tex, my dope

00:06:52.560 dealer. And I'm telling Tex, man, Tex in Texas, Tex in Texas. Yeah. I mean, he's a dope dealer in

00:06:57.420 Texas. Are there in Texas? There's, there's a lot. There's, there happens to be a lot in prison,

00:07:03.020 but I'm telling Tex that day, man, Tex, you don't want to be here, man. The cops are closing in on me,

00:07:09.380 man. The end is near. And man, just about that time, the flash rain grenade breaks the window.

00:07:14.440 It's tumbling across my living room. It's smoking. I can see it, man. And I try to get out of the

00:07:18.080 living room as fast as I can, but it was too late. Boom. This thing blows up in my face, man. Bright

00:07:22.540 white light, loud noise. Cops are swarming in. And, and when I, when I could see and hear again,

00:07:27.560 this cop's got this barrel of an assault rifle digging into my eye socket, his fingers on the

00:07:30.660 trigger and he's screaming, don't move, don't move. And I'm like, man, don't worry. Don't worry.

00:07:34.520 You know? And, uh, and one of the cops screamed out, we got him. We got the uptown burglar.

00:07:39.900 And that was my name. That's what they called me. The uptown burglar. Um,

00:07:44.560 the uptown burglar crime spree was about a dozen other meth addicts and myself, young and old,

00:07:49.500 male and female, black and white, and everything in between because drugs and addiction don't

00:07:52.980 discriminate, man. That gets anybody, right? But we indiscriminately without reservation

00:07:57.960 broke into the homes of dozens and dozens of people in the uptown neighborhood of Dallas and

00:08:01.840 beyond to feed our insatiable meth habits. And when I broke into people's houses, Andy,

00:08:06.460 I didn't just steal property from my victims. I stole something way more valuable from these

00:08:10.220 people. I stole their sense of security. And I don't know if they can ever get that back.

00:08:15.420 No one was ever home during these crimes. It's very, it's very much a violated feeling.

00:08:20.380 I had, I had to deal with this. I've had to deal with it. You had to deal with it.

00:08:24.460 Yeah. I had to do break in my house for political reasons, man. It's, it's something I think about.

00:08:29.500 Like I got today in this life, I've got a wife, I've got a stepdaughter. I can't imagine somebody

00:08:34.460 doing that in my home, what I did to other people, you know, and I was, so I was a bad guy. Didn't

00:08:39.580 physically hurt anybody. Uh, no one was ever home, never saw my victims. They never saw me. We didn't

00:08:44.060 use any weapons, but a dozen of us. And I was the ringleader of the whole thing. I was the,

00:08:48.220 the mastermind of the crime spree. They take me to Dallas County jail. They put me in jail. They

00:08:53.020 set my bond at $1.4 million. This is higher than any murderer or rapist or any violent criminal in,

00:08:58.460 in jail at the time. 10 months later, I go to this trial. I'm in the trial, man. The evidence

00:09:03.980 of my guilt is overwhelming. Everybody's there to testify against me that I committed crimes with.

00:09:07.660 I mean, the, they put on like 58 witnesses in six days, man. It was, it was just exhausting,

00:09:12.140 man. The evidence was so overwhelming. The jury goes to deliberate for 10 minutes on my punishment.

00:09:17.980 Yeah, man. I don't know how much law and order y'all watch, but if a jury's gone for 10 minutes,

00:09:21.740 it means they smoked you, man. Oh man. I came back in the courtroom. I got two paid attorneys.

00:09:27.500 I, I thought I was going to get probation. I've never had a felony conviction, white middle-class 1.00

00:09:31.340 guy. You know, I'm a division one college quarterback, you know, my job, my, my job

00:09:35.820 history, man. I worked in Congress. I worked on wall street. No, but man, that judge read the

00:09:40.540 sentence out loud. 65 years in the Texas department of criminal justice, Andy DJ, that's a life sentence

00:09:46.540 in Texas. They stopped calculating. What was that like? It was like being kicked in the stomach,

00:09:51.180 Andy. What was that like? That had to be, I can only imagine that has to be like

00:09:55.740 probably the worst feeling ever. Oh my God. And one of the first things that went through

00:10:00.140 my head was like, my mom and my dad were there in the front row, man, my mom and my dad. And

00:10:04.140 then I was like, oh man, they just heard that, you know? And I'm thinking to myself, man, I broke these

00:10:07.980 people. And, um, and as soon as the judge reads the sentence out loud, the sheriff is on me,

00:10:12.620 the bailiff is on me, the handcuff. They took you right there. They're getting me out of there,

00:10:15.020 man. That's, I mean, you got a lifer on your hands. This guy could run or anything, but I mean,

00:10:18.300 I didn't, I was just stunned still. And I, I lock eyes at my mom on the way out. I'm like,

00:10:21.980 I'm screaming across court. My mom, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. They whisked me out of there. They

00:10:25.820 put me in this little side room. It's got a bulletproof glass. They told me to wait.

00:10:29.660 My mom and my dad get escorted in the other side of the glass. It's about

00:10:33.420 a five minute conversation. They're going to let my parents have one last visit with me before I go to

00:10:36.780 prison. They actually feel sorry for my parents. I just got life. My mom has this conversation with me on

00:10:42.060 May 18, 2009. It's about five minutes. And she's telling me, you know, you can't go to prison and get one of these

00:10:47.420 white hate groups, these Aryan brotherhood type gangs. You know, she's telling me no gangs, 0.98

00:10:51.340 no tattoos. She said, you come back as the man we raised or don't come back to us at all. She's

00:10:56.140 like, I mean it, Damon. You owe us this debt now. You owe Texas that other debt. You owe us this debt.

00:11:02.220 So they take me back to my cell. I got two months before the prison bus comes to pick me up, Andy,

00:11:06.700 and I'm asking every guy in county jail, how am I going to survive? What am I going to do? And

00:11:10.140 every guy I talked to, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, they all say the same thing.

00:11:14.620 You got to get into a gang. They said, you won't survive where you're going without a gang. I'm

00:11:18.380 going to the worst part of prison, Andy. It's a, it's where lifers go. It's a maximum security level

00:11:22.700 five prison that I'm about to go into. Level five is the highest security level there is in Texas.

00:11:27.180 But there was this one guy who was so different, man. This old black man named Mr. Jackson,

00:11:30.940 old Muslim guy named Mr. Jackson. And he was real positive guy. He always had a smile on his face.

00:11:35.820 And every morning he'd come up and he'd talk to me and he'd try to pick me up and, you know,

00:11:38.700 cause I was down in the dumps. And so one morning he comes up, he's got a cup of coffee in his

00:11:42.540 hands, a smile on his face. He's like, West, I've been watching you. I've been watching how

00:11:45.740 you're dealing with the knuckleheads of these dummies. Talk about, you got to get to a gang. 0.97

00:11:48.940 He said, man, don't listen to these fools. But if you want to keep the promise you made to your mom 0.99

00:11:52.620 and your dad, then I need to tell you what prison is going to be like. So he tells me, he said,

00:11:56.620 the first thing you need to understand about prison, he said, prison is all about race.

00:12:00.300 He said, race runs the entire institution because the inmates want it to be about race. He said,

00:12:04.460 that's how they keep people preoccupied. They fight racial wars in there and you get stuck fighting that. 0.52

00:12:09.980 He said, because it's about race, when you walk in the door, the white gangs get the first dibs on you.

00:12:14.140 So the Aryan brotherhood, the Aryan circle, the white knights, the woods, he starts naming all 0.84

00:12:17.660 the white prison gangs. He said, you've got to fight all of them if you want to be independent

00:12:20.940 from them. And he said, if you don't give in to their ideology of hate out of fear,

00:12:25.420 then you're going to fight the black gangs. And he said, the white gangs are going to send the 0.99

00:12:28.780 black gangs after you, by the way. And the black gangs, the Crips, the Bloods, 1.00

00:12:31.980 the Gangster Disciples, the Mandingo Warriors, they're going to be happy to tee off on this 1.00

00:12:35.820 independent white guy. Is that the one you'd be in? The Mandingo Warriors? 0.97

00:12:38.700 Yeah, for sure. I was just thinking, which one would I be in?

00:12:43.500 I think I'd be in the Mandingo Warriors too. Maybe. 1.00

00:12:45.820 Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I would get in with the white gangs. 0.62

00:12:50.140 I think you'd be an independent, Andy.

00:12:52.060 I don't think you'd fit in. I think you'd probably run all of them.

00:12:54.460 I don't know about that. I listen to your stuff, Andy.

00:12:56.620 You'd be an independent like me, man. You're an independent.

00:12:59.020 Listen, I'll tell you this. Listen, it'll probably be the most profiting year of that

00:13:03.100 fucking jail. 0.99

00:13:03.740 Yeah, we'll figure out how to make some money. 1.00

00:13:05.500 We'll figure out something. It'll be like fucking Shawshank Redemption. 0.98

00:13:08.380 Yeah, that's the man. But he told me, he said, you're going to fight the black gangs, 1.00

00:13:12.620 and the black gangs are going to get a free shot at you, man. So they're going to come after you. 1.00

00:13:16.860 But he told me, he said, if you survive all that, and you can survive all that,

00:13:19.580 you'll earn the right to walk alone. He told me the strongest man in prison always walks alone,

00:13:23.660 doesn't join a gang. That's why I told you, Andy, you're a strong dude. You'd probably be independent.

00:13:27.340 No. He told me the truth about fighting. And it's the truth I've shared with every audience

00:13:31.900 I've ever spoken to. He said, you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight

00:13:35.420 all your fights. He said, some days you'll win. Some days you're going to lose. He said,

00:13:38.460 it doesn't matter. No one cares about your wins and losses. Just fight. Just defend yourself.

00:13:42.940 But man, when he's telling me this, man, back in 2009, I'm looking back at this guy like a deer

00:13:46.380 in headlights, man. All this violence and terror I'm about to walk into. And that's when he's like, Wes,

00:13:50.620 let me break it down for you a different way. He said, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of blown water.

00:13:55.100 And he said, anything we put into this pot of blown water will be changed by the heat and the

00:13:58.540 pressure inside this pot. He said, I'm going to put three things in this pot of blown water

00:14:02.860 and watch how they change. A carrot, an egg, and a coffee bean. So he walks me through it. The

00:14:08.940 carrot goes in really hard in a pot of blown water, but becomes soft and mushy and weak.

00:14:13.340 You're going to encounter guys like that. He said, guys that go in there really tough and prison

00:14:17.420 breaks them down. The egg in the same pot of blown water goes in with that hard outer shell,

00:14:21.260 that soft liquid inside, but that soft liquid inside becomes hardened while they're in prison.

00:14:24.700 Like your heart becomes hardened. They become the egg and they're mean and mad and angry.

00:14:29.660 He said, but a coffee bean in the same pot of blown water changes the pot of blown water

00:14:34.060 into a pot of coffee. He said, it's the only thing that can change water. He said, it's the change agent,

00:14:37.260 right? He said, so if you want to come back as someone your parents recognize, you have to be like 0.92

00:14:41.260 that coffee bean. You got to change the pot of blown water into a pot of coffee. You got to change the

00:14:44.780 prison around you. And Andy, I mean, he told me what the first day of prison was going to look

00:14:50.380 like. He said, Wes, when you get into prison and they let you in the life sentence building,

00:14:54.300 he said, do not run to your bunk like the guys that are scared. He said, man, when you walk in

00:14:58.140 that day room, you put your bags down, you put your back against the wall and just let it happen

00:15:01.980 that first day. And I'm like, man, what happened, dude? What are you talking about, man? He said,

00:15:06.940 your heart check, your heart check is the most important fight in prison. He said,

00:15:10.620 you're a new face on the block. They don't know you. They're going to test you

00:15:13.180 immediately when you get in there. The first guy is going to come up. He's going to be a white guy

00:15:16.300 because you're white. He said, the first guy is not a threat to you. He's an information 0.57

00:15:19.660 gatherer. He's a scout. He's going to ask you one relevant question. What gang do you want to be a

00:15:24.300 part of? Get him out of your face as fast as you can and get ready. Get your head on the swivel. 0.75

00:15:28.060 He can say, because the second guy comes up, he ain't coming to talk to you. He's an enforcer.

00:15:32.300 He's coming to hurt you. He said, when the second guy gets within range, put your fist in his 0.88

00:15:36.540 mouth. He said, hit this dude as hard as you can. Don't even want to get a word out. And man, the prison 0.99

00:15:40.460 bus is coming to pick me up. And the guy has four words for me out the door, man. Be a coffee bean.

