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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays. I have a special guest here that traveled all the way to the ranch. We're here in Temecula, California at the Wild Jungle. 26 acres of animals. There's 188 animals outside to my left. There's a whole military training obstacle course for the Operation Blackside to my right. And sitting here at this table is a three-time best-selling author of a book called The Coffee Bean. He's going to tell you an amazing story.
of how he went from the jail cell to speaking in over a thousand stages around the planet. Please give a warm round of applause to Mr. David West. All right, Dan, thanks a lot, man. Dude, I've been, like, I'm getting to come to the ranch and seeing it, like, in person. I see the stuff that you post because I follow all your stuff. I follow Tarzan and stuff, too. Right.
And you drove me around this morning. I got to see it all in person. And it's so different seeing it in person. And the thing that we saw, the Zorse. The Zorse, yeah. Yeah, that was cool. It was magical. It was magical. It was like a unicorn. And I sent it to my little stepdaughter that's 11, and she'll get a kick out of it too. But it's like you have bought yourself an island here, like Fantasy Island. It's beautiful out here. I'm so impressed with what you've done, brother. Thank you. I'm glad you're here. Normally we are in an RV motorhome.
where I drive around the country to go to people. It worked out good timing. You were already speaking in Temecula, so you could just pop right over. Bada bing, bada boom, here we are. So on the Money Mondays, we keep the episodes to under 45 minutes. We try to be around 35 to 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes.
And so we want to be around that 40 minute mark. That way you guys can listen to all this as you're getting in and out of your car, going to your workout, going to work, etc. You get to hear about Damon West's amazing story and why he's spoken on so many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stages around the planet. So...
The way we do this is we talk about three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. Now, even though we're talking about money, not all things take money. Damon's also going to talk about charity-related efforts that don't exactly take cash. It's more about effort, time, and energy where he'll help people in prisons or help people stay out of prisons.
But first, we want to do a quick two-minute bio. Give everyone the idea of what's going on in your world so we can get straight to the money. Yeah, so you know, I listen to your podcast. I've listened to every episode, so I've been thinking, like, what is my two-minute version? Here it is. All right, so I go around. I'm a keynote speaker and best-selling author. I'm also a college professor because I went back to school and got a master's in criminal justice and became a professor at the University of Houston downtown teaching a class called Prisons in America. But that's a little side gig that I do. I only have one class.
But I go around sharing the story of the coffee bean. And the coffee bean message is a message that I got from a guy in Dallas County Jail named Mr. Jackson. And it was right after I was sentenced to life in prison back in 2009 for engaging in organized crime. Rico. Everybody's talking about Rico right now in America, right? I went down for Rico as the mastermind. And I'll tell everybody how Rico works. Yeah, that's what I went down for. I went down for Rico. I got sentenced to life in prison in 2009. So here, right? Yeah. So that's the whole story. Like I made...
I made parole. I made it out. But here's the deal. I'm not a free person because I'm not a free man because I'm on parole in the state of Texas until the year 2073. Come on. Yeah, man. I'm on parole the rest of my life. 50 more years? Yeah, 50 more years. I got out. It was 58, Dan. I'm chipping away at this thing, brother. But in 2009...
So the jury sentences me on May 18, 2009. My mom tells me that I can't—I mean, right after the trial's over, they give my parents five minutes with me, and they say, hey, listen. My mom's saying, listen, you can't go off and get in one of these Aryan Brotherhood-type gangs. No gangs. No tattoos. She said, no gangs, no tattoos. You come back as the man we raised.
or don't come back to us at all. Why does she think you're going to come back when you just got life in prison? Well, because I have a non-aggravated life sentence. And so this is a good question you asked because a lot of people are like, how did you get out? There's two kinds of felonies, two kinds of classes of felonies in Texas and in most states, aggravated and non-aggravated. Aggravated crimes are violent crimes. Crimes where there's a physical victim. Think murder, rape, assault, child molesters. Those are aggravated offenders.
