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

Ryan Hanley: The last words he ever said to me in Dallas County Jail, when the prison bus is getting ready to come pick me up, he said, "Hey, West, be a coffee bean." Those four words, "be a coffee bean," were the four words that changed my life because those four words put the power back inside me. And if the power is inside me, it cannot be in the world around me, right? The criminal justice system, the guards, the other inmates—it's in me. And if I keep the power inside me, I won't survive prison. I'll thrive in that prison. And I want everybody listening to know that the power is inside you. It's not inside all those no's that you get. It's not inside that time you quit before you got to your dream. It's not inside all the difficulties you're facing every day in life. It's not inside the idea that you haven't been able to make that business deal work or that dream with your family work because it just hadn't happened yet. But if you keep the power inside you, you don't survive the adversity. You thrive in the adversity. What if your biggest breakthrough is waiting on the other side of your biggest breakdown? After getting fired from my third executive position, I realized God didn't create me to work for someone else. So I founded my own company, bootstrapped it, and sold it for seven figures in less than four years. This podcast is for unreasonable people seeking unreasonable results. My name is Ryan Hanley, but most people just call me Hanley. And if you're ready to stop making excuses and start making moves, you're in the right place. This is the way.

[The interview begins]

Ryan Hanley: I wanted to start with something that I saw on your website that just caught me. You write on your website—there's a little bit of preamble—but the last sentence is, "Do not quit before the miracle happens." And the question that hit my brain was, how do you know when the miracle happens? Like, how do you know you've hit that point?

Damon West: Yeah, I think that's a very good question, a good place to start this thing. I'll tell you the answer. I'm going to tell you a story behind this, how I know this to be the answer. The answer to when the miracle happens is when you've not only achieved the goal you're trying to achieve, but it's something bigger than you could have ever imagined, right? That's the miracle. Everybody's got goals in life, things they want to set out to do. But it's when you stand up and you say, "Oh my God, I didn't just hit the goal. I hit way past the goal. How did I get here?" Like I tell my wife every day, "I can't believe this is my life."

The story behind this is back in 2017. I had been out of prison for two years at this point. About 14 months—this date I'm going to tell you about, the date is January 11th, 2017. I know the date like it's my birthday. January 11th, 2017, I've been out of prison for 14 months. I live in my parents' spare bedroom in a town called Port Neches, Texas. Living in my parents' spare bedroom at 41, 42 years old. I'm on parole for the rest of my life because I committed a bunch of crimes in Dallas back when I was a meth addict. I was the leader of an organized crime ring. We broke into homes all over Dallas. A jury in Dallas back in 2009 sentenced me to life in prison—65 years is what the sentence was. The jury sentenced me to life in prison, and I went to prison and transformed myself in there.

After I got out of prison on early release, which is parole, I knew I wanted to share this story because I had an incredible story—the message of the coffee bean. We'll talk about the coffee bean later. But I didn't have a lot of places to share this story when I got out in 2015, 2016, even 2017, because I'm an ex-con. So many ex-cons that have come before me have burned the bridge to the ground. How many ex-cons in the history of ex-cons have gone back out and messed up again? A lot of us. The list is so long.

So I've got this story to tell, and I know that the right audience at the time is going to be college football, because I played Division I college quarterback back in the day. I was a starting quarterback at the University of North Texas in the mid-90s. At 20 years old, I was a starting quarterback on a Division I team. So I've got this great cachet to spend with college football teams, but I don't have any coaches. I don't know any coaches 20 years later in 2017.

But a buddy of mine in Houston, Texas, calls me up. Houston is 90 miles away from where I live. He said, "Hey, get to Houston right now." He works in the media. He said, "Get to Houston right now. It's the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Award. They're going to name the best college football coach in America. The eight best coaches in the country are in this room right now. I've got an extra press pass. I'm going to sneak you in."

So, Ryan, I drive the 90 miles from Beaumont to Houston. He sneaks me in the back door of Toyota Center and hands me a press pass. There I am in this room, and all these coaches are there—USC, Wisconsin, Penn State, PJ Fleck—they're all in this room. And I'm in this room too with my dream and my pitch that I'm going to pitch to these guys of why they should bring me to talk to their team.

So I go around that room that night, Ryan, and I meet every one of these coaches. I shake their hand. I give them my pitch and I tell them why they should bring me in to talk to their team. And every single coach I meet that night slams a door in my face. They all tell me no. It's a bloodbath of no's. In one hour, I got seven no's from eight coaches. It's a no every eight minutes.

So now I'm standing in the corner of Toyota Center. I'm 10 feet from the door. I'm licking my wounds. I'm feeling sorry for myself. And the voice in my head is screaming at me, "Go home." The voice in my head is telling me things like, "You don't belong in this room. The dream was too big for you, Damon." The voice in my head is calling me an imposter. I know every single person listening to this podcast right now knows the imposter voice.