00:15:45.580 Be a coffee bean, man. I remember how I felt when he told me the story of the coffee bean,

00:15:50.300 Andy. Cause like, man, I could grasp that. And when I go around all over the world,

00:15:53.900 sharing the story of the coffee bean, people understand, man, I do. I have three choices,

00:15:57.820 how this pot of boiling water is going to affect me. And we are in a pot of boiling water, Andy.

00:16:01.260 And I mean, make no mistake. So I go to prison. I get there and it's the hardest thing I've

00:16:07.180 ever been through in my life, man. Prison was a baptism by fire. And it would just,

00:16:11.660 like he said, man, the first day I walk in, I go to the Mark Stiles unit in Beaumont, Texas. Stiles

00:16:16.220 is one of the toughest prisons in Texas. It's one of the tougher prisons in America.

00:16:20.460 And you know, Andy, in this new life, I can tell you a lot about tough prisons in America.

00:16:23.820 Cause since I got out of prison in 2015, I went back to school. I got a master's in criminal justice.

00:16:29.900 And I became a professor at the University of Houston, downtown,

00:16:32.940 teaching a class called prisons in America. How about that for flipping the script a little bit?

00:16:36.460 Yeah. The only professor on earth to teach a prisons class who lived in prison.

00:16:40.620 Right. So I know, I know about prisons, man, and Stiles, hard as it gets. So I'll walk in there,

00:16:46.700 man. They take me to seven building, which is where all the lifers live. 0.98

00:16:50.220 Seven building, G-Pod, two section. I'm looking for 45 cell when I walk in.

00:16:54.300 The door closes behind me. I look up, I'm in this giant room, three tiers of cell, man.

00:16:58.460 And all the inmates are yelling and screaming. But as soon as they see this little white guy walk in,

00:17:01.900 the volume drops to zero. And I'm sitting there, I'm about to pee in my pants. I'm looking for 45 0.97

00:17:06.300 cell, but it's up on the third. So this is like an all thing that everybody in there knows.

00:17:09.820 Like they all know to get quiet, scared to fuck a new guy. Well, yeah. I mean, 0.99

00:17:13.020 but especially a new guy that comes in and look like me, man, I don't look like anybody else in

00:17:15.820 prison. Yeah, man. I don't look like anybody else in prison. I don't, I don't have any of the same

00:17:19.740 background. That's you. Yeah, man. That's the day I was arrested. That's July 30th, 2008.

00:17:24.140 I don't even look like you. Yeah. Isn't that correct? Look at those eyes, man.

00:17:27.260 Yeah, dude. Dead to the world.

00:17:28.700 You look like you belong in prison. Yeah. Yeah. I was a criminal. Yeah. 0.99

00:17:32.060 And dude, when you break the social contract, that's where you're supposed to go. I deserve

00:17:36.860 to go to prison. I mean, I, and I earned by 65 years, brother. And, and I tell people all the

00:17:41.980 time, prison saved me, Andy. It saved my damn life. And that SWAT team, those are my angels, 0.99

00:17:47.740 brother. I mean, I, I look back now, that SWAT team on July 30th, 2008, they didn't just arrest me

00:17:52.380 that day. They rescued me that day. They pulled me out of a world. I couldn't get myself out of that,

00:17:56.940 Andy. I was going down. I was, I was circling the drain. I was down the drain.

00:17:59.820 No, you'd be dead. Yeah. I'd be dead. Or it'd be a version of myself, not worth living. 0.92

00:18:02.860 No, bro. You'd be dead. Yeah. Yeah. And so the SWAT team. 0.99

00:18:05.500 We all know how those guys end up. Yeah. Those SWAT teams, those, those guys,

00:18:08.460 those men and women saved me that day, man. And, and you know, on July 30th, I always, I,

00:18:12.220 I follow Dallas SWAT on Instagram and I always message them and, but I've never received any

00:18:16.460 messages back from them, but I'd love to like do something for them at some point. So if any of them

00:18:20.300 are listening from Dallas SWAT, man, when this anniversary comes up on July 30th, I'm.

00:18:24.780 So you want them to bust you again? No, I want to have a, I want to have like a meal

00:18:29.420 with them where I recreate. Yeah. I don't want to come through the window this time or the,

00:18:32.620 or the knocking the door off the hinges. I want to like have, come sit down and talk.

00:18:35.980 I'll just open the door guys. All right. So back to the prison. Okay. So walk in,

00:18:40.860 man. You walk in, everybody's fucking screaming and hollering and it's just fucking burnt toilet 1.00

00:18:45.260 paper. Like the mood, like, Oh dude, it's, it's crazy. So it's just three tiers of sales. 0.99

00:18:50.060 There's inmates hanging over there, all the railings. And when I walk in, the volume drops

00:18:53.500 to zero and everybody's staring at the new guy. I got a mattress under one arm,

00:18:56.060 a couple of bags of property. And man, I'm looking for 45 cell. Cause I'm going to make

00:18:59.900 a run for it. I mean, forget what Jackson said, right? I'm running, man. But 45 cells up on the

00:19:04.220 third tier by the shower, further self from the door. I'd never make it. So I put my mattress down,

00:19:07.900 I put my bags down, I put my back against the wall and I waited. Here he comes. Just like Jackson.

00:19:12.380 How long did it take? Huh? Oh, five minutes. Okay.

00:19:14.780 A little bitty white dude comes up for a little bitty ball headed white dude. He's tatted up from head to toe. 0.85

00:19:18.140 Even his eyelids are tatted up, man. He gets up on my face. He says, Hey white boy. He said,

00:19:22.380 what family are you riding with white boy? They call gangs families, right?

00:19:26.540 And I'm like, man, get out of my face. Little dude, I'm right with God. Please just leave me

00:19:29.740 alone. I'm right with God. But he laughed at me. He said, God, he said, God, man,

00:19:34.220 God isn't here. White boy. He said, we kicked God out of here a long time ago, but we're here 1.00

00:19:38.460 and we're coming to get you. He shoots up the stairwell on the right side. I mean,

00:19:43.020 I'm ready to pee in my pants, Andy. I don't, I don't have long to wait because coming down the third

00:19:47.100 tier, biggest corn fed white dude I've ever seen in my life. This dude is a, he's a giant, 0.78

00:19:50.940 man. He's a fricking ogre, right? Man, just huge, muscled up, ripped dude. He's coming on the stairwell. 0.99

00:19:55.020 I get a good look at him, head up, right? Huge muscles ripping out of his shirt, bald

00:19:58.940 head with a swastika all around the top of his skull, man. Man, all I see is a swastika, 0.96

00:20:03.100 two bitty eyeballs, muscles coming at me. My back's against the wall, Andy, but I remember

00:20:07.180 what Jackson said and I can be coach. I played sports all my life. This guy gets within range

00:20:11.340 of me, man. I hit this dude in the mouth, boom, as hard as I can. My feet come off the ground. 0.98

00:20:15.340 I hit him so hard, Andy. And in 20 seconds, my first fight in prison was over.

00:20:19.900 Because that big dude beat me from one side of the day. He beat the hell out of me that day,

00:20:25.180 Andy. And that, that's what prison fighting looked like for me. I mean, at two months,

00:20:29.180 man, it took me two weeks to get through the white gangs. After that, it was the black gang. And 1.00

00:20:34.540 sometimes more than one at a time because the rules are off the table for a guy's trying to go

00:20:38.140 independent, man. I remember six weeks in, I got jumped on a Friday, man, by a bunch of guys.

00:20:43.580 And man, they were trying to break me. And that was my moment. I was broken,

00:20:46.700 man. I even thought about killing myself. But Monday after that, six weeks into prison.

00:20:51.500 Now, look, man, I've, I've probably gotten in three dozen fights in that first two month period.

00:20:55.260 And I lost 75% of those fights. I got my butt kicked a lot in prison, but I won because I kept

00:20:59.900 showing up because Jackson said, you don't have to win those fights. And guys in prison,

00:21:03.980 they don't care about wins and losses. They just want to see if you're going to get up and defend

00:21:06.940 yourself. Much like what goes on in society, man. No one's caring about your wins. You care about

00:21:11.500 your wins and losses. No one else does, but everybody's watching. See, does he or she get back up

00:21:15.180 when the adversity hits? So I just kept getting up. Six weeks into prison, man. This is when it all

00:21:20.620 changed. The only thing I haven't used at this point to earn respect in prison is my athletic

00:21:24.860 ability. God blessed me to be a tremendous athlete, but man, that rec yard where you play sports,

00:21:29.660 it's the most intimidating place I've ever seen. It was the most segregated place I've ever seen.

00:21:33.820 Andy, the rec yard on the life sentence building of that prison, man, every sport was segregated by

00:21:37.740 the color of your skin. I mean, like sand volleyball, whites and Hispanics only, no blacks allowed in the 1.00

00:21:42.620 sand. Handball, all the races can play handball, but if you wanted to play partners and double up, 0.92

00:21:47.340 your partner has to be the same skin color as you. You can't mix the races. The weight stack, 1.00

00:21:50.940 same thing, just like you see in prison movies. Everybody wants to push out iron in prison and

00:21:53.660 all the races can lift weights. But if you want someone to spot you or someone to work out with

00:21:57.420 you, your partner, your spotter has to be the same skin color as you. You cannot mix the races. 1.00

00:22:02.460 You can't even sit down and eat a meal at the table with people of a different race in the life sentence 1.00

00:22:06.060 building. Race is everything. So that Monday morning, six weeks into prison, I go out to the rec yard.

00:22:11.100 I pass up all those other sports and I go straight to the basketball court. Who do you

00:22:15.020 think runs the basketball court, Andy?

00:22:16.700 Oh, wait. I think I know, Gary.

00:22:18.780 I bet it's the white guys. 0.63

00:22:21.500 DJ, who is it?

00:22:23.340 I'll tell you. It's the blacks, the brothers. They run it, man. And no white boys are allowed 0.98

00:22:26.860 in that basketball court. But you know, I grew up in this little town called Port Arthur, Texas.

00:22:30.700 Man, I've been the only white boy in the basketball court all my life. And I played sports all my life.

00:22:33.900 And I know I can take a couple of these guys in a game of basketball.

00:22:36.540 So, man, I get myself in a basketball game that Monday morning, man. I snatch the ball

00:22:41.260 when the game is over one game and I won't let the ball go until they let me shoot a shot to see

00:22:44.700 if I can play right. So I get in the game. And that first day, that Monday out there, man,

00:22:48.620 it's the most brutal basketball. I mean, it's not five on five basketball. It's nine on one.

00:22:52.700 My own teammates don't want me out there, man. And you can punch, kick, scratch, bite, pull hair.

00:22:57.900 But I survived. And I go out the next day, the next day, the next day. I learned two things

00:23:02.380 about adversity that week, Andy. I learned that adversity is never as bad as you think it's going

00:23:06.060 to be. And you're always capable of way more than you think you are. Because how we think matters.

00:23:11.020 And we let overthinking get in the way of overcoming all the time. And so, man, after a week of playing

00:23:16.860 basketball with those guys, the blacks circled up around me. There was a blood from Houston named J

00:23:20.540 Blood, man. Big old dude. Everybody says, you know what, Wes? You pulled something off out here.

00:23:24.460 We've never seen a white boy pull off before. You took everything we had. You gave it back when you 1.00

00:23:27.980 could. You didn't get racial with us. So you don't have to worry about the blacks the rest of the time 0.99

00:23:31.500 you're in prison, man. You're good with us. And that was it, man. That's pretty cool. 0.89

00:23:35.660 Yeah, man. The violence is finally over. The threat to my physical safety is gone.

00:23:39.420 But man, two months into prison, man, I'm becoming an egg. And it's hard, man. Prison is

00:23:43.660 the hardest environment I've ever been in. That's one of the strengths of this story that I tell.

00:23:47.180 It's like, you know, I did this in a maximum security prison. There's a lot of different

00:23:51.500 places you can call a pot of boiling water, but this is the worst place I've ever seen.

00:23:55.980 And I was thinking about what Jackson told me, man. Right before I left prison, left

00:24:01.740 county jail, I asked him, I said, what am I going to find more of when I get to prison?

00:24:06.700 And his answer was profound. He was the most intelligent man I've ever met. He said,

00:24:09.580 you're going to find more eggs, Wes. And here's why. He said, the egg is a natural evolution

00:24:14.700 of any human being inside of any difficult situation. He said, you're going to go in the

00:24:18.140 most difficult situation on earth. He said, the truth is you'll probably become the egg too.