My crimes were property crimes. It was a bunch of other meth addicts breaking into homes to sell off the goods for meth. And I was the ringleader of all those meth addicts. There was about a dozen people. They called it the Uptown Burglaries. It was the Uptown Burglary Crime Spree. They called me the Uptown Burglar. That was the name, the moniker I got from this crime spree. Sounds like a movie. It's going to be a movie. And it's going to be a wild movie. But the Uptown Burglary Crime Spree...
I was a stockbroker in Dallas in 2004, working for UBS. And another broker introduced me to meth one day. I'm sleeping at work. He wakes me up. He's like, you know, wake up, dude. He said, you can't sleep on this job. The markets are open. You're messing with people's money. He said, yeah. And so he says, come on down to the parking garage. I got something that'll pick you up. Wow. And so, and I'm into blow at this point. I mean, I'm not, it's not like I'm not doing drugs. I am into drugs and alcohol. Yeah.
But that day, he introduced me to meth for the first time. I'd never touched a drug like meth before, and I was instantly hooked, man. I mean, just like that. 18 months later, I'm living on the streets of Dallas. Wow. I'm homeless, dude. I've smoked everything, man. And that's how I did it. I smoked it. Oh, my God. I've smoked everything. I'm homeless, man. I live in dope houses. I've slept on park benches. And then I became a criminal to feed my addiction. And my crimes were property crimes. Back to your original question. So...
I committed a bunch of burglaries and other property crimes, thefts. Think about a crime where no one's home, never saw my victims, they never saw me, no weapons were used in the crime scene, no one got hurt physically. Now, it doesn't mean I didn't hurt people in different ways because I want to always say this, Dan. When I broke into people's houses, my victims...
I didn't just steal property from my victims. I stole something they'll never get back. That is their sense of security, brother. Exactly, their safety, yeah. I stole it. And I don't know if my victims ever get that back. I assume that they don't. And they'll live with that for the rest of their lives. And the thing about being on felony parole the rest of your life, in Texas they have a law that says you can't apologize to your victims. If you ever attempt to make an apology, they'll send you back to prison. So I'll never make an apology to them because...
It makes no sense for me to do that and go back to prison, right? I mean, I work a program recovery called AA. In AA, we have the steps. And on the eighth step, you have a list of all the people you've harmed. And the ninth step is when you make an amends to them, except when to do so would cause you or them harm. That's this category, because I can't...
Any percent of them actually know Damon West, the three-time best-selling author, is the one that broke into their house? Yes. Some of them have reached out to me in their own way. Most of it's not positive. Sure. And I get that. And you know what? And I own that. And every time I've ever had a victim that's reached out, it's been by email or through social media. You and I were talking about social media, the power of it. Yeah.
Every time it's happened, I turn over the communication to my parole officer, Ms. Braggs, and she'll say, you cannot respond. Wow. Yeah, and I can't. I can't respond. I can't apologize. I can't respond. I just have to take it. Fascinating. And she's like, that's part of the price you have to pay for what you did. And I get that. And I own that. I did. I did all the crimes. They said I did. But because my crimes were non-aggravated, it means I have a chance to make parole a lot sooner. Sure.
If you have an aggravated violent crime in Texas, you have to do half of your prison sentence before you see a parole voter. So if I had a... You have a life sentence. If you have a life sentence. Oh my God. In Texas...
This doesn't sound good. I still don't get it. Yeah, I mean, so in Texas, they stop calculating time at 60. Because 60 years is a natural life sentence. Because if you have to be 17 to go to prison, 60 on top of that, that's a human lifespan. So everything stops calculating at 60. So when someone says 65, which is what the jury gave me that day, they gave me 65. Or they say 99. It all means life. Because anything 60 and above is life.
So an aggravated offender has to do 30 calendar years before they see parole for the first time. Oh my God.
And Dan, I live on the life sentence building. I live on the life sentence building of a maximum security, of a super max. And what they do is they take all the lifers and they put them on one building to segregate them out because they want you to get escaping off your mind. So you have to live on that building for five. You can't come off the building. It's an island. It's the most dangerous place I've ever seen in my life because there's no hope on this island. It's the life sentence building. 432 people. Seven buildings. It's a building I lived on on the styles unit. Yeah.