But I'm going to tell you something I quit doing a long time ago, Ryan: listening to myself. I found out why I started listening. Listening to myself, sometimes the voice in my head that was talking to me that I was listening to was fear talking to me. You don't want to listen to fear because fear is a liar. So instead of listening to myself, I talk to myself. It's a technique I picked up while I was in prison. I remind myself that night, "Damon, you survived prison. This is not going to hurt you like prison. You came to talk to eight coaches. You're not leaving until the last coach in the room tells you no."

The last coach, Ryan—hardest guy to get to in the room. His team had just beat Alabama two nights before for the national championship. Everybody is in line to talk to this coach. But I'm relentless, so I stalk Dabo Sweeney around this room, the head coach at Clemson. I look like a crazy person, Ryan. I'm hiding behind fake plants. I'm pushing people out of the way. Dabo sees me, and security sees me too. They're going to throw me out of the Toyota Center. But I get in front of Dabo. I give him my pitch, and I come up for air, and Dabo looks terrified. He's like, "Man, you got a card on you? It looks more like a stick up than a pitch." I was like, "I've seen that look before." Inside, the wheels are just spinning—this is terrible. I give him my card. He looks at it. He said, "I'll check you out." He takes off. He's a nice enough guy, but that's a no.

But I would tell you what I felt good about that night was that final no, because that final no meant that I left it all on the field. That's one of the biggest takeaways I got from playing sports all my life, or like this old guy that told me the story about the coffee bean in county jail. He said, "You don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights." So that night I fought my fights. I lost them. And I went home and slept like a baby because I did everything I could in my power to make that dream come true. I just kind of resigned myself to maybe the dream's not going to happen.

Well, four months later, I got an email out of the blue. It's the director of football operations at Clemson University, a guy named Mike Dooley. Mike Dooley's email said, "Hey Damon, Coach Sweeney met you at a board show in Houston. He'd love to have you come talk to his team. Do you have August 1st open?" And I'm like, "Brother, I got every first open. I got nothing going on." The only thing I'm doing in 2017 when he emails me—the entire time that I've got this presentation I want to do in front of people, but I don't have a lot of options—I practice my presentation every night in my parents' spare bedroom. They got a mirror in there, a little vanity mirror my mom had when I moved in. So for two years, I've been practicing my presentation, getting myself ready, getting into my reps. Because anything you want to be good at in life, you've got to practice. There's no such thing as an overnight success. It doesn't exist. It's not real.

So that day I told Mike Dooley, "Look, you can have any Monday you want in 2017, because I'm just talking to a mirror at this point." He said, "Well, let's set the date for August 1st, 2017." August 1st, 2017, I go speak to the Clemson Tigers, the defending national champs of college football. When I get to my presentation that night, Dabo's in my face now. Dabo's a high energy guy. He's like, "Damon, that's the most amazing story I've ever heard. I've never seen my players respond like that to a speaker." He said, "Have you been to Alabama to talk to their football team?" And I'm like, "No, I haven't been anywhere. I've been to Clemson." He said, "Well, we're going to see about that, Damon. I just texted Nick Saban from the back of the room."

Ryan, the next day when my flight lands in Houston for my trip to Clemson, I turn my phone on. There's a voicemail and a text message from the director of football operations at the University of Alabama—the biggest program in America with the best coach to ever do it. Here's what the voicemail said: "Hey Damon, Dabo called Coach Saban last night. Coach Saban cannot wait to hear your story. He said, how does August 21st, 7:30 p.m. work for your calendar?" And I'm laughing out loud. I don't have a calendar at the time. I was like, "I'll be there."

Just like that, Dabo Sweeney kicked open the biggest door to college football. And Dabo didn't stop there, because Kirby Smart's calling, Lincoln Riley, Chip Kelly, Lane Kiffin, Ryan Day. Every coach in America starts picking up the phone and calling me because Dabo becomes the friend, the client that turns the whole Rolodex over to me.

So the dream is real, Ryan. This is it. I wanted to be a speaker. Now I'm a speaker. I'm speaking in all these rooms of college football. I'm going everywhere at this point. But the biggest event hadn't happened yet. The dream—the reality was way beyond what I even dreamed it could be, you know, what you were asking the original question. The biggest event hadn't happened yet. I hadn't met the second servant leader. Dabo's the first servant leader. This other guy's the second.

So it's August of 2018, one year after that first presentation at Clemson. I get a phone call out of the blue that day. On the other end of my phone is a guy named John Gordon. John Gordon is one of the biggest speakers and authors in America. This is the "Energy Bus" guy. I'm like, "John, I follow you. I know who you are. How do you know who I am?" He said, "Dabo Sweeney." He said, "Damon, I just got done speaking at Clemson's team. Dabo brought me to the office for 30 minutes to tell me your whole life story." John said this before the pandemic. John said, "Damon, the world needs the coffee bean message. Let's deliver this message to the world. Will you write a book with me? We're going to call it 'The Coffee Bean.'"