00:24:22.380 And man, he was writing. He was right about everything. But I finally figured out that

00:24:29.260 my thinking was everything inside that place, that it didn't matter where I was and you can

00:24:33.420 bloom where you're planted. And I started working on myself inside that prison. You know, I started

00:24:38.060 getting up every single day and I focused on the gratitude, the things I could be happy about in

00:24:42.220 life. And even though I'm inside of a prison, there's still things I could be happy about in

00:24:45.580 life. I've got a family out there that loves me. I had, you know, my family never let go of me.

00:24:49.100 Andy, they came to visit me over 150 times when I was in prison. I lived in a, I was in prison

00:24:53.900 in Beaumont, Texas, in Port Arthur, Texas, where I'm from. It's the town right next to it. So my

00:24:58.060 parents came to see me almost every weekend. You know, I met your dad a while ago in the weight

00:25:00.940 room. Your dad reminded me of my dad, man. He just, just had me. Same age. Yeah. Same age,

00:25:04.700 man. Same from Missouri. Yeah. So, I mean, it's like, you know, my parents never gave up on me. And,

00:25:10.140 um, I got up every day, man. And it, I told myself that no matter where I am,

00:25:14.780 the person I want to be when I get out of this, I've got to become that person today. Like, I want

00:25:19.100 to be, uh, someone that can add value back in the world. I want to be useful again, but I've got to

00:25:24.460 figure out how to do that in here. And if I could do that in here, then I could do it anywhere.

00:25:28.460 And after seven years and three months in prison, it was, uh, it was November of 2015. The parole

00:25:35.260 board comes to see me. And, um, the lady from parole has got my criminal file in front of her. It's

00:25:39.660 about this thick, you know? And she's flipping through pages of it for about 20 seconds and she

00:25:44.460 slammed the file shut. She pushed it away. She said, Mr. West, I came here today to ask you one

00:25:49.660 question for your parole hearing. And she said, the answer to my questions is not in the file

00:25:53.180 about the guy who I'm reading about who committed all those crimes. She said, we don't see a lot of

00:25:57.660 Damon West come through the system, by the way. She said, you had it all, every advantage, every privilege

00:26:01.900 and every opportunity. She said, you're the definition of a privileged person. And, and I did,

00:26:05.500 I had all the advantages of everybody in life. And I came from a great family, just like you. And,

00:26:08.940 and all the opportunities were there in front of me, sports, you play college sports, you know,

00:26:12.620 you understand this. And so, um, she said, you didn't just change yourself in this prison. She

00:26:17.980 said, there's no doubt about the change you made yourself. She said, you changed this entire prison

00:26:22.060 around you. She said, one man was able to change his prison. She said, so my, my question for you

00:26:26.300 today is this. She said, if you could be remembered for being anything in life, anything at all, she said,

00:26:31.020 tell me what that would be in just one word, go. And man, I breathe out and relax. That's an easy

00:26:37.340 question for a coffee bean. And I fire her answer back at her. I was like, ma'am, useful. I just

00:26:41.980 want to be useful. You know? And like you were talking about people that earn a second chance,

00:26:45.900 they're just trying to be useful, man. People that make mistakes, they want to be useful again.

00:26:49.340 Yeah. And I think everybody wants to be useful, right? At the core. And, uh, November 16th,

00:26:54.940 2015, I walked out of a Texas prison. Now, now I'm not a free man. You're not, you're not looking

00:27:00.060 at a free man in front of you. I got a little more time left on parole. I'm on parole.

00:27:03.260 It's only, uh, what, like 65 more years.

00:27:06.220 I'm on parole till 2073. So from the recording of this, I got 50 more years.

00:27:10.460 Yeah. And that means every month in Beaumont, Texas, I go see Ms. Braggs, my parole officer,

00:27:15.500 Ms. Braggs. If you're listening, I go, I go pee in a cup for Ms. Braggs. I pay a fine to Ms. Braggs. 0.61

00:27:19.900 I get a travel permit for Ms. Braggs every time I travel. In fact, I got one for first form today.

00:27:24.140 That's right. But, um, I mean, I don't let parole hold me back. I don't let any of these things hold

00:27:29.180 me back in life because I think that growth follows belief. Once you believe in yourself, other people can

00:27:34.220 believe in you too, you know? Yeah, bro. You, you, the world treats you as you present yourself.

00:27:38.860 Absolutely. And you showed that with your company and, and how you grew it. And,

00:27:42.620 you know, it means if you believe in yourself, they're going to believe in you too.

00:27:45.900 Right. That's what I mean by that. I got a great story.

00:27:48.540 People think it's the other way around. They think it's the, they think it's,

00:27:51.500 the world gives you permission to be something. It's not that at all. Like it's what you decide you

00:27:58.380 are. And then you become that, even if you're acting as if you are that, and you know, you're not

00:28:04.860 that yet. Right. The world reciprocates with that sort of attention. So really, dude, we all tell

00:28:10.700 the world how to treat us and they treat us exactly how we tell them to. Absolutely. And if you're,

00:28:16.060 if you want to put yourself out there, this is one of the things that you have, you have to put

00:28:19.500 yourself out there. You got to put yourself in a position to fail sometimes, you know, a lot of

00:28:23.500 times, you know, because you great story for you about that. So January 12th, 2017, I've been out

00:28:30.140 of prison 14 months at this point. And I've started sharing my story locally in the Southeast Texas

00:28:34.620 area where I live, you know, wherever I can find someone to let me come in and speak. But I really

00:28:38.780 want to be speaking in front of college athletic program, college football specifically, because

00:28:42.060 I played division one college quarterback in North Texas back in the nineties. But man,

00:28:46.140 it's been 20 years since I've taken a snap. Andy, these college coaches don't know me.

00:28:49.260 I saw you take a snap the other day and throw the ball 70 fucking yards. Yeah, man. I can still 0.99

00:28:54.060 gun it, man. I'll be 48 pretty soon and I can still throw about 65, man. So, but, um,

00:28:59.900 Video proof too. That's it, man. We'll put it up on YouTube.

00:29:02.380 You know what? We'll throw it right here. Yeah. We'll throw that shit right here. People watch

00:29:05.180 this shit. We'll throw it up on YouTube. I gotta, I gotta, yeah, it's, it's wild. 1.00

00:29:07.980 Put that in for real. Yeah. I'll put it in for real. And I told you guys, I give them a bunch of

00:29:11.500 B roll for this thing. Um, I was with your contract. Yeah. Well, and Dak Prescott's, you know,

00:29:16.620 today, Dak, Dak Prescott and I were working together on this movie deal to turn my story

00:29:20.940 into a Netflix limited series or a TV show, whatever. But, uh, Dak had his little football

00:29:25.740 camp that I volunteer at every, every summer. And that's where you saw the video of me chunking it,

00:29:29.020 man. Yeah. Um, but January 12th, 2017, the world's a little bit different. I, um, I've been out of

00:29:34.780 prison for 14 months. What was that like? What was that like going in and then coming out in the world

00:29:41.340 being so different? Man, phones were the first thing that really tripped me out. When I got

00:29:45.820 arrested, phones had buttons, right? Right. My mom hands me an iPhone. The day I get out,

00:29:49.420 she hands it to me in the backseat of the car. They came to pick me up from prison.

00:29:52.620 And man, I couldn't get thing to light up. I don't wear the buttons, you know, but, uh,

00:29:56.300 prison was the adjustment back in. One of the hardest things to get adjusted to

00:30:01.100 in prison. The threat of violence is the glue that holds the whole thing together. Because if you step

00:30:06.460 out of line in prison, you could lose your life. You can certainly get hurt. You can lose an eyeball.

00:30:10.780 I've seen guys lose eyeballs. I mean, there's a lot of repercussions to treating someone

00:30:15.100 offensively in prison. You have to own every action you have in prison, but there's no threat

00:30:19.980 of violence like that in society. And, and, and, and for good measure in some way,

00:30:23.980 but I think some ways have, we've gone too far about pulling that, pulling that back,

00:30:27.660 right? There's not enough threat out there in some ways, like people can act any way they want.

00:30:31.820 No, there's too much disrespect and no repercussions. Way too much disrespect.

00:30:34.860 And that was one of the things to get adjusted to, man. Like I'm walking,

00:30:37.420 I'm out of prison and people are bumping into me. Like I'm going out to go shopping

00:30:40.620 at the mall or something. Or inside you deal, that'd be something to deal with.

00:30:43.260 Brother, you bump into somebody in prison, you got to own it. Like my bad or excuse me,

00:30:46.700 or let's fight. You know, those are your options to come out of your mouth.

00:30:50.140 You might not even get a chance to apologize. Yeah. Right. If you bump into somebody in prison,

00:30:53.180 you got to own that. And like, for example, like if someone in prison comes up and says,

00:30:57.420 and says, Hey man, what size are your shoes?

00:30:59.500 The old size. Yup. That's it. That's it, DJ. That's the only answer that's acceptable inside

00:31:03.740 of prison. Your size. They're your size. Come get them. 0.78

00:31:06.060 Yeah. Real shit. 1.00

00:31:08.700 So January 12th, 2017, man, I'm a, you know, I've acclimated back in. I got a job working 0.99

00:31:14.940 at a law firm and I did my own legal work in prison. These lawyers took notice of it. And

00:31:18.540 they even told me when I was in prison, if you ever get out of, you put together a hell of a legal

00:31:22.060 writ for a guy's never been to law school. If you get out of prison, come see us. We got a job for you,

00:31:26.540 man. Second day out of prison, I'm working at one of the most prestigious firms in Southeast Texas.

00:31:30.380 Right? So there I am 14 months into prison working at the law firm, but I'm just sharing my story and

00:31:36.300 the message of the coffee being locally because you know, no one's really giving me a shot yet.

00:31:41.260 Buddy of mine from Houston calls me up. A guy named Mike Orta. Mike Orta calls me up. He's in Houston,

00:31:46.300 90 miles away. He said, Damon, tonight is the Bear Bryant coach of the year award. They're going to name

00:31:50.380 the best college football coach in America. He said, the eight best coaches in the country are in this

00:31:54.460 room tonight at the Toyota center. I've got an extra press pass if you want to go. He works for the media.

00:31:58.620 And I'm like, man, you better want to go. So I drive the 90 miles from Beaumont to Houston after

00:32:02.940 work. I'm driving. I'm practicing my elevator pitch, Andy. What I'm going to tell these guys,

00:32:06.300 you know, when I get in front of them, and he sneaks me in the Toyota center,

00:32:09.980 hands me a press pass, and I hit the ground running. And all the best coaches are there that night,

00:32:14.060 man. USC, Wisconsin, Penn State, they're all there, right? And I get to go up and I meet these

00:32:19.180 coaches and I shake their hands and I'm pressing the flesh and I'm giving them my pitch, why they should

00:32:22.540 bring me in to talk to their team. And every coach I meet that night slams the door in my face.

00:32:28.300 I mean, they're all telling me, no, it's a blood bath, Andy. In one hour, I got seven no's from

00:32:33.020 the eight coaches that are there. That's a no every eight minutes, man. Yeah, but there was eight

00:32:37.100 coaches. I'm in the corner of the Toyota center. I'm licking my wounds. I'm feeling sorry for myself.

00:32:41.900 And the voice in my head is screaming at me, go home, you imposter. What are you doing in this

00:32:46.220 room? Right? That's that voice talking. That's fear. I'm going to tell you something. I quit doing a

00:32:49.900 long time ago, listening to myself. I never listened. I talked to myself. I talked to myself a lot.

00:32:54.700 Now I'm telling myself, I'm pumping myself back up. You're not leaving, Damon. You're not going

00:32:58.060 anywhere. That last coach is going to tell you no to your face. And the last coach, hardest guy to get

00:33:03.420 to in the room. His team had just beat Alabama two nights before for the national championship.

00:33:06.380 Everybody wants a piece of this man's time. But I'm reminding myself too, over there in the corner,

00:33:11.420 you survived prison, Damon. You survived something way worse than this. Now, now I'm applying

00:33:15.420 perspective of what a bad day looks like. And we all own this perspective in life. We forget about

00:33:20.140 that sometimes. We think things are bad, you know? A real bad day, that's when a marriage fails.