Everybody's got life, man. And it's the most dangerous world you've ever been in. Right, because what do they have to lose? Not much. I was on a pod one time. There was 48 men on this one pod. G pod, one section. 48 men on this pod. 12 of the guys had life without parole. One-fourth of your pod are nuclear bombs. They'll never see a parole officer. Nothing to lose for these guys, right? Right.
I have non-aggravated life. So this is the deal. The final answer to your question. Non-aggravated means that you can see parole after you've done 25% of a life sentence. Now, you're good with math. That's 15. So 15 years. But if you're non-aggravated, you get access to something that an aggravated offender doesn't get. You get access to good time credit and work time credit. So here's how good time works. Every day that I'm in prison and I don't get in any trouble, I get another day. I get one for one of good time.
Every day that I'm there and I'm willing to work because inmates really do run the asylum.
Every day I'm willing to work, I get a half a day credit. So when I got to six calendar years of real time, there's six more years of good time. There's 12. There's three years of work time. That was 15. Six times 2.5. And I was eligible for parole, you know, and they got to me finally is right at the seven year mark. I was eligible for parole and I actually made it. Most people never make their first parole, not seven years. I was pretty sure I would do 10, maybe 15 years on that life sentence. And incidentally, Dan,
15 years is this year. It's 2023. 2008 is when I went in. 2023 is when I thought I was getting out. Literally this year. But I've been out for eight years now. But here's the story that caught me. So right after my parents gave me that talk, I'm in Dallas County Jail. I got two months before the prison bus comes to pick me up. And I'm asking every guy that's in county jail,
How am I gonna survive? What am I gonna do? And every guy I talked to in there, man, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, they all say the same thing. You have to get into a gang, man. Don't listen to your mom. Your mom's not even your family. They said the gang is your family. Obey the gang. But there was this one guy that was so different, this old black man named Mr. Jackson. And Mr. Jackson, well, he was a career criminal. He's been in and out of prison his entire life. Most positive guy I've ever met though, Dan. He had a smile on his face everywhere he went.
And every morning he would come up and check on me. He'd come to my bunk and he'd pick me up like a ray of sunshine in a dark place with this positive energy.
So one morning he comes up to me, and I know my time is limited in county jail. The prison bus is about to come pick me up, and he's like, listen, West, don't listen to these idiots about getting into a gang, but let me tell you what prison is going to really be like. So he tells me, the first thing you need to understand about prison, it's all about race. He said race runs the whole institution. The inmates want it to be about race. Everybody breaks off in their own racial group when they get to the life sentence building, prison in general. He said when you walk in the door, the white gangs get the first dips on you because you're white. That means you have to fight all of them off.
Aryan Brotherhood, Aryan Circle, White Knights, Woods. He named all the white gangs. He said, if you survive that, now you fight the black gangs. And the white gangs will send the black gangs after you. So the Crips, the Bloods, the gangster disciples, they're all going to want to get a piece of this white guy that won't get in line and get with his own race. Wow.
And he said, but if you survive all that and you can survive all that, you'll earn the right to walk alone. He said the strongest man in prison always walks alone. He told me the truth about fighting, Dan. And this is why people, when they hear this story, it gravitated. People love stories that have these three elements to it. They love stories of overcoming adversity, inspirational stories, stories that have sports, and then they love stories about prison. And so this is where it really gets into it.
He says, you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights. And he said, some days you're going to win and some days you're going to lose. He said, do not worry about winning these fights. He said, just show up and fight. No one in prison cares if you win. They just want to see if you're going to defend yourself. And so he told me, he said, I need you to imagine prison like it's a pot of warm water. He said, you have three choices how you're going to respond to this pot of warm water. You can be like the carrot that becomes soft, the egg that becomes hard in a pot of warm water, or you can be like a coffee bean, which changes the pot of warm water into a pot of coffee.