In the summer of 2019, the book "The Coffee Bean" came out, and it took the whole world by storm—the whole planet. It starts off in America first. Four to six weeks, it's riding high at the top of every bestseller list. Gets a global publishing deal attached to it. Ryan, global publishing deals are rare. That's when your book gets reprinted in every language in the world. The book starts popping up in Chinese and Spanish and Arabic, French, Italian, German, Vietnamese, Korean—just in time for the year 2020. Everybody remembers the year 2020. You'll never forget when a global pandemic hit. The entire world became a pot of boiling water. The entire world was searching for the right message. And that's when the entire world discovered the coffee bean guy, Damon West.

My life went from this horizontal to straight up vertically, and it hasn't stopped yet. Since the year 2021, I've gone around the world sharing this story. Every month I'm on the road 20 to 25 days every month sharing the story somewhere on the planet. But it all goes back to one night in Houston, Texas, January 11th, 2017—the night I had seven no's in the first hour. I was 10 feet from the door getting ready to walk out and leave. If I walk out that door that night, we're not having this conversation today, and the world doesn't have the coffee bean message.

So I guess what I'm telling you is this: the miracle happens whenever it's bigger than what you'd ever dream. That's what I tell everybody in life. You can't quit because life gets tough. You don't give up on your dreams because life gets hard. You don't not ask your questions in life. The only question you know the answer to in life, Ryan, is the one you do not ask. That answer is no every time because you never asked your question. I think Wayne Gretzky said it best: "You miss 100% of the shots you do not take." So you've got to go take your shots in this life. You can't quit before the miracle happens. But so many do.

Ryan Hanley: What can we wedge into their brain? The people that are listening to this show who got the seven no's and did give up, but are willing to try again. They got the seven no's and quit, but they're willing to try again. What can we wedge in their brain today listening to this show wherever they are, so that when they do go after those eight coaches again, they get all eight? In their world, whatever that is, what's a thought or an idea that they can hold on to when they walk into that room so they don't stop at seven, they get all eight, and they go home and sleep like a baby?

Damon West: Here's a great place to introduce the coffee bean, because that's what I think is the thing that everybody can take with them. Anybody from five to 95 years old can pick this message up.

In 2009, the jury sentenced me to life in prison for organized crime. In the little intermediate period between the time that I've been sentenced and the prison bus comes to get me, I'm in Dallas County Jail. I'm asking all these people in Dallas County Jail, "How am I going to survive? What am I going to do?" And everybody's telling me the same thing: "You've got to get into a gang. You can't survive without a gang." But my mom and my dad had made me promise I wouldn't get into a gang.

So I run into this old Black Muslim man named Muhammad. Muhammad's a career criminal, in and out of prison his entire life, but he's the most positive guy I've ever met in my life. Muhammad comes every morning by my cell and he picks me up, he checks on me. This particular morning he comes by. He's like, "Hey, listen, West, I've been watching how you're dealing with these knuckleheads and these dummies talking about you've got to get into a gang. Don't listen to these fools, but let me tell you what prison's really going to be like." That's when he tells me what prison is going to be like—the racial dynamic in there, the fact that I'm going to have to fight. That's what he tells me: "You don't have to win all your fights, but you've got to fight all your fights."

But he sees the fear in my eyes, and that's when he shares with me. He says, "Listen, let me break this down in a different way. I want you to imagine prison as a pot of boiling water. Anything we put into a pot of boiling water will be changed by the heat and the pressure inside this pot. I'll put three things in this pot of boiling water and watch how they change: a carrot, an egg, and a coffee bean."

So here's where I first heard the story of the coffee bean. It was the summer of 2009 in a jail cell in Dallas County Jail, 10 years before John Gordon and I wrote that book. He said, "First things first. If I put a carrot in the pot of boiling water, what happened to the carrot?" I'm like, "The carrot's going to turn soft." He said, "That's right. But the carrot goes in the water really hard and firm, but the water of the prison will turn the hard carrot soft and mushy and weak. You don't want to be a carrot."

He said, "What about the egg? What happened to the egg in the pot of boiling water?" I'm like, "The egg is going to turn hard, like a hard-boiled egg." He said, "That's right. The egg has a shell that can protect it physically on the outside, but inside that shell, that soft liquid core, that yolk, that heart becomes hardened. Now, if your heart becomes hardened, you become incapable of giving or receiving love. If you are incapable of giving or receiving love, you've become institutionalized and you do not come back as someone your parents recognize."