00:33:24.860 That's when a bankruptcy happens. A job is lost, man. A child gets hurt. A child dies. That's a bad

00:33:29.260 day. Most of our days aren't one of those. So I'm like, you know what, Damon? You're not going

00:33:33.580 anywhere until this last coach tells you no. So I stalk Dabo Sweeney around this room. And I look like

00:33:38.380 a nut, man. I'm hiding behind fake plants. I'm weaving in the tables. I mean, security's looking at 0.93

00:33:43.740 me, man. Security's going to come take me away. But I finally pounce on Dabo. And I give him a

00:33:47.420 minute of my best stuff, man. I come up for air after talking for about a minute. And Dabo's like,

00:33:51.900 dude, you got a card on you or something? So I give him my card and he takes off because I've

00:33:56.140 occupied this guy more than anybody else tonight. He takes off and over his shoulder, he says,

00:34:00.220 I'll check you out. And he's gone. I'm like, man, that's a no. I went 0 for 8 that night, Andy,

00:34:04.940 but I felt good about the last no because I left it all on the field. And that's where we learn

00:34:09.020 lessons from when we play sports, man. You give it your best effort. Sometimes you come up short.

00:34:12.540 Sales. You knock on every door. You make every call. Or Jackson says, man, you don't have to

00:34:17.660 win all your fights. Just go fight your fights, man. So I fought all my fights, went home and slept

00:34:21.260 like a baby. Forgot all about it. Four months later, I get an email from the director of football

00:34:25.500 operations at Clemson University. My name is Mike Dewey. And Mike Dewey's email said,

00:34:28.940 Hey, Damon, Coach Sweeney met you at an award show in Houston. He'd love to have you come talk to the

00:34:32.620 team. Do you have August 1st open? Dude, I got every first open. I got nothing going on in my life

00:34:39.260 this time. So August 1st, 2017, I go speak to the Clemson Tigers, the defending national champs

00:34:44.460 of college football. And when I get done with my presentation at night, Dabo Sweeney's in my face.

00:34:47.820 And Dabo's a very high energy guy too. And Dabo's like, man, that's the most amazing story I've ever

00:34:52.540 heard. I've never seen my players respond like that to a speaker's story. He said, have you been to

00:34:56.780 Alabama yet? I'm like, no, Dabo. I've been to Clemson. I hadn't been anywhere, Dabo. He said,

00:35:02.300 we'll see about that. He said, I just texted Nick Saban from the back of the room.

00:35:04.700 The next day, I get a voicemail and a text message from the director of football operations

00:35:08.860 at the University of Alabama. We'll see you in Tuscaloosa, August 21st, 730 PM. There's your

00:35:13.460 window of opportunity. Just like that, Dabo Sweeney starts kicking open the door to college

00:35:17.740 football. He calls, I mean, Kirby Smart starts calling me, Lincoln Riley, all these coaches

00:35:21.540 around America start calling me saying, when are you coming to talk to my team? Dabo said,

00:35:24.920 I got to bring you in. That's badass, dude. Badass, dude. The one yes and the no. Dude, all those

00:35:30.820 no's and I got the one yes. But the real magic wasn't even happening yet, man.

00:35:34.700 It was August of 2018.

00:35:36.140 I just think it's cool that he did that for you.

00:35:38.220 Oh, and he still does.

00:35:39.420 And it speaks a lot to the kind of dude he is.

00:35:42.460 Yeah. He's one of my best friends and my mentors. And Dabo has shown me through his own

00:35:47.340 actions what some of the best attributes are of a servant leader, man. A servant leader

00:35:51.880 is a connector. You connect people to other people, man. You help other people out. You help

00:35:56.280 raise other people up to a different station in life. What you've done with First Form, you've

00:36:00.100 raised a lot of people up. You talk about this. You've got a lot of people that depend

00:36:03.100 on you, man. You raise them up. That's what a real leader does. And Dabo showed me through

00:36:07.240 his actions. And it was August of 2018. I was at the law firm that day. And I remember

00:36:14.160 I was working. My cell phone rings. And on the other day, my cell phone is this guy named

00:36:18.380 John Gordon. And John Gordon is one of the biggest motivational speakers and authors in

00:36:21.760 America, man. This is the energy bus guy. I follow John on Twitter every day for my inspiration.

00:36:25.580 And I'm like, dude, John, man, I know who you are, man. How do you know?

00:36:29.220 Yeah, he's a fucking legend. 1.00

00:36:29.980 Yeah. I'm like, how do you know who I am, John? 1.00

00:36:31.660 Yeah.

00:36:32.540 He said, Dabo Sweeney. He said, I just got done speaking to Clemson's football team.

00:36:36.640 And Dabo told me that, Dabo brought me in the office, Damon. And for 30 minutes, he tells

00:36:40.980 me your entire story. And he said, Damon, he told me the story of the coffee bean. He said,

00:36:45.600 I looked it up, man. No one's ever shared the story. I don't even know where you came from.

00:36:49.240 But he said, and he said this in 2018 before the pandemic, Eddie, he said, the world needs

00:36:54.520 the coffee bean message, Damon. Will you write a book with me? We'll call it the coffee bean.

00:36:58.040 Let's share this message with the world. And man, the next summer, the summer of 2019,

00:37:03.080 exactly 10 years after I first heard the story from Mr. Jackson in county jail, the book,

00:37:07.660 The Coffee Bean, comes out, becomes a bestseller here in America. Then it's all over the world.

00:37:11.900 It's almost every language in the world now, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, French, Italian.

00:37:15.640 They all have a version of the coffee bean on their bookshelves because the coffee bean is

00:37:19.160 one of those rare messages that can be translated into any language because everybody understands

00:37:23.200 a carrot and egg and a coffee bean in a pot of boiling water. And it's just taken off and

00:37:27.380 exploded. And my speaking career exploded from that because in my presentation, you hear about

00:37:32.340 a guy that had it all, lost it all, threw it all away, fought his way back, and started applying

00:37:37.960 these rules of being a coffee bean and came out on the other side to be a success story. And it shows

00:37:43.960 people that massive success. Yeah. And if I could do it in there, then you can do it out here.

00:37:47.180 That's right. That's the power of it, man. I mean, what do you say all the time? Is the ultimate

00:37:51.080 rebellion, personal excellence? Yeah. Personal excellence is the ultimate rebellion. And that's,

00:37:55.560 man, I'm on parole the rest of my life, Andy, but I travel the world sharing a message with people

00:37:59.300 that gives them hope. Yeah. And everybody has to have hope. Wow. Dude, it's an awesome story,

00:38:03.980 brother. And what you're doing is amazing work. Where can people find your book? Pretty much anywhere?

00:38:10.200 Anywhere books are sold. People find me speaking at my website, damonwest.org. And the books are on

00:38:16.500 Amazon, anywhere books are sold, stuff like that. What's the name of the book? My autobiography is

00:38:21.140 The Change Agent, but the book that everybody knows me by is The Coffee Bean. Yeah. Guys, check it out.

00:38:25.340 Yeah. How to be a coffee bean. We wrote another book about the coffee. John and I were like, man,

00:38:30.100 we got inundated with people when they heard this message for the first time. They're like,

00:38:33.460 do you have more principles of it? Yeah. I've been trying to get John on the show. It's just that we

00:38:36.700 haven't been able to align the schedules right. Oh, man. I'd love to have him on, though. He's

00:38:39.780 been, I mean, he's done a lot of really good things for people, man. Dude, John's great, man. He is,

00:38:43.880 I mean, dude, Andy, the two biggest people in my life are Dabo Swinney and John Gordon. Those guys

00:38:50.160 have done more to shape my life and help me. Is John how you got connected with Ed? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:38:54.640 John's how I got connected with Ed. Like, that's another great story. Like, I wanted to be on,

00:38:58.120 I wanted to talk to Ed because Ed talks about his dad and AA and stuff like that. I'm in AA.

00:39:02.740 And, um, John made that happen, man. John made the connection with Ed too. John, John does. I was

00:39:07.640 with John Sunday night in Vegas. There was a big dinner with a bunch of NBA people and he was like,

00:39:12.040 Damon, you need to be at this dinner. And so I landed in Vegas at two 30 Sunday and left at 1250 in the

00:39:17.160 morning. I was there for less than 10 hours because John Gordon told me to be there. I do everything

00:39:21.040 John says. Yeah. Everything. Well, it seems to be working. Yeah, man. It's dude, but you need to get

00:39:26.420 John on. Yeah. I think we're working on it right now. Yeah. I think Emily's trying to schedule it. So my God,

00:39:31.340 man, he would be incredible. He's a wonderful human. We've had it a couple of times. It's just

00:39:34.800 the dates, my schedule, uh, and his schedules weren't able to align. So I think we got it coming

00:39:40.400 up. Great guy, but he won't bring you a first form football. No, he won't. So Damon brought me

00:39:47.060 a custom collegiate football with our logo on it. Um, one of one kind of foreshadowing because one day

00:39:54.540 it will actually be that way. Dude, just saying. Okay. I love it. That's you got to, you got to

00:40:02.340 visualize and touch your dreams. You just touched it. Yeah. It's going to happen. So, all right. So

00:40:07.900 you know how the show works, right? Absolutely. All right. People submit questions and we'll, we'll

00:40:11.920 kind of, we'll triple team them here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, technically just double team. Is that what

00:40:17.700 they do over there in the Mandango Kings or whatever? Yeah. Mandigo. Mandigo warriors. 0.98

00:40:21.560 Mandigo warriors. Be careful now. Okay. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I'm not trying to 1.00

00:40:26.360 disrespect. I'm just saying. No, man, let's get into it, man. Uh, guys, Damon, question number one,

00:40:32.500 all right. Uh, Andy, my biggest problem, which is also the number one thing that holds me back in all

00:40:37.980 areas of being successful in life is a fear of confrontation. Uh, anytime there's a need for me to

00:40:45.280 be assertive, whether it's at work, family, dating, socializing, I always remain passive and let the

00:40:52.040 other person win or have their way. This has kept me, uh, from having a management position at work

00:40:57.740 and has also kept me from successfully having a girlfriend. Uh, people think I'm weak. What's your

00:41:03.600 best advice to overcome this issue of avoiding confrontation? What do you think? Um, so a lot of

00:41:13.160 people have a fear of confrontation. I think it's pretty normal. I think most people have it.

00:41:17.260 Yeah. And I think most people have it. And look, I mean, I'm going to tell you, be honest, I have a

00:41:21.140 fear of confrontation. No one likes it. I don't like it either. Yeah. I mean, and, and I mean, like, I,

00:41:25.300 I know that if I'm about, you know, the butterflies, they talk about stuff like that. I get those still

00:41:29.600 if I'm a, you know, any kind of confrontation, but, but I do know this, that most pain that you're

00:41:35.340 going to experience is not going to last as long as the pain of not trying and having to look at

00:41:40.700 yourself in the mirror all the time and say, man, I could have, should have, would have, you know,

00:41:44.600 the pain that you're going to feel, even if it's physical pain, if you got, had to get into a

00:41:47.260 fistfight or something like that, that goes away a lot quicker than the pain of never doing anything.

00:41:51.380 Yeah. The, the feeling that you get from not doing anything. And that's that regret,

00:41:55.400 that regret, that regret could have, would have, should have, you know, um, if I walk out the door

00:41:59.700 that night at the Toyota center without talking to Dabo Sweeney, man, we're not having this

00:42:03.040 conversation today. Dude, was I scared that night? Yeah. You bet I was scared. I felt like an imposter.

00:42:07.480 You know, I think it has to do with asking yourself the right questions in those scenarios.