And he said the coffee bean is the only thing that can change the water west. He said the carrots are changed by the water. The eggs are changed by the water. You're going to see a lot of those in there. But coffee beans change the water. They're the change agent. In fact, my first book, my autobiography is called The Change Agent. And he's telling me, he's like, you know, everybody in life puts out energy, negative or positive. Whatever kind of energy you put out, you attract back. The law of attraction. We know this. And you see this all the time where you go. You attract positive people.
So he's telling me, he said, you can't walk around with a mean look on your face or look down. People that are negative attracted that. He said, walk around with a smile on your face. No matter where you go, no matter what happens. Walk around jail with a smile on your face. Walk around prison, have a grin on your face. Really? Yeah. He said, just, just do it, man. Just, just trust me on this. He said, walk around with a smile on your face.
And he said, you are, this is what he said too. He said, you're going to be a light in a dark place and they're going to want to extinguish that light. They're going to try to kill you, man. What are you smiling at? Yeah. But he said, if you get through this on the other side of that, you are going to be the change agent in that place. You'll be the one that attracts other positive people. And the other positive inmates, the other coffee beans in prison, they'll find you. He said, there's other coffee beans out there. He said, they'll find you, but you have to be that beacon of light in there. And the last thing he ever said to me, the last words he ever spoke to me on earth was,
He said, West, be a coffee bean.
And that was it, man. The prison bus comes to pick me up. I go serve. I go start serving this life sentence. And one of the toughest prisons in Texas, man, the Mark Stiles unit in Beaumont, Texas. This is like one of the toughest prisons in Texas. It's one of the toughest prisons in America. And remember, Dan, I went back to school after I got out of prison and I got a master's in criminal justice. And I teach a class at the, well, I'm not teaching this semester. I'm just too busy. But the class is called Prisons in America. So I'm the only professor on earth to teach a prisons class at a university who lived in prison. Right.
So I know a lot about tough prisons and the journey, the story that I talk about with all these audiences is about how I was able to transform myself in that pot of warm water because there's no bigger pot of warm water. You know, we talk about the fears people have in life. We talked about, you know, public speaking snakes and stuff like that.
But almost universally, I hear from people that one of their biggest fears is to have to go to prison. And there's a good reason why. Prison's a very difficult place to live, difficult place to survive. It's like the movie Shawshank, one of the best movies ever made. But it's the best prison movie ever made because it depicts the fact that prison is a very hopeless place. There's no hope in prison. And, um...
I decided I was going to be the face of hope. And that's what I was in there. And the parole board saw the transformation made. They saw that I became that coffee bean. In fact, you know, the instructions from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice are to go out in society and find more coffee beans. And so I get out of prison.
November 16th, 2015. My parents are waiting there to pick me up and they bring me back home to their house. And so, I mean, I'm going to paint this picture for your audience. So I'm 40 years old. I just got out of prison. I live in my parents' spare bedroom. I got a job making minimum wage. I'm on parole for the rest of my life. You know, I mean, if I would have had like a Tinder profile, it would have sucked. It would have been terrible, right? But I wasn't on any dating apps and stuff like that. But when I got out, when I was in prison, I started working on myself and I thought, okay,
You know, if I could transform myself inside this place, I would have a great story to tell and I can motivate people and inspire people. But I've got to I've got to be able to do it in here and become the best version of myself possible. Like my mom wanted me to be. And so when I got out, I wanted to go around and speak. But it was very hard. No one was letting a guy that just got out of prison come in. You can't just knock on the door of a school and say, hey, I just got out of prison. I want to talk to your kids. They may lock you back up.
So I had to convince this law enforcement officer and this judge in my area to sponsor me to take me in. And it was hard at first. And I didn't have a lot of places to go speak. But I started doing it in my little area, southeast Texas, where I live. And it started catching on a little bit.
Didn't make any money at first, you know, and we talk about making money on this podcast. And look, when I started doing this, there wasn't any money involved. It was a passion. And I think one of the ways to answer the question, how do you make money, is you provide a service to other people. You provide something that is of value. And now I'm the guy that other potential speaker or other people that want to be speakers reaches out to on social media. They're like, hey, I want to be a speaker. I want to do that.