Then he asked me the question, Ryan. He said, "What about the coffee bean? What happened to the coffee bean in the pot of boiling water?" Ryan, I didn't have an answer for Muhammad on that one. I didn't know what happened to a coffee bean in a pot of boiling water. And that is when Muhammad—this man who looks nothing like me, this man who doesn't come from the same America that I came from, the man who doesn't believe the same things I believe in life. This is a Black Muslim man from the streets of Dallas, Texas. I'm a white middle-class Catholic from a little town called Port Arthur, Texas. This guy is so different than me. He's about to share with me one of the most important and transformational messages I've ever received in my entire life.

There's a moral there too. If you ever shut yourself off to other people because of their differences—different race, different gender, different ethnicity, different religion, different opinions, different political views—if you close yourself off to people because of their differences, you are going to miss some of the most important messages and some of the best friendships in this life. Because the messages in life can come to you from anywhere in life.

Muhammad shared with me that day. He said, "If I put a coffee bean in that same pot of boiling water we call prison, now you've got to change the name of the water to coffee. Because the coffee bean, West—the smallest of the three things, small like you—has the power to change the entire atmosphere inside that pot because the power is inside the coffee bean. Just like the power is inside of you. Everything else in life is changed by the waters of life. Carrots are changed by the water. Eggs are changed by the water. But not a coffee bean. The coffee bean is the only thing that can change the water because it's the change agent. If you want to come back as someone your parents recognize, you've got to be like a coffee bean too."

In fact, the last words he ever said to me in Dallas County Jail, when the prison bus is getting ready to come pick me up, he said, "Hey, West, be a coffee bean." Ryan, those four words—"be a coffee bean"—were the four words that changed my life, because those four words put the power back inside me. If the power is inside me, it cannot be in the world around me. The criminal justice system, the guards, the other inmates—it's in me. If I keep the power inside me, I won't survive prison. I'll thrive in that prison.

I want everybody listening to know that the power is inside you. It's not inside all those no's that you get. It's not inside that time you quit before you got to your dream. It's not inside all the difficulties you're facing every day in life. It's not inside the idea that you haven't been able to make that business deal work or that dream with your family work because it just hadn't happened yet. But if you keep the power inside you, you don't survive the adversity. You thrive in the adversity.

When the power's inside of us, Ryan, we understand that coffee beans know that there's only a few things you can control. You can control what you think, what you say, what you feel, and what you do. Four things. That's it. What you think, what you say, what you feel, and what you do. If it's not one of those four things, you don't control it. So being a coffee bean means that if it's something I don't control, I won't focus my time—the most precious resource I have. Because once time is gone, it's gone for good. All the money in the world can't buy one more second of time. But when you start focusing your time on things you actually can change, the things you can impact, the things you can control, that's when you get closer to your dreams.

Ryan Hanley: You talk a lot about this idea of resiliency. What I heard in that message was almost the core underlying philosophy of what resiliency really is—continuing to push through and believe in what's inside here and not allowing the external. Talk a little bit about how resiliency plays into this idea. I think a lot of people can understand and appreciate the pain and the hardship and the difficulty of surviving that prison and coming out. But I think we also get lost in the mundane of our lives as well. Completely different, but the day-to-day, easy comfort routine of day-to-day can lock us in almost as much as a set of bars can. How do we break free and create this concept of resiliency in a life that ultimately is almost set up to be convenient at every step?

Damon West: I tell people all the time that I meet more people out here in the free world that are locked up than I ever did when I served time in a real prison. Because more people are imprisoned by their thoughts, by their things, by their prejudices than by steel bars and barbed wire and concrete combined. That's the prison in your mind. That's a very serious thing you need to watch out for, because when you become a prisoner in your own mind, that's the hardest prison to ever get out of.

Whenever I got out of prison, Ryan, that wasn't the first time I was free. I had already freed myself spiritually and mentally and emotionally. I was free even though my physical body was locked up. So when I walked out of prison in 2015, it was almost like a trifecta of freedom—spiritually, mentally, now physically, I'm a free man. But in order for me to hold on to that freedom, I've got to practice the same things I practiced when I was inside that dungeon and I freed myself. That's the thing I go back to every day: "If you weren't locked up mentally in there, you're not going to be locked up mentally out here, Damon."

Here's a few things that I think you have to do to become free in your mind and spiritually and mentally. One, you have to have a spiritual awakening. I don't mean something religious here, because I think religion and spirituality are two very different things. Religion is a man-made concept. Spirituality is your conscious contact with whatever you call God. You can pick whatever you want to believe in. I'm a Christian, and I choose to believe in Christ, but anybody can believe in whatever they want to believe in.

I learned a lot about this when I was in prison. I got into a 12-step program recovery called AA. I don't speak for AA, but it happens to be the recovery program that I'm in. I have found that the principles in AA work really well for just about anybody in life. You don't have to be an addict for the principles to work. We have these things called the 12 steps. The first three steps of the 12 steps are when you acknowledge that there's a higher power out there and you admit that you're powerless over whatever it is that's holding you back in life. Only the higher power can help you get past this blockade in your life, whatever's holding you back. That's when you turn your life and your will, your thoughts and your actions over to a higher power.