00:42:11.820 You know, a lot of people ask what could go wrong if I do this and that's what they focus on. But like,

00:42:18.580 but what I always focus on in tough situations is what happens if I don't do it? Like what happens

00:42:23.460 if I don't, what happens if you don't talk to Dabo Sweeney? Yeah. Nothing. Yeah. And that's the worst

00:42:28.360 thing ever. Right. And so it's, you know, I, I think that when it comes to confrontation,

00:42:35.660 I think it stems from, I think it's a bigger problem than just being afraid to have confrontation,

00:42:44.540 because I think the way society is built right now, we don't learn to properly communicate

00:42:50.440 because we're always on our phones or we're working through social media or we have text or

00:42:55.200 internet. Right. Whereas when you and I grew up, you know, we're old enough to have interpersonal

00:43:00.660 relationship skills built in because that's how we did shit with the option. There was no other 0.98

00:43:06.260 option. There wasn't, there was no way to dumb it down. So like you have to learn at some point in

00:43:10.480 time, how to interact with other people and how to not, you know, how to hold your line and stand

00:43:15.300 for yourself. Or you fucking like back in those days, you just get picked on and beat up all the 0.97

00:43:20.060 time. Now you might not get picked on or beat up, but you find yourself in a situation where 0.97

00:43:23.960 people perceive you as weak. And, and, and, and I give this person a lot of credit for asking this

00:43:28.940 question because just to have the courage to even ask this question shows that they're aware that

00:43:34.420 they're perceived as a weak person, which is something that very many people, not very many

00:43:38.600 people are capable of even doing. Right. So the fact that you're aware of this and that you

00:43:43.300 understand that this problem is real and it's affecting your life is a huge deal because most people

00:43:48.440 never do that. So we have a society that's built for antisocial behavior. And so that creates a

00:43:56.480 situation where it's even harder to, to do confrontational, you know, conflict or stand

00:44:02.020 for yourself or learn any of these things because that's built upon communication skills. Right. So

00:44:07.620 my advice to this person would, would be a couple of things. But first thing is you got to get

00:44:14.580 yourself comfortable having conversations with people in real life. And one of the ways I did

00:44:19.100 this because I w I'm an introvert, I'm not a naturally, uh, you know, I don't know if you're

00:44:24.560 naturally how you are, but, but I'm not, I I've had to like develop this skillset of being social

00:44:30.020 and my natural state is kind of like, I just keep my mouth shut and I do my thing. And I really don't

00:44:35.800 like people to talk to me and I, that's my natural. So I have to work to become social. And I've had to put

00:44:42.240 in a lot of work to do that. And the reason I put in all the work to do that was because I realized

00:44:46.520 that if I wasn't social like this, I realized it was going to fuck up my life, mainly my business

00:44:51.240 life, because to sell, you have to be social and you have to be able to talk to people.

00:44:57.320 And so what I did is I made up this little game, uh, that I did for years and years and years.

00:45:02.080 And I would actually go into the grocery store and I would, I would make myself talk to three

00:45:09.640 strangers, uh, before I could leave. Okay. And not like, Hey, how you doing? Like I would have

00:45:15.620 to have a real conversation. So I would have to look for something of common interest and try to

00:45:20.220 start a conversation, whether it be something like, you know, somebody is looking at baked beans.

00:45:25.780 Right. And you're like, Oh, you know, you see that they got bushes, baked beans. Right. And you're

00:45:29.700 like, are those bushes as good as they say they are. Right. Like you have to develop this,

00:45:34.920 this, it sounds cheesy, but what will happen is you'll start to dissipate this fear of actually

00:45:40.280 interacting with humans. And I did this for, for years, every single day. Okay. Cause it takes time,

00:45:45.720 but what happens is, is you become comfortable and you learn that there's nothing really to fear

00:45:51.500 about other people. And that actually makes you able to have a tough conversation much more easily

00:45:57.440 than it would be if you didn't have those skills at all. So I would start there. I would start

00:46:01.760 and assess your own personal social skills. And if those need to be addressed in a positive way,

00:46:07.080 just play that game. I played, go to the grocery store, talk to three people. When you have three

00:46:11.160 conversations with strangers, fucking go home. And sometimes it takes 10 minutes. Sometimes it 1.00

00:46:15.740 takes 30 minutes, but it's a minor energy investment for maximum return because you start to really

00:46:21.800 develop into somebody who can speak to people, which is the most valuable skill in the world.

00:46:26.340 I love, I love what you said too, because like, and if you do that today, you did this coming up at a

00:46:30.700 different time when the phones weren't everywhere. You're going to actually teach the other person

00:46:35.420 you're probably going up to and talking to. You're going to make them get out of their comfort zone

00:46:38.760 and have a conversation with a stranger too. And if you do it with the right perspective,

00:46:41.520 you could actually make their day. Yeah. You can make their day, right? You can make their day.

00:46:44.700 You told the story. I mean, that's the intent. That's something Ed taught me. So Ed taught me this

00:46:49.180 about speaking a long time ago, um, about if I go on stage with the proper intent, I can actually 0.99

00:46:55.900 prepare far less because I realized that all I'm trying to do is help these people learn some shit.

00:47:00.700 And which has actually made me a more effective speaker because I can just be myself and then 0.97

00:47:05.240 make sure I'm getting the impact. So if you have the intent, when you approach these people that

00:47:10.640 you're going to make them feel good when you walk away, like I'm going to make their day. Now it

00:47:14.720 becomes easy to approach them. Yeah. And I think that's great. And now, now we're talking again

00:47:18.760 about servant leadership. We're back to, because you know, this idea of servant leadership,

00:47:23.620 it's passed around and a lot of there's, and there's people in the motivational world that beat this

00:47:27.720 to death. But it's, it's like, to me, that's the ultimate thing is when, when I can try to be a

00:47:33.060 positive force in someone else's life, serve other people that takes me out of all my problems too,

00:47:38.760 man. Somebody once told me it was an AA meeting and said, if we could all throw our problems on a

00:47:42.460 pile and we go up to that pile and we can pick up anybody else's problem, take ours, you throw your

00:47:46.900 own problem back over your shoulder. That's right. I'm out of here, man. When you start seeing what

00:47:49.880 other people are dealing with. And so this person that asked this question, this man or the woman

00:47:53.360 asked this question, first of all, they practice vulnerability. Vulnerability is a strength, man.

00:47:58.000 A huge strength. Huge strength, man. It gets a bad rap. You can't honestly assess yourself unless

00:48:01.820 you're okay being vulnerable. That's it. And when you're vulnerable, you let your guard down and you

00:48:05.300 draw the people closer to you. So this vulnerability, this person at practicing the question, you're

00:48:09.680 already there. You already have something that most people can't do, which is to be vulnerable and let

00:48:13.800 your guard down and, and know that like Ed says this, man, Ed says on the other side of the

00:48:19.160 adversity is the best version of you, but you have to go through the adversity to meet that

00:48:23.200 best version of you and shake their hand. And so if this person will use the skills that they

00:48:27.800 already currently have and even practice that three person, the grocery store type thing you're

00:48:31.560 talking about, they're going to find out that once they go through that, they're going to become the

00:48:35.160 best version. So they're going to meet the best version of themselves. Yeah. And that's the thing.

00:48:38.500 Like all of you guys listening, they all, everybody struggles with this. Every, this is a question

00:48:43.160 or type of question that we get a lot. People all feel alone and people all hesitate to talk to

00:48:51.700 other people. And it's the nature of our, our, our society structure right now. So a lot of people

00:48:56.620 are struggling with this exact thing. So if you can get comfortable having interpersonal conversations

00:49:01.880 cold with someone, you don't even know, there's going to be far less fear about when you have to

00:49:07.280 have the hard conversations. Correct. Okay. And then the other thing that I think this person needs

00:49:11.540 to do is you do your practice saying no without explaining it. Okay. No is a complete sentence.

00:49:17.860 Powerful. Very, very, very powerful. And when you can learn to just say no and just keep walking

00:49:22.820 and not explain it at first, you're going to feel like a dick, but, but after a while, 0.95

00:49:28.580 people are going to start to respect you and they're going to see you differently. 0.94

00:49:31.400 And that gives you strength and confidence to have more difficult conversations because

00:49:36.200 the reason that we have a hard time with interpersonal conversations or dealing with a job,

00:49:44.040 like the reason this person can't be a manager is because you lack the ability to say no,

00:49:48.140 that's really your whole thing that you're missing. So practice saying no and without apologizing

00:49:54.140 or without trying to explain it. Um, and then if they want an explanation, you can explain it,

00:50:00.440 but like, don't do this gushing shit where you're like unsolicited. No, but I'd really like to do it. 0.93

00:50:06.760 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's weak. Yeah. Okay. What's,

00:50:10.880 what's not weak is no. And then the other person says either. Okay. Or they say, okay, well,

00:50:19.460 why? And then that gives you a chance to have the computational conversation. You say, well,

00:50:23.680 because it doesn't make sense because of this, this, and this, it's nothing personal. Maybe it

00:50:27.660 is personal, but you know, it gives you a chance to explain it. And now you have their full attention

00:50:32.560 because you said no. All right. How many times you see me do that? Do I explain myself to anybody?

00:50:37.780 No, I don't give a fuck. Fuck you. If you don't get it. But you know what? The other thing is, 1.00

00:50:41.940 it's just fucking no, no, you're, you're right. Correct. I know, but correct. Yeah. That's what 0.99

00:50:46.800 you say. And the other thing is this, like, no, you're, you're correct. No one, no one really

00:50:51.840 loves confrontation, but you know what? I'll go into the confrontation. I go into it. I go into the

00:50:57.320 storm, like the Buffalo and the cows thing or whatever that people talk about. That's right.

00:51:00.740 I'm going into the storm and, and I know that a lot of people don't like confrontation. So I'll

00:51:06.440 initiate. If I know it's going to have to come at some point, I'm going to try to make it happen

00:51:10.100 on my terms. You know, if I know there's going to be a difficult conversation coming up, then it's

00:51:14.420 going to be my home field advantage. And I'm going to you now. Yep. I'm going to take you because I

00:51:18.620 know that not everybody likes this. Try to get on the offensive of that. And dude, I think that's

00:51:22.940 great advice. And I also think, you know, sometimes, sometimes there's nothing you can do. The

00:51:27.380 confrontation is coming to you and it is what the fuck it is. Just like this dude coming down in the 0.99

00:51:31.040 prison. Yeah. First day it's coming. Here it is. There's nothing I can do. I got to do what I can

00:51:35.920 do. And sometimes the answer is you just got to do what you got to do. That's it. And that's it,

00:51:39.680 man. I love that move. Yeah. I love that. Great. Dude, that's a massive skill set that you should

00:51:43.960 all work on. And I highly recommend that little hack that I did for all those years for anybody

00:51:48.540 that struggles. Another tip is if you get yourself a job or a place of employment, even if it's a side gig

00:51:53.920 in a retail environment where you get to talk to many people in a day, because dude, this comes down to

00:51:58.820 reps. It's like anything else, bro. You didn't learn how to throw a football. You didn't pick

00:52:03.100 up a football at one time, throw it 65 yards. No, no. It was thousands and hundreds of thousands

00:52:08.540 of throws over the course of your life. And to get good with people, guess what? It's hundreds of

00:52:13.420 thousands of interactions and conversations. And so anytime you could put yourself in a position

00:52:18.780 that's social, all right, for me, it was, I got to work at the bars. Okay. And then I also worked

00:52:24.320 retail during the day. So think of the amount of people I talked to just by sheer number,

00:52:28.820 all throughout the day, all the time. Now that many reps took someone who's completely

00:52:33.740 introverted and made them into a pretty effective, uh, you know, extrovert when I decide I need to

00:52:40.620 be, right? It's a skill. And, um, no matter how shy you are, no matter how introvert, introverted

00:52:48.800 you think you are, you can become one of these amazing communicators by practice. It's a skill.

00:52:54.620 I mean, Andy, can I say something about that? Right, man, you're, you're hitting on something,

00:52:57.800 but get in the reps, man. That's so important. Get in your reps because you can't get good at

00:53:02.340 something unless you practice at it. And if you're not good at something, there's only one way to get

00:53:05.980 better. It's reps. Reps. When I, when I got out of prison, man, I told you, I was trying to share

00:53:09.960 my, my, my message in the area where I live, man. Very few people, I mean, you can't just walk out of

00:53:14.680 prison, go knock on the door of a school and say, I want to talk to your kids. I just got out of the

00:53:17.560 joint, you know, they'll throw you in the wood chipper. Right. So, but what I could do, and I

00:53:25.440 actually found a, uh, a local law enforcement officer and a local judge that would escort me in

00:53:29.200 to take me in at first, because that's the only way I could get into a school. So there are very

00:53:32.460 few places that I could go speak at the first two years. Whenever I paroled out of prison, I lived with

00:53:36.200 my parents for the first two years. I mean, like, you know, I'm 40 years old. I live with my parents.

00:53:40.400 I make minimum wage, you know, I live in my parents' spare bedroom. You know, if I had a

00:53:44.160 Tinder profile, it would have sucked. Right. So, but in my parents' spare bedroom, there was a mirror 0.79

00:53:55.780 and it just happened to be in there. That's just a piece of furniture that was in there.

00:53:59.060 But I got in front of that mirror every single day for two years, Andy, and I practiced this

00:54:03.160 presentation, the same presentation that I'm out there doing around the world right now.