My first question is, how do you add value to the audience that you're going to speak to? What do you do to add value to them? Because that's really what it's about, is adding value back in the world. And it was tough. You know, the first year, I think I made $500 speaking. But again, money wasn't the thing driving me. It was a passion. But then people started hearing about the story. And do I have time to tell a story about how my life transformed? We don't really do stories here. Okay. I didn't want to teach about money. Yeah, let's go about money. So anyway, but...
Eight years down the road, I've turned the speaking platform into a multiple seven-figure business. I mean, for the last three years, I've made over seven figures a year speaking, going around all over the world, sharing the story of the coffee bean with audiences. So when you first got out of jail, they give you $200, right? Like walkie money? They give you $100 gate money. Gate money. Yeah. So how do you go from gate money to speaker money? Like what's that look like? Yeah. Yeah.
So I had, I got my $100 gate money, and luckily I had a job at a law firm right when I got out of prison. I did my own legal work when I was in prison. Really? Yeah. And I went to law, I was trying to get myself out. Biggest motivator in the world, right? Your freedom? For sure. So I go into the law library, and there was a guy named Mr. Brandon. In my book, I call him Mr. Winston, but Stephen Brandon. Yeah.
This old guy in prison showed me how to use the law library, gave me a tutorial for one day, two bags of coffee is what he charged me to teach me about the books, the Black's Law Dictionary, stuff like that. Put together my own writ, tried to get myself out, but these lawyers took notice of my writ and they said, hey, look, man, you put together a hell of a writ for a guy who's never been to law school. If you ever get out, come see us. We've got a job for you.
So that was my first job out of prison. I was working at a law firm. And on the side, I would go and do some speaking stuff. For free? For free. Because that's the thing about it, Dan. I mean, I had to get in front. You got to get in reps, right? You got to get in reps. And the first, I tell people all the time, the first two years I was out of prison, there weren't a lot of places for me to speak. But in my parents' spare bedroom, there was a mirror. It just happened to be there when I moved in. Almost every night for two years, Dan.
After I would get home from work, get home from the gym, go to my meetings, I'd get in front of that mirror and I'd practice the presentation that I'm doing today in front of that mirror. I got a rep in every day for almost two years, man. And that's how I got good at my craft. I was willing to put in the work and build that presentation up. Even if I didn't have an audience, I got my presentation in every day. And then the real break came in 2018. John Gordon reaches out to me because Dabo Sweeney is a mutual friend of ours, the coach at Clemson.
And Dabo tells John about me. And John's like, hey, man, he reaches out to me. He's like, Dabo gave me your number. He told me your story. He 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'll call it the coffee bean. Guys, John Gordon has 26 books.
Let's give you context of who he's talking about. John Gordon has 26 books. One of the biggest motivational speakers and authors in the world. This guy, he's massive. And when he reaches out to me blindly in 2018, hell, I know who John is. I follow John on Twitter. But I'm like, John, how do you know who I am? And he's like, Dabo, man. Dabo is the one. He's the connector. Dabo is a connector, too. He's an incredible guy. And so we write the book, The Coffee Bean, and it comes out in 2019, and
10 years exactly since I first heard the coffee bean in a jail cell from Mr. Jackson in 2009. And it rocketed me to a whole different level. And John gave me some of the best advice about building my brand that I've ever heard anybody get. And it's something I've always held on to. John told me this when we were writing the book. He said, Damon,
He said, your message is powerful. Your story is powerful. Stick with it. Do not change your message. Your message is be a coffee bean. He said, stick with that thing. Do not ever change your message. He said, because what happens to people a lot of times is they they don't see the results fast enough. You're trying to build a brand. You don't see the results fast enough. And then you're like, well, let me change my message. Maybe that'll help. Well, now all you do is just confuse people. Are you the coffee bean guy or are you this other guy? Right.