The fourth step of the 12 steps is when you make a searching and fearless moral inventory. A moral inventory is this: you find all the things that you have resentments against in life. You put them down. You find all the things that you fear in life and you put them down. Because these are the things that hold you back. Fears hold you back. Fear is more akin to theft, I think, than anything else, because fears rob us of things in life.

The new book that I just wrote starts off with a question: "If someone took control of your life tomorrow, what's the first thing they would change?" I didn't come up with that question. I first heard it from James Clear. "If someone took control of your life tomorrow, what's the first thing that would change?" The trick is that we all know the answer to that question. Then the question really becomes, if you know the answer to what the first thing that changes, why have you not already made the change? I believe the answer lies in some form of fear—fear of doubt, fear of failure, fear of success. Fears hold us back and they keep us in that place called the comfort zone. Nothing big ever happens in a comfort zone.

In recovery, I've learned how to put my fears and resentments down. I worked this moral inventory. Here's what I'm trying to get to in life: I want to keep my side of the street clean. I can't clean anybody else's side of the street in life, but Damon West can keep his side of the street. When I mean my side of the street—virtually, mentally, physically—I want to do the best version of Damon West every single day. In a moral inventory, I'm sitting here trying to figure out what role I play in my problems. Because if I can find the role that I play in my problems, that's the one thing I can change. That's the one thing I can fix. That's the only thing I can control. So I start putting my problems down. I start figuring out my fears and the role that I play, the resentments and the role that I play. Then I can work on my role. That's the only thing I can control, because you can't control anybody else.

Another thing I would tell people to do: wake up with gratitude. You have so much to be grateful for. Even when things are spinning out of control, you have things to be grateful for. Focus on the positive, not the negative. Whenever you're going through something difficult in life, your days are bad—they're just running a bunch of bad days together. Focus on the days that you won. Remember the successes you had in life.

When I was in that corner of that room after those seven no's, I started thinking about, "Man, I survived prison, Damon. You're a pretty unique guy to be able to survive prison." Most people listening to this will never go through a prison experience. Most people listening to this will never have a SWAT team come into their living room. But I would argue that the SWAT teams of life come for us in different ways. It's a bankruptcy. It's a marriage failing. It's a family falling apart. It's something happened to one of your kids. It's something happened to one of your pets. These are the SWAT teams of life.

But if you can find this mindset that says no matter what the adversity is that's going to come in my way, there's an opportunity in there somewhere for me to grow and focus on trying to get to that opportunity—that's when I think we turn our situations around. But it's a mindset shift.

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

Ryan Hanley: But he told me it was very simple. You have 24 hours a day, seven days a week now to work on yourself. You could become the best version of yourself possible while you're here. And so it was a mindset shift to start looking at my obstacle as an opportunity in life.

Damon West: Gratitude for where you are. Focus on you and the things that you can change, and have that spiritual component to your life because it's a big universe out there, Ryan. We can't do it alone.

Ryan Hanley: For a long time, I completely disregarded the idea of a gratitude practice. It felt like huckstery. It felt like ethereal foo-foo. Even though I'm also a Christian and believe in Christ myself, I felt this sense that somehow it was nonsensical or unimportant.

[Ryan's son enters the room]

Ryan Hanley: You're coming in for it? You're leaving? All right, hold on. I told you one of them might come down.

[Ryan greets his son]

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, cool, man. Give me a hug, bud. Hey, say hello to Mr. West.

Son: Hi.

Damon West: Hi.

Ryan Hanley: All right, have a good tournament. I love you, and I will be following on Game Changer, all right? I love you, buddy. I love you, bud.

[Ryan's son leaves]

Ryan Hanley: So my younger son, Colton, is playing a baseball tournament in Connecticut, and my older son is playing a baseball tournament about an hour north of here. So I'm going with my older son, and my ex-wife is going with my younger son.

Damon West: Are you a Connecticut fan in basketball?

Ryan Hanley: No. I was a Syracuse fan when Boeheim was there because that's the closest school. So we always hated Connecticut. Now I just kind of love watching college basketball in general. Syracuse's Jerry McNamara from the title run is now the head coach of Siena, which I could hit with a driver and probably a five iron from my home. So I'm rapidly becoming a Siena basketball fan.

So this idea of a gratitude practice was always one of those things that I thought life coaches taught as a five-step whatever. And then I started going through some hard times and was searching for something I could grab onto. In the mornings, I just started sitting and reading. After I got done reading, I would put my book down and just sit there for 30 seconds. "God, thank you for the home that I live in, the children that I have, whatever." Whatever hit my brain. And then I'd stand up, and holy shit, bro. Even 30 seconds, even acknowledging one thing changes your perspective on the day. One thing, just acknowledging one thing, and you stand up and there's this weird sensation that everything's not terrible. I'm going to be able to get through this thing. It's wild.