00:54:06.280 Yeah. That started in my parents' spare bedroom. Every day that I didn't have a

00:54:10.340 place to speak, I spoke in front of that mirror. And if I had a place to speak out there, I wouldn't

00:54:13.580 get my rep in front of the mirror, but I got my reps in. And almost exactly two years when I walked

00:54:18.980 out of prison, when I spoke to Dabo's team for the first time, and guess what I had? A polished

00:54:23.100 presentation, no hiccups, no ums, none of that stuff. It was on fire because I got my reps in in

00:54:28.440 front of that mirror every single day for two years. Dude, it's the solution to most things.

00:54:32.600 Yeah. Most things that you suck at can be overcome by just reps. Real talk. 0.95

00:54:38.820 Rips. It's people just don't want, most people just don't want to be seen doing that shit when 1.00

00:54:43.460 they suck at it. Right? Like you guys weren't following me on social media because it didn't 1.00

00:54:47.740 exist. Thank God. When I was this person, right? Like by the time social media came around for me,

00:54:53.280 I could talk pretty good. You know what I'm saying? But like, I wasn't always that way. It wasn't

00:54:57.800 always that way for me. And, and like, so I'm speaking to these shy people out there, like you guys have

00:55:03.800 all that potential to become exactly what it is you wish you had. You've just got to be willing

00:55:08.920 to be kind of rough around the edges at it for a while. It'll work, dude. You hit the nerve with

00:55:13.400 that one, man. That's it. Yeah, it's great. Guys, Andy, Damon, question number two. Uh, Andy,

00:55:19.700 how do you mentally power through difficult challenges in life? Uh, my wife has been out of

00:55:25.800 work for about a year and a half and we've had home repairs, rental property repairs, car breakdowns,

00:55:31.280 left and right over the last few months. I'm an individual that is addicted to progress.

00:55:36.840 So when these things keep coming up and my progress is stunted, it takes a heavy toll on me mentally.

00:55:43.320 So how do you mentally power through difficult challenges in life?

00:55:47.460 Man, dude, that's, that's a, that's a tough question because we all know the saying,

00:55:51.840 like it wouldn't be a saying if it wasn't true. When it rains, it pours.

00:55:55.980 Right. And you can't fix a leaky roof in the rain.

00:55:57.500 Yeah. So, so we're, we're, we all deal with this because success and hardship come in waves.

00:56:04.180 Um, when you're winning, this is just my experience, but like I said, it wouldn't be a

00:56:08.340 saying if it wasn't true when you're winning, the winds come easy, dude. And they keep coming

00:56:12.760 and they keep coming and they keep coming. And that's why I stress you guys, uh, so hard about

00:56:17.320 keeping the momentum going as best you can, because we want to try to extend the winning

00:56:22.540 streaks as long as we can. Right. And the best way that we can do that is by controlling our

00:56:27.060 momentum. And that's why I'm, I'm big on that. But no matter how good you are at controlling

00:56:33.400 momentum, guess what? It's still going to fucking rain. Okay. And when it rains, it's especially 0.99

00:56:40.000 if you've been someone who is driven by progress, like this person is, it's going to feel even 0.98

00:56:45.460 a sprinkle is going to feel like a fucking hurricane or like you hate it. And cause I can relate 0.97

00:56:50.020 to this person, dude, I am total offense all the time. And inevitably every three or four

00:56:56.380 years, there's a period of time where shit gets hard. And you know, I've personally think 0.98

00:57:05.380 that when those times come, when shit is extremely hard, what I personally do and what I believe 0.78

00:57:12.980 in is I use that time to get as the, get myself in the best possible place that I can. This is 0.94

00:57:21.020 where I lean into things like the live hard program and 75 hard. This is where I say, okay,

00:57:26.720 I understand that shit's fucked up. I understand it's not where I want to be, whether it's my fault, 0.99

00:57:31.960 whether it's just natural waves of up and down, but I am going to do every single thing that I could

00:57:38.420 possibly do to move through this. Meaning I take total control of my life. All the controllables

00:57:45.180 that are available to me, I control them the best that I possibly can. I control what I eat.

00:57:50.980 I control the energy I'm around. I control how I move. I control the books I read. I control

00:57:57.340 every single aspect of my life that is possible for me to control. I do the best I possibly can

00:58:05.320 because what you're doing there is you're starting to crawl again. Okay. You're starting

00:58:10.560 to move again. And when you see your physical start to change and you see, you feel good because

00:58:16.360 you've been putting good things in your brain and you've been eliminating the negativity. You start

00:58:20.720 to recognize that momentum starting to be built again. Okay. And sometimes it takes some time to get

00:58:28.160 it going, but eventually it'll catch again and you'll be on the winning streak again. And so

00:58:32.960 where most people fuck this up is that when shit gets bad, they throw, they do the opposite. 1.00

00:58:39.400 They're like, fuck it. I'm already fucked. I might as well just go out and drink. I'm all right. It's 1.00

00:58:44.080 shit's already bad. I'm on it. Dude, you hear this shit. When do people say they need to drink 1.00

00:58:48.080 after some fucked up shit? Dude, it's a societal norm. Like shit goes bad or fuck. I need a fucking 1.00

00:58:54.640 drink. Motherfucker. The last thing you need is a drink in that scenario. Correct. That's the absolute 1.00

00:58:59.560 last thing. Alcohol will always make a bad situation worse. Always. Okay. You ask fucking

00:59:06.160 most of the dudes in prison. You say, how'd you get here? It's going to have to do with 1.00

00:59:09.000 alcohol in some way, shape or form. Alcohol, drugs. 80% of people. So, you know, ask police

00:59:13.940 officers, how many of the calls deal with drunk people? Fucking most of them. Okay. So alcohol 0.99

00:59:18.840 is not a good idea when shit is bad. And most people will just throw up their hands and not 0.99

00:59:23.980 take any control because shit is bad. All right. It's like, it's like the fat guy. Like 1.00

00:59:28.160 I used to be. All right. Who's eating, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm fucking 349 pounds

00:59:34.760 and I'm like, fuck, I'm 349 pounds. What's 350. It doesn't fucking matter. And so I would 0.97

00:59:41.940 just gorge myself. You know what I'm saying? Like we get in these self-destructive cycles

00:59:46.700 because that's what society typically does. But the appropriate action when things are hard

00:59:52.100 is for you to control everything that you can control to give you some sort of sense that

00:59:56.840 you can guide the ship where you need it to go. Okay. And that's, you asked how I do

01:00:02.320 it. I'm not saying that's the only way to do it, but that's how I do it. Okay. I dedicate

01:00:06.300 myself like, dude, this last three years or the last fucking 18 months feels like fucking 0.99

01:00:10.680 three years. I fucking blew my shoulder out. I couldn't train. I was in the best shape 0.99

01:00:15.760 of my life. I'm 42 years old when it happens. I fucking had to watch my entire physique fucking

01:00:20.520 fade away. Cause I can't do shit. I can't even wipe my own ass. All right. Can't do nothing. 1.00

01:00:26.840 That destroyed me mentally. Like fucking watching all that work I put in from when I was 350 pounds 0.99

01:00:32.880 to becoming like legit fucking yoked. I had to watch it go away after I just put in the 0.99

01:00:37.900 six years of fucking work it took, bro. You talk about mental destruction. It was mental 1.00

01:00:43.380 destruction. Then on top of it, I'm like, fuck it. I'm going to fucking get off, uh, antidepressants 1.00

01:00:48.600 too. You know what I'm saying? Well, fucking shit's already fucked up. Let's make it harder. 0.99

01:00:52.300 Fuck it. I'm getting rid of that. So now I'm in this place where I'm like, you know what? 1.00

01:00:56.160 This is going to be on me, dude. And you know what I did the whole fucking time? I did the 0.97

01:01:00.400 same shit I tell you guys to do. I did the live hard program. I did fucking 75 hard and 1.00

01:01:05.220 phase one, two, and three. And, and that's what's pulled me fucking through. So you could 0.99

01:01:09.800 troll. I mean, you don't have to do that program, but I would recommend it. It's extremely popular

01:01:14.380 for a reason. It's not because it doesn't work. Uh, despite what the nuclear post says,

01:01:18.660 I turned you into a domestic terrorist, but you know, Hey, uh, the point is, is that do

01:01:28.600 the opposite of what most people do. Most people throw their arms up. They say, fuck it. I can't

01:01:32.280 do anything. Everything is fucked. And you say, no, I'm going to pull myself out of this. And 1.00

01:01:36.160 I'm going to do this because I'm going to control the shit that I can control. And what you'll 0.99

01:01:39.460 find is that when you start controlling the things that you control, your brain will actually

01:01:44.100 start operating instead of this panic state. Like, Oh fuck what's happening? Because a lot 0.99

01:01:48.760 of this shit we attract into our lives. A lot of these negative things happen in waves because 1.00

01:01:54.120 we are constantly in a negative mindset. And so when you're in a negative mindset and you're

01:01:58.880 thinking how fucked everything is, things continue to get more fucked because that's all you can see. 0.98

01:02:03.300 And that's how the universe works. The universe works in an energy currency. You put shit out, 0.99

01:02:08.340 it brings it back to you. So how do you get your mindset away from thinking everything is 1.00

01:02:13.740 fucked up and back into the, the offense mode that this person's that, that only way to do it that 1.00

01:02:19.120 I know is to take control of the shit you can control. And that includes your food, your water, 1.00

01:02:24.200 your energy, your information, your activity. And these things are these, these things that we're

01:02:29.860 talking about. It's, it's five or six things that you're in absolute control of. They dictate most of

01:02:37.280 your reality. Oh yeah. No, you're absolutely Andy to that point. Like, I mean, you're like,

01:02:41.780 I'm like raising my hand over here. Like, man, you're hitting all the, you're hitting all the

01:02:44.900 right notes, man. You can try, I tell people you control four things. This is what, this is what,

01:02:50.360 and this is what got me through prison. So hopefully this will help this question. This

01:02:53.460 guy asking this question, you control what you think, you control what you say, you control what

01:02:58.220 you feel. And what I mean is what do you do with your feelings? Do you talk about what's going on?

01:03:00.880 Are you a vulnerable person? Do you practice empathy? And the last thing you control is what you do.

01:03:04.620 Those are your actions. And that covers your eating, all your other stuff, you know,

01:03:07.420 what you think, what you say, what you feel and what you do. That's it, man. That's the whole

01:03:11.960 ball game right there. And everything else is not one of those four things. You don't control it.

01:03:16.020 You have no control over it. But if you can get yourself to a point where you allow the world to

01:03:21.260 happen around you in the areas you don't control and focus on those four things, now you're focusing

01:03:25.960 your time, your most precious resource, man. Time's a thing. You're spot on.

01:03:29.960 All of us, man. If you can focus your time on the areas you can actually impact,

01:03:33.460 your life changes. How much better does your internal dialogue get when you start to see

01:03:37.580 when you're accomplishing things, when your body's changing, when you know you've done the right

01:03:42.040 thing? Absolutely. How much better does your self-talk actually get? Because you made those

01:03:45.340 right choices, like your food choices. It starts to create the momentum. And dude,

01:03:49.320 I agree with you 100%. What you say to yourself is of utmost importance. And a lot of people,

01:03:56.660 this person in this situation, I'm going to bet that this person who asked this question is saying, 0.98

01:04:01.000 what the fuck did I do to deserve all this? Or when is this going to get better? Well, there's 0.93

01:04:06.200 also a saying that besides when it rains, it pours. Do you know what it is? It's always darkest

01:04:10.660 before what? Dawn. Dawn. Yeah. Okay. So there's always an end to the hard times. That's reality.

01:04:16.080 And it happens for everybody. So you're, let me tell you something that changed me. Okay. I deal

01:04:21.380 with a lot of stress, dude. Like I'd probably deal with more than that. It's not even comparable to

01:04:27.840 average person, but even amongst entrepreneurs, like I'm out of all the entrepreneurs. I know

01:04:32.420 I'm running more shit than fucking any of them. Okay. I have literal more companies dealing with 1.00

01:04:38.460 more points of contact, having more shit run. And it's fucking overwhelming. Yeah. I don't know 0.99

01:04:43.420 how you do it. No, it's hard. And when I wake up in the morning, I do it because I'm living what,

01:04:47.640 what I'm telling this person to live. I have to live that way all the time. Otherwise I can't do it.

01:04:52.420 So when you, one thing that changed for me, dude, and, and, and dude, I still fuck this up, 0.85

01:04:59.740 but it fucking makes the biggest difference in my day is that when I wake up my, what, 0.89

01:05:06.720 what do I think about first? What's my first thing I say to myself that matters so much to how my day 0.96

01:05:13.140 goes. And if I forget to do what I'm about to tell you, my day is usually fucked. But if I do it, 0.98

01:05:19.060 I usually kick ass that day and dude, I wake up in the morning and you know what I think attack, 0.99

01:05:24.960 attack, attack. It plays in my head. Like just like that attack, attack, attack. That means get up, 0.99

01:05:32.040 be aggressive, go do it, get on offense, go put in the work. That's right. And do, when I do that,

01:05:37.900 when I do that properly, I feel amazing when I don't do that because of the outside, uh, you know,

01:05:45.200 influences and responsibilities and distractions and texts and all this shit that I have coming 0.93

01:05:51.340 at me all the time. If I don't have that mindset of attack, it's automatically react. Right. And so 0.97

01:05:57.800 now I'm on defense. So now I'm overwhelmed. Now I'm like, and you see this cause you're with me all

01:06:02.640 the time. You know, when I fuck this up, because what happens is, is I get so overwhelmed. I'm like,

01:06:07.520 you know what? Fuck all y'all. I'm going home. Fuck you. And that's what happened. Is that not what I do? 1.00

01:06:12.200 I go to fuck home and I say, fuck you. I ain't doing your shit. And they get pissed at me. And 1.00

01:06:17.420 it really, it fucks me because then I got to do it tomorrow. Yeah. But the point is, is like, 0.75

01:06:24.760 I get so overwhelmed with the reaction and you can't win reacting, dude. You can only win

01:06:30.500 attacking. And so like that thing, try that, wake up in the morning and fucking say to yourself, 0.98

01:06:36.060 attack, attack, attack, and get the fuck up and go. Yeah. And I would also add to that. That's, 0.99

01:06:40.800 that's, that's incredibly important, man. What, because you're going to talk to yourself more

01:06:44.240 than anybody else talks to you. Yeah. I mean, you, you talk to yourself more than anybody talks to

01:06:47.580 you. So what you say matters to yourself. So say the right stuff, but make little promises to

01:06:52.540 yourself and keep those promises, man. That's how you build confidence doing that stuff. Um,

01:06:57.560 and that's on a subconscious level too. People don't think about that. Like we hear a lot about this

01:07:01.940 shit, right? Especially cause 75 hearts gone mega viral and people started to understand 1.00

01:07:05.840 that discipline is earned. It's not something that's a trait. And now we have all these people

01:07:11.340 talking about discipline that think they know really it's because the fucking program is mega 0.99

01:07:15.380 viral. And what they keep talking about is keeping promises themselves, but what they don't really hit 0.99

01:07:21.060 on is why that actually works. And the reason it works is because you have a subconscious being inside

01:07:26.760 of you that knows if you're full of shit or not. Right. Okay. And if you make all these fucking 1.00

01:07:30.780 promises to yourself, uh, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to do this. And 1.00

01:07:35.680 you don't do those things. Your inner self thinks you're a bitch. Okay. And then you cannot respect 1.00

01:07:40.900 yourself. That's the voice you talk about all the time. It's the bitch voice. That's right. 1.00

01:07:44.280 You cannot respect yourself. You cannot have confidence. You cannot have self-esteem because

01:07:50.820 your deepest inner subconscious being knows that you're full of shit. So you cannot fool yourself. 1.00

01:07:57.780 So you have to live in alignment with exactly who you tell yourself you're going to be.

01:08:02.160 Meaning when you make these little promises to yourself, it's so much more important than that

01:08:08.140 you keep them than you truly, really understand. Sure. Because it's going to dictate how you feel

01:08:13.000 about yourself. Really a hundred percent of the way. Like, I think this is everything. I think it's

01:08:22.840 spiritually, mentally, physically, these are the areas to work out in every day. And, and, and like

01:08:29.380 that stuff that you're talking about, Andy, that that's a, that's on a spiritual level, man.

01:08:33.020 Everybody can tap into that, man. And when you, and they do from time to time, it's magical. It's

01:08:37.440 not magical. No, you can do it. You're, you can, you can tap into that, man. And that's the thing

01:08:41.240 that we have to realize that like, man, there's not a lot we can control, but the things we control,

01:08:44.940 the promises to make sure we keep those things. And look, this is something I tell people all the

01:08:49.220 time. The hardest prison to do time in is the prison in your mind. I meet more people out here

01:08:55.160 in the free world, Andy, that are locked up than I ever did when I served time in a real maximum

01:08:59.320 security level five prison. Yeah. More people are in prison by their thoughts and by their things

01:09:03.660 than by steel bars and barbed wire and concrete combined. Yeah. You can't become a prison in your

01:09:08.300 mind. It's the hardest prison to walk out of. But the, the, the good thing is, is that you have the

01:09:12.120 keys. Yeah. You have the keys to free yourself at any time, but it's, it's, it's what you're

01:09:16.440 talking, everything you've said is spot on and it's incremental, small changes that you make

01:09:19.880 and small problems you keep to yourself and the things you control work on those. Yep. Love it,

01:09:24.220 man. I want to say something on that last question. Sorry to interrupt you. That's going,

01:09:28.400 I want you to understand something. You are dragging yourself out of a fucking hole. Okay. It's not 1.00

01:09:35.580 going to happen in one week. This is like an inch by inch by inch crawl. And eventually that crawl

01:09:41.600 becomes a walk. And eventually that walk becomes a jog. And eventually that jog becomes a sprint.

01:09:46.440 And that's where you're trying to get to. So understand that in the beginning you're crawling

01:09:51.240 and not only are you crawling, you're dragging all this shit with you too. Okay. So it takes time to 1.00

01:09:56.300 build this. Just be ready for it. That's all I want to say. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Guys, Andy

01:10:02.160 Damon, our third and final question. Question number three, Andy, my wife and I have been running our

01:10:07.460 business for nine years now. The last couple of years, we've made lots of money, then also lost a lot,

01:10:14.060 made a ton back, and then lost some again. We invest a lot of money back into our businesses.

01:10:20.720 So by all accounts, it makes sense why the money fluctuates. We are a long game type of people. So

01:10:26.180 we genuinely believe we'll pay off. And this is just part of the process. We've both come to peace

01:10:31.880 about this being a 10 to 15 year game until we really start seeing our fruits of our labor.

01:10:37.700 Can you give us some insight into why the money fluctuate like it does in business and some

01:10:44.240 pointers on how we should be thinking during this phase of our business? Well, first of all,

01:10:49.300 it's not a 10 to 15 year game. It's a life game. Okay. So you need to be thinking longer term,

01:10:54.820 not just 10 years, 15 years. All right. As far as fruits. I'm going to tell you how this is going

01:10:59.060 to work. Here's how it's going to work. You're you now and you're making X and you're going to make X

01:11:05.340 plus. All right. And then you're going to, and you're telling yourself right now, when I make X

01:11:09.240 plus, I'm fucking out. Okay. But here's, what's going to happen. You're going to figure out how 0.98

01:11:14.320 to make X plus. And then you're going to say, well, fuck, that wasn't that hard. I want to make 0.99

01:11:18.440 X plus plus. And then you're going to make X plus plus. And then you're going to make, then you're

01:11:22.900 going to say, you know what? We did that. We could do X plus plus plus. Right. And you're going to

01:11:28.840 start continuing to move down the road. This is what, this is what everybody does because when your

01:11:32.940 skillset expands through the journey of owning a business or running a business entrepreneurship,

01:11:38.780 every lesson you learn gives you a new skill. All right. So where you are now compared to where

01:11:45.380 you're going to be 10 years from now, where you think you're going to be done, you're not going

01:11:49.920 to be done because your skillset has now expanded so broad that you see infinite possibilities for

01:11:57.640 your progress. And so when you have the ability to do amazing things and you know, you do,

01:12:03.440 cause you have the skills, how many people have the discipline just to quit? They don't. Okay. So

01:12:08.520 it's always going to be this way. It's a lifelong journey. That's the first thing to understand.

01:12:12.280 The second thing to understand is that you are playing a volatile game. It's a hard game to play.

01:12:17.480 And the goal of the game is not to accumulate money. It's actually just to survive. All right. So that

01:12:24.760 you can have a company that pays your bills and takes care of you and provides a lifestyle

01:12:28.940 for the rest of your life. And a lot of people think of it like, I want to get this big lump of

01:12:34.680 some money and then I'll be done. But that's not how the fuck it's going to work because guess what? 0.97

01:12:37.940 You'll spend it. You'll lose it. You'll make bad investments and you won't have shit. And you'll 0.98

01:12:41.020 be sitting on a fucking couch in your mom's basement. That's what will happen. So you have to think 1.00

01:12:45.060 about this long-term. You have to understand that you're going to be a different person five years from

01:12:49.560 now than you are today. 10 years from now, you're going to be double that person. All right. And you have to

01:12:54.040 understand that the environment of business is always fluid and it's always changing. And there

01:12:57.540 are going to be things that like we like to think as entrepreneurs, you know, what I call entrepreneur

01:13:02.520 math, right? You bring out an Excel spreadsheet. You say, I want to make $10 million. That means I

01:13:08.240 got to sell a thousand widgets per hour and they got to be priced this. And all I got to do is these

01:13:14.080 things. And you think of it like this, it's a smooth line up. Like all I got to do is this,

01:13:17.780 but the reality is there's going to be things that fucking happen. Okay. In my business, 0.98

01:13:21.960 like when I started my first retail store in 1999 and two weeks later, we got our store broken into

01:13:26.940 and vandalized. I wasn't counting on that. That fucking sucked. By the way, it took us six weeks

01:13:31.280 to get the insurance payment. So like in that meantime, I didn't have any product to fucking 0.97

01:13:34.880 sell. Yeah. That wasn't in the Excel sheet. That wasn't there. Okay. And the only reason that I was 0.98

01:13:39.120 able to survive that period of time is because we paid the landlord up front for the full year of rent.

01:13:45.700 Otherwise we would have had to close the business. So what I thought was an injustice and a,

01:13:49.680 and a, and a, us getting treated poorly because we were only 19 years old actually kept us in

01:13:54.420 business and we survived that. But then there was these other things. I got stabbed in the face,

01:13:58.600 fucking, um, you know, we have people quit like, dude, you're going to go through all the, 1.00

01:14:03.580 the market's going to change. The products are going to change. There's going to be new laws. 0.99

01:14:07.220 There's going to be regulations. There's going to be all kinds of things, bro. You're going to get

01:14:10.960 married. You're going to get divorced. You're going to have kids. You're fucking kids are going to do 0.99

01:14:15.400 stupid shit. Like dude, wife is not a predictable game. Like, so to think that business is going to 1.00

01:14:22.460 be predictable when it depends on actual other human beings to buy your shit is not even reality 1.00

01:14:27.960 because all of those people are dealing with their own shit. And guess what? They don't need 1.00

01:14:32.060 to buy your shit sometimes when their shit's fucked up. So even if you have the most loyal base of 1.00

01:14:36.000 customers ever, and you've got a million loyal customers, fucking half of them are going through 1.00

01:14:40.060 so much shit. They're not thinking about your business. They're not buying your shit right now. 1.00

01:14:43.040 Okay. So like there's all these moving parts and we have to, we have to change our expectation 0.99

01:14:48.800 around entrepreneurship. And once you change the expectation, the reality becomes easier to deal

01:14:55.960 with because what the expectation is, is I'm going to get a product. I'm going to run some ads.

01:15:02.040 People are going to buy it. I'm going to be rich. I'm going to be drinking a beer in the Corona

01:15:05.760 commercial on the beach of Mexico forever. All right. That's the, yeah, that's the expectation.

01:15:10.520 I've arrived. Yeah. That's not how it works guys. No. Like it is up and down. It's left and right.

01:15:16.160 It's Holy fuck. It's, this is awesome. And that can go by the hour. Like it can go by the hour for 1.00

01:15:22.280 decades. Okay. So change the expectation, expect that this is a volatile career path in a volatile

01:15:31.680 world that changes at the speed of light. All of that's going to affect sales. That's going to make,

01:15:36.760 sometimes you're going to have sales go. There's going to be things like brand cycle,

01:15:40.020 like most brand cycles where 20 fuck 40 years ago, brands could last with the same brand for

01:15:46.120 decades. They can't do that anymore because the, the, the, the news cycle and the attention cycle

01:15:52.460 is so fast that you have to reinvent yourself. You have to reinvent your branding. You have to

01:15:56.620 reinvent your product. You have to improve. There's so many fucking moving pieces to this

01:16:02.280 to expect that. It's going to be a diagonal line towards the place you want to go, 0.98

01:16:06.980 but just straight up is, is, is an absurd expectation.