Damon West: Most people would never go through a prison, but everybody's gone through something difficult in life. I wake up every day and I think to myself, "Damon, you didn't wake up in a prison today. How great is your day going to be?" Because my worst day out here is better than my best day in there. That can apply to anybody. Think about your worst day right now versus the best day you had in that bad situation you were in. If someone's going through a breakup, a bad marriage, a divorce, it's tough to find good days in there. But you survive that, and if you survive that, you can survive other things in life.

I think it's normal to look at some of this personal development stuff and say it's rose-colored glasses. There's a lot of phonies and fakes in that world, and it's unfortunate because they taint the whole industry. You've got some really good life coaches out there, but you got some bad seeds. I would say to be careful. Watch out for these people. If someone leads with the bling, the shiny, flashy objects, they're probably a huckster. If someone throws their faith out there in your face in the very beginning, pay attention to that. I'm not saying they're a huckster, but you want to watch their actions really heavily.

When people want to tell me they're a Christian, it makes me want to grab my wallet first because it feels like they're trying to pick my pocket. Now I'm watching to see with all these people that want to profess their faith publicly. A lot of Christians are susceptible to this. I find that with a lot of my brothers and sisters in Christ, they let their guard down when someone talks about Christ in public. It blows me away. I'm like, "Let's watch that person's actions." If you want to tell me how much you're a Christian, I want to see all that stuff that shows up in the red ink of the New Testament. Show me love. Show me compassion. Show me some mercy. Show me empathy. Show me these things that show up in the red ink of Jesus' words and the Gospels. And when someone wrongs you, show me that thing about "he without sin cast the first stone." Grace upon grace.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah.

Damon West: Show me grace, because grace is hard. Grace always costs the person giving it more than it costs the person who receives it. When you were talking about these people that have tainted that coaching world, I'm not a coach, I'm just telling you from observation, watch people's actions. If your actions don't align with your words, then you're not authentic. You're not real. I think more people would sit back and say, "I'm going to just watch and see what you do and take a little more time with this decision for you to be a coach in my life." I think we'd have a lot more mentors and mentees that are better matched up.

Ryan Hanley: I couldn't agree with that more. The unfortunate part is that so much of the advice they give you is actually correct and valuable, but the delivery and the fact that they don't live it gets muddled and mucky. It takes me 42 years to realize that gratitude and a simple, salt-of-the-earth gratitude practice is incredibly valuable to my life. I wish it hadn't taken 42 years to get there.

I also think there's something too, man, just test shit. I look at everything as an experiment or a project. I try not to put too much expectation on anything. It's an experience. I'm going to try this gratitude thing because whatever I'm doing today ain't working. I'm not feeling better. I'm not getting better. So I'm going to try this. If it works, awesome. If it doesn't work, get rid of it.

People give me shit all the time because I tell people I like to cold plunge. This is a microcosm. They'll be like, "Oh, you're just another guy talking about cold plunge." Sure, I guess I am. At face value, I'm just another guy that will say it works. Or at least it helps me. I don't sell cold plunges. I don't have a referral code for cold plunges. I don't get sponsored by a cold plunge company.

Damon West: I like that.

Ryan Hanley: I have a quasi-makeshift tank right there. That's why I'm pointing off the screen for everyone watching on YouTube. I get into it for one reason: because I fucking hate it. Every day for five years. I've been doing it since pre-COVID, so maybe six years. Every day, Damon. Every day I stand in front of it, and my body is screaming not to get in because I know how terrible it's going to be. And every day when I do it, I get out and go, "Fuck you, bitch voice." I can get through this. So the next thing and the next thing that day, I can get through that thing because I did this stupid thing that I hate already.

It's little hacks like that. If you don't try stuff, if you don't experiment a little bit, if you just stay in your comfort zone, you never figure out those things that work for you.

Damon West: My dad had a phrase for this. He said, "Do things you're afraid of so you can do things you're afraid of." It's the most simple thing.

Ryan Hanley: Do things you're afraid of so you can do things you're afraid of. The more you conquer fears, the more you can conquer other fears.

Damon West: Yeah. The more you do stuff that holds you back. Voluntary adversity. Put yourself through some adversity voluntarily. There's two forms of adversity in life. There's the kind you find because life is hard. Life is going to deal you some tough stuff. But then there's the other kind of adversity that you find yourself in because of the choices that you make. That can be voluntary adversity too. You can do something bad and there's a bad consequence. Or you can say, like a cold plunge, "I'm going to put myself in this situation because I need some adversity. I need to handle some adversity every day because you're going to face other adversity in life." Do things you're afraid of so you can do things you're afraid of.

I love that you do cold plunges every day. I love the fact that you stated you don't sell cold plunges. There's no financial gain by me stating that I do this. It's just funny. But then you get all these commenters online, which I love. I want to get to your new book. But one more thing that I think is just funny, maybe you'll appreciate.