01:16:10.480 Let me ask you this about this though. I mean, cause like I'm, this guy asked you a question.

01:16:13.440 I'm learning from you right now because you're, you're further than the road than me. You're

01:16:17.160 where I'm, I'm working in to get that road. What I've learned from guys like you guys, like Ed is

01:16:22.000 like, um, keep the main thing, the main thing in an entrepreneur journey. Like my main thing for me is,

01:16:27.280 uh, the big thing is I'm a speaker that brings in, you know, make millions of dollars speaking.

01:16:31.860 Right. But I've been able to keep that. The main thing focused most of my attention there, but I've,

01:16:36.540 I've divested into different businesses that I've started. Like you're doing, you're talking about,

01:16:40.600 you have all these other, that's why I was like, man, I don't know how you do it. I've, you told me

01:16:43.020 how many you got going on. We started a business for my wife. My wife has their own demolition and

01:16:48.220 construction company. Her and my mother-in-law, it's a female owned demolition company called it. It's 1.00

01:16:52.060 called divas of destruction. So, but, but their, you know, their struggle in the first couple of 1.00

01:16:58.320 years of this is real, man. And you're watching a business struggle and we put resource to that,

01:17:02.620 but she has to keep that focus on her thing, the main thing. And you're two of this thing,

01:17:07.580 man. So they're not making any money right now. No one's bringing home a salary or anything like

01:17:10.900 that, but it's the same thing. It seems to me that you've, you've keep the main thing,

01:17:15.900 the main thing, then you've got a chance, you know, but when do you know, Andy, when to break

01:17:21.360 off and to try something else and focus a little bit of your attention into another business?

01:17:25.060 When do you know that? Well, I, I think that's, there's nuance there. There's no set number to

01:17:29.280 where else, like people want a number. Is it a feeling you get? How much am I making? Yeah. How,

01:17:33.660 I think the correct assessment for when you're, cause like, dude, a lot of these younger entrepreneurs 0.99

01:17:38.280 do get fucked up because of the fucking meme that goes around. We all know what the meme says. 0.98

01:17:42.840 The average millionaire has seven streams of income. Oh my God. And fucking that meme gets

01:17:47.800 shared by all these fucking idiots who don't even own shit. Okay. That might be true for someone 1.00

01:17:53.740 who's been in business for 25 years. That should not be the case when you're starting. What you're

01:17:58.700 saying is absolutely true. If you're pulling a wagon and you only got one fucking horse, are you 0.99

01:18:04.240 going to tie up all the ponies and ride the pony? No, you're going to tie it to the big motherfucking 1.00

01:18:08.440 horse that's going to pull the load. That's your main gig. Okay. Your, your goal 0.99

01:18:12.760 is to get so good at this one thing that it generates excess cashflow that is way above

01:18:18.560 and beyond what you ever wanted for yourself. And then you take that and you reinvest it in

01:18:22.980 projects as they appear. And most of the projects that are going to come about are usually going

01:18:28.760 to have to do with slight variations of what you already do, where there's a base level of

01:18:34.100 product knowledge. And then there's opportunities that come along that allow you to vertically integrate

01:18:39.960 sort of. So you're not just starting from scratch every time.

01:18:42.760 Correct. Like for me, it's consumer packaged goods. I know how to sell CPG brands. I know

01:18:48.100 how to sell CPG products. So I'm in fucking supplements, right? Now I have my supplement 0.99

01:18:53.900 business is completely vertically integrated, meaning we own things all the way from the 1.00

01:18:58.060 farms, all the way down to the fucking retail stores that shit sold in. All right. Then we 1.00

01:19:02.700 go to, to cannabis, then we go to tequila. Then we go to this because all of the principles

01:19:08.120 of how to operate those things are the fucking same. 0.96

01:19:10.920 And some of your customer base taps into all those. 0.98

01:19:13.360 For sure. But, but dude, like this, you have to say, okay, this is my main thing. This is

01:19:18.780 what generates the main amount of revenue. I'm going to get so good at this that I can then

01:19:23.920 branch off into these things that I have a really like a pretty good understanding about,

01:19:30.560 but it's not the exact thing I did. Correct. Okay. After you kind of vertically integrated

01:19:35.200 and squeezed all the juice out of your main thing. Right. And I think most people don't

01:19:39.580 put enough into their main thing to ever get it to that point. Like for us, we had our

01:19:43.680 retail supplement stores, right? That's how we started. Most people think First Form was

01:19:47.180 the first company. First Form was actually the second company that we started. We had retail

01:19:51.300 stores first because that was the lowest barrier to entry because it took the least amount

01:19:55.340 of money. All right. So we ran that play for eight years, nine years before we

01:20:00.460 ever came into a situation with First Form, right? Then we used our experience for what

01:20:07.060 we learned in the stores from up close view and how brands operated. And cause we didn't

01:20:12.240 know how to do it. Right. Correct. We didn't have, we didn't have what they have now. Like

01:20:15.860 you didn't have motherfuckers like me teaching you shit on the internet or people that you 1.00

01:20:19.340 could learn from. Like that, that's not what happened. You learned from mistakes and trial 1.00

01:20:22.900 and error. You guessed. Yeah. And you observed and then you guessed. Yeah. And so, so we,

01:20:27.420 we kind of got a good view of what, what product brands that sold to us at our retail store,

01:20:35.400 how they operated. Right. And we were able to kind of nitpick them apart because we were,

01:20:38.740 you know, we were coaching from the sidelines. Right. So we would say over the years, we were

01:20:42.940 like, well, they should do this. They should do that. They should do this. Cause we had an

01:20:45.440 upfront understanding of the customer base. So we took what we knew and what we became decent

01:20:50.020 at. And then we slightly vary, varied it over here. Then we became really good at that.

01:20:55.040 Then that became the main thing. All right. And then we started taking the money from that

01:20:59.040 and doing things that were sort of similar. Well, no, I actually forgot a step in that first form

01:21:04.240 thing. Then we started working towards owning some of our manufacturing and owning the distribution

01:21:08.460 process all the way from top to bottom. Okay. That's called vertical integration. Right. That's,

01:21:12.580 that's a big value driver. If you're building a brand that will eventually potentially attract

01:21:17.640 investors or strategic partnerships or potentially be sold, you have to have the integration because

01:21:23.780 the more that you own, the more that you're worth. And, but, but basically you take what,

01:21:29.840 you know, you go over here when it's appropriate. Okay. And a lot of people think it's appropriate

01:21:35.020 because they think that they got to have seven things to be credible on the internet. Bro, you know

01:21:39.680 what I think when I see that people say that shit and they're not like, I don't know them 0.99

01:21:43.520 because like in reality, like I know pretty much all the big entrepreneurs or I know someone that 0.99

01:21:48.700 knows them. Yeah. And they're just on the internet and they're fucking 25 years old. And they said,

01:21:52.520 Oh, I got this. I got that. I got this. I got that. You know what I think you're full of fucking

01:21:56.460 shit. Correct. And you will never fucking get a meeting with me. You will never get on my show. 1.00

01:22:00.620 You will never get fucking close to me because I know you're fucking full of shit. All right. 1.00

01:22:04.460 Because you don't know all of those things. And a lot of kids are trying to fast track their way

01:22:09.740 into that, into that place when the sales don't really justify it at all. And I would argue

01:22:15.160 heavily and strongly to never do that because eventually that will bankrupt you because what 1.00

01:22:20.580 you're doing is you're spreading all of this shit. It's the, it's the jack of all trades, 0.99

01:22:25.240 master of none. I know. I know. That's what it all the time. So crazy. Yeah. And it's because

01:22:30.600 this fucking toxic entrepreneur culture that doesn't really know what the fuck they're talking 1.00

01:22:35.760 about, who'd never really built anything, giving these kids bad advice, bro. They're telling them, 1.00

01:22:40.820 Oh, you know, like I said, millionaires have seven streams of income. Like fuck dude. Like you're 1.00

01:22:45.520 telling these kids to go out and start just fucking a bunch of shit. Cause that's what they do. They 1.00

01:22:49.500 take the shit literally. And then they don't have any capital to fucking put into any of them. They 1.00

01:22:54.320 never get good at any of them. They waste 10 years of their life. And then they got to close all the

01:22:57.900 shit and start to fuck over. Right. And this is what happens. And then, and you know, 1.00

01:23:01.740 it's just like diet culture, you know, when they used to sell people, um, 0.98

01:23:05.760 you know, eight minute abs, like you can get in shape in one week and shit. Here's what happened. 0.98

01:23:10.240 People would fucking buy these products and they wouldn't ever get results. And you know what they 0.99

01:23:14.520 ultimately did? They blame themselves. They said, there's something wrong with me. Why does this

01:23:17.860 work for everybody else? It doesn't work for everybody else. They're lying. So then they start

01:23:22.280 to question themselves and this happens in the, then they give up and then they just say, I'm fucking 0.99

01:23:25.860 fat and it is what it is. And they quit. This happens in an entrepreneurial space. When you think about 0.99

01:23:30.400 how damaging that is to someone's life, who you, you, you tell them the wrong information,

01:23:35.300 they go out and do it to try and present to be a certain way on the internet. And then they get

01:23:40.140 to be 30 and they have to close all the shit. They're embarrassed. They ruined their reputation. 1.00

01:23:44.460 They've lost all their money. And they feel like a failure, bro. And then they fucking believe that

01:23:48.040 there's something wrong with them. No, you're listening to the wrong people. Yep. And so, 0.99

01:23:51.840 so like, dude, become what you, I'm all of this to say, yes, you are correct. I love it.

01:23:58.580 Focus on your main thing, become fucking great at it. When it starts making so much money that you can 0.98

01:24:03.980 go buy Lamborghinis and Porsches and shit, and it doesn't fucking matter. And you don't give a 0.98

01:24:07.460 fuck. It's like buying jeans. Then fucking do your next thing. Right. Love it. Yeah. Guys, 0.99

01:24:13.420 Andy Damon, man, that's been three. Yeah, bro. That was awesome. This is awesome, man. This is

01:24:17.780 cool. I'm glad you were able to come through. Yeah, man. I learned a lot, man. Can I come back

01:24:21.160 to St. Louis and do this again? Dude, yes, absolutely. That was fucking amazing. I had a great time. And

01:24:25.660 guys, where can they follow you at, bro? Instagram, Twitter, and now the new one,

01:24:31.780 the threads you were talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Because you can't erase it from your phone.

01:24:35.400 Yeah. I just, I just got it. Took the link out of my bio and let, I'm not, I just wanted my name

01:24:41.640 to sit on it. It's at Damon West seven D A M O N W S T seven for my social media follows. And again,

01:24:48.220 people find me for speaking engagements all over the world at Damon West dot org D A M O N W S T dot

01:24:54.180 ORG. Cool. Yeah, man. Thanks, Andy. Thanks for everything you're doing. Dude, and your people

01:24:59.340 are incredible, man. That Glocker that I had set up when I walked in here today. Yeah. Dude,

01:25:03.120 I sent a picture up to my wife. It's like, man, look at these. They're amazing. It is incredible.

01:25:06.180 You have great people around you. I'm very blessed to be here. You build something great around

01:25:09.140 these people. No, dude, I'm blessed to be around these people. They make me better. This is awesome

01:25:12.920 today, guys. It's fun. Thank you, brother. Yeah. Thanks a lot. All right, guys. Don't be a hoe. 1.00

01:25:17.200 Share the show.

01:25:24.180 Share the show.

01:25:34.200 Okay.

01:25:46.300 Bye.

01:25:47.680 Bye.

01:25:48.280 Bye.

01:25:48.360 Hue.

01:25:49.440 Bye.

01:25:50.400 Bye.

01:25:51.180 Bye.

01:25:51.980 Bye.

01:25:52.360 Bye.

01:25:53.120 Bye.

REAL AF with Andy Frisella - July 17, 2023

547. Q&AF Ft. Damon West： Fear Of Confrontation, Power Through Difficult Challenges & Business Highs And Lows

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

REAL AF with Andy Frisella - July 17, 2023

547. Q&#x26;AF Ft. Damon West： Fear Of Confrontation, Power Through Difficult Challenges &#x26; Business Highs And Lows

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

547. Q&AF Ft. Damon West： Fear Of Confrontation, Power Through Difficult Challenges & Business Highs And Lows