Ryan Hanley: So I train to box. I don't spar. I don't want to get punched in the head. I played football too. I would have played football in college, but I got three concussions my senior season, so it was no more football for Ryan.

Damon West: That's a good choice you made.

Ryan Hanley: That's a good consequence of a decision. I ended up playing college baseball, so it was all good. I don't want to get punched in the head, but I do train to box a lot because I love the physicality of it. I love that it's aerobic, physical. For my own sake, I make no money on anything related to boxing. But I will post these videos sometimes on Instagram, mostly as motivation. "Look, I'm 44 years old. I'm out here getting after it."

Bro, these guys, and I love them, they will write me essays on Instagram on how they would knock me out. It's amazing. People are always like, "Don't read your comments." I love the comments because these guys would be like, "Oh, you jabbed with your right foot there. I would slip underneath your jab and come up with a hook." The amount of time they took to analyze this guy who knows nothing, who watches YouTube videos and tries to mimic them, it's amazing. It's one of the beauties of human beings and how insane we are.

The good thing about the comments is that you have power over that. Someone sends you a comment, there's nothing to say that you've ever read it. So many times people that put those out there want a fight. If you don't respond back, you don't give them what they want.

Damon West: I look at the comments too. It cracks me up. I did a show recently called Soft White Underbelly. Have you ever heard of that?

Ryan Hanley: Soft White Underbelly.

Damon West: This guy in L.A. interviews people off of Skid Row. People in active drug addiction, all kinds of stuff. Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, somebody's interviewed. You just sit in front of the camera and tell your story. Millions of people follow this guy. I did it recently, and it posted about a week ago. I go in there every day and check out this video. There's people saying, "Oh, man, I love this. It's a great story." But you got all these haters. "Oh, my God, this guy is full of shit." I'm just cracking up. People are like, "This guy never did time in a real prison." I'm like, "Okay." The comments don't bother me.

Here's another rule I live by. We're talking about these rules and principles I live by. Other people's opinions of you are none of your business. Other people's opinions of you are none of your business. It doesn't matter what someone thinks about you.

Another really foundational principle of my life, when I started working the 12 steps, and I still go to meetings to this day. I go to a couple meetings every week. I'm on the road, so I hit meetings on the road a lot. It's this: whenever you owe someone an apology in life, you need to make that apology. You need to own your behaviors in life. That makes you a better person. The first thing an apology does is it frees the other person from the harm that you did to them. That's the most important thing. When you do something to somebody, they don't deserve that. This is about grace and being a good person, a person of integrity. When we wrong people, and you're going to wrong people, I'm going to wrong people, you need to own it. When you own it, you free them, but then you free yourself too because you don't have to hold that resentment against yourself.

I had that problem in my life too. I've got a lot of victims of the crimes I committed. I committed a bunch of property crimes, Ryan. It's important for me to say this. I broke into people's houses for three years in Dallas. When I broke into people's homes, I didn't just steal their property. I stole their sense of security. Something I can't get back to them. Something I can't replace. Something I can't fix. The damage is done. I can't change what I did to these people. I can't even apologize to them. The state of Texas has a law. It's a felony to apologize to a victim of a crime. They will send you back to prison in Texas if you reach out to apologize. So my victims have to live with that for the rest of their lives.

But in recovery, I found out that there was this clause about making amends, and it's called a living amends. A living amends is when you go out and do good deeds and you expect nothing in return. You just wake up every day and look for ways to serve other people. I got this little prayer that I say, and I'm going to give everybody this prayer because whatever faith you are, you can plug this prayer into your life too. I get up in the morning and say, "Hey, God, put in front of me what you need me to do today for you, and let me recognize that when I see it, because I don't want to miss whatever that thing is. Amen." That's it. My life is pretty simple when I live out that prayer every day.

Am I perfect about this? No, man. I'm in spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection, brother. I haven't figured out how to perfect this thing yet, but I do work on myself every day. I stumble, and I fall, and I get back up, and that's what being a coffee bean is all about. Do I have some days that I'm the carrot? You bet. There's some tough days out there that beat you down. Do I have days that I'm the egg? I've got a lot more egg days and carrot days, to be honest with you. I think the egg is a natural evolution of most human beings. We have a tendency to get angry at a situation before we do anything else. But I can always snap out of it and always become a coffee bean no matter what time of the day. Noon, 4 p.m., life's not going right, hit the pause button. Take a step back. Take a deep breath and just tell life, "I'm not going to live like that. I'm not going to be the carrot. I'm not going to be the egg." Then run and jump back in that pot of boiling water called life and tell life, "Turn it up. I got this, man. I can be a coffee bean too."

Ryan Hanley: To your point about how you approach negativity in your life, a comment on a social post or otherwise, whenever someone writes a post about how they would beat the shit out of me or knock me out, however they phrase it, I always respond, "Thank you. I'm going to work on that." Dude, the next thing, I'm telling you, not everyone, but three out of every 10, then they give just as long on advice. They immediately go, "Oh, bro, well, hey, man, here's what you do. Here's a box step routine." They become super nice. The first post is like, "You're a jerk, you're terrible. I'd beat the crap out of you." And then just by going, "Thanks, man. I'm gonna work on that," or "I appreciate the feedback," all of a sudden now they're my boxing coach. You flipped the script on them.

To your point about apologizing, I think so many people want to apologize and they hold it in for whatever reason. Every once in a while, like what your dad said, "Do things that I'm scared of to do things that I'm scared of." If it scares you to respond or apologize, try it once and see how it feels.

Dude, I want to finish with the time that we have left. I want to finish with your new book. I highly recommend it. I'll have it linked up. *The Coffee Bean* is amazing. I have a copy. I've given a copy to my older son. My younger son is working on it right now, the one that came in during the middle of the podcast. I love it. It's absolutely phenomenal. But *Six Times a Nickel*, let's talk about that book, where it comes from. You've got it on the screen here. If you're watching on YouTube, we'll have it linked up. Guys, this episode is coming out on release day, the same day that *Six Times a Nickel* goes live. We'll have it all linked up and you can go get the book. But tell us about what we're doing now.

Damon West: *Six Times a Nickel* — the title comes from prison slang for 65 years. Every 10 years in prison is a dime. Every five years is a nickel. I got 65 years by a jury in Dallas, so that's six times a nickel. Really what it is, Ryan, it's all the life lessons from a life sentence.

I told you the beginning of the book starts off with a question: "If someone took control of your life tomorrow, what's the first thing that would change?" My goal with this book is to give you the principles, the stories behind the principles I live by, and the applications of all these principles in my life that help me to not only answer that question and make that change, but hold on to that change. I want you to be able to make the change in your life that you're holding back on and hold on to your change too.

Every chapter is a principle I live my life by. The body of the chapter is the story behind how I learned the principle because I believe people learn from storytellers. We love good storytellers. We love stories about redemption, the underdog journey. We love stories that have sports — sports is the great uniter. But we really love true crime and prison stories. I've become a really good storyteller, Ryan. Every title of a chapter is a principle. The body of the chapter is the story behind where I learned the principle. The end of the chapter is the application of the principle in your life too.

I have learned a lot about writing books. This is my sixth book and probably going to be my final book, to be honest with you. Writing books is hard. I'm on the road. I'm so grateful for my life. I've got a lot of demand as a speaker right now. I'm on the road 20 to 25 days every month speaking somewhere, sharing this story with corporations, sports teams, school districts, associations. But writing books is hard, so I wanted to put it all into one book. This book right here will read like a movie because it's a life story that's the backdrop, but you're going to get the principles that I've turned my life around with, and you can use in your life too.

Ryan Hanley: I love it, Damon. Dude, you are a national treasure, bro. I love that you're out there telling your story. Your ability to take this incredible experience that you've had, that so many would have fallen apart through, and to share it in a way that while you said so many won't be able to relate because they won't have spent time in prison, you can grab onto it. That's what I loved about *The Coffee Bean*. I was like, "I will never, hopefully never, experience this life." But I felt like I was there with you. I was learning with you. And it's as meaningful to me today as when I read it. Dude, please just keep doing what you do, bro. I love it. I appreciate it.

Damon West: Thank you so much for your time.

Ryan Hanley: Thanks for having me on today.

Damon West: If anybody wants to find me, my website is damonwest.org. That's where people find me for speaking. Appreciate you, brother.

Ryan Hanley: Thanks, man.

[Outro begins]

Ryan Hanley: What if I told you that your biggest breakthrough is waiting on the other side of your biggest breakdown? What if the very thing you're afraid of — losing control, facing uncertainty, getting knocked down — is exactly what you need to discover who you're really meant to be? This podcast is for unreasonable people seeking unreasonable results. If you're tired of playing small, if you're frustrated with where you are versus where you know you should be, if you're ready to stop making excuses and start making moves, then you're in the right place.

My name is Ryan Hanley, and after getting fired from my third executive position, I finally realized something: God did not create me to work for someone else. That's when I founded Rogue Risk, bootstrapped it from the ground up, and sold it for seven figures in less than four years. This is also when I developed the RealityOS Framework, a leadership methodology that helps entrepreneurs find their signal in a world of noise.

Whether you're stuck in revenue growth, struggling with leadership, or simply know you're capable of more but can't figure out how to get there, this show will give you the clarity, tools, and inspiration you need to break through to the next level. So subscribe to The Ryan Hanley Show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want to go deeper down the rabbit hole, visit FindingPeak.com to join our community of leaders who refuse to accept ordinary results. This is the way.