But he said, stick with that. He said, Damon, if you do that, one day you'll be known as the coffee bean guy. And that'll be something pretty valuable to be known as, pretty important in society to be known as. He said, people know me as the energy bus guy. One of the first books I ever wrote. But if you can stick with your brand, you'll be something one day. So how does someone that wants to become a speaker...
And they're putting those reps in. They're doing free events. They're throwing their own events. They're going to more free events. When does that shift? When do they know they can finally say, hey, pay me $500 or $1,000 or $2,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 or $25,000, et cetera? When do they know or what's that turning point when you can actually decide to charge to speak? I think a good barometer for that, it's a very good question, Dan, because I think a good barometer for that,
is when you're starting to get calls back from people that may have been in the audience when you spoke at an event. And like when you're starting to get more gigs because someone was in the audience and heard you speak and they reach out to you said, hey, I was I was at this event you spoke at. And, you know, it's great because you want to always have. And this is something you talk about, too. All your social media should look uniform. All your different social media platforms you're on should have the same picture, all the same information. But you should have that in front of people so they can find you and your Web site, too.
When people start reaching out and finding you from an event you spoke at, then you know you have something that is of value. And then you start charging. It gives you more confidence. And then you start, you know, you can start making some money off this thing.
But the catch 22 is that most of most of us to start out. I don't know. I can only speak for my my level of what I did speaking. I started out. I didn't make anything. I didn't I didn't know I could make anything. I just knew that I had a story to tell. And I felt like this is one of the reasons God got me out in the first place. And then the money just came. And John told me.
John gave me some good advice. He asked me one day when the coffee bean was on the Wall Street Journal bestselling list for like four or five weeks, man. It was unheard of what this book was doing. And now the book is all over the world. It's in every language in the world. Chinese, Spanish, Arabic. It's got a global publishing deal. John's like, what are you charging? I told him. He said, no. He said, now, today, your rates are this. And he said, you start asking for that. And the number he threw out at me, I was like,
man, I don't know, John, I don't know about asking. I'll tell you what he told me back then. This is kind of funny looking now. He's like, ask for $10,000. He said, that's what you need to start. That's what you need to be at now. And I'm like, $10,000, that's so much. And it was so much money back then. It's a lot of money. But I did. I started asking and I started getting it. But if you don't ask for that, another thing, advice for people wanting to be speakers is
And this is something I learned from another speaker. One thing is you have to always be willing to be coachable. You have to be coachable, be willing to learn because anybody can be a teacher, man. And some people teach you how to do things the wrong way. Some people do things the wrong way. They teach you how not to do something. Right. Right.
So another speaker shared this with me. He looked at my website. He said, hey, man, look, your contact form is great. Your website's awesome. But you don't have a space in your contact form for people to put their speaker budget in there. Why don't you have that? Because if you had that, then they could tell you what their budget is. And now you know what numbers you're working with, you know.
I was like, oh my God. So I put a speaker budget button on there and it changed my life. It changed my whole business platform because now people were showing me that I've been leaving money on the table a lot, you know, and that's, that's important. I mean, because there's nothing wrong with making money, making money. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, it's, and then when you find your niche, if you're a speaker that you add value to places, the money will come. So on the author side, put your author hat on, someone decides they want to write a book.
It's a big undertaking. It does change their life because now authors, you know, part of their brand, personal brand forever. What is that step when it's time to like, I'm going to write a book like the coffee bean. I want to finally write a book. What are the steps that someone needs to do to really make that decision and like figure out what that ethos is of that book? And then how the heck do they make money from a book? Good question. Damn, these are good questions. All right. So my job, let's, yeah, let's go, but let's go, let's unpack it backwards. The money for the book, because this is what usually people in, in,
damn like I can't believe this is my life I tell my wife that almost daily I can't believe this is my life so a lot of people reach out to me a lot about two things speaking and writing right I've had a lot of success in both in eight years so writing a book people are like hey can you connect me with a publisher with a literary agent whatever and I tell them the same thing every time first of all publisher you got to ask yourself do you think you can sell 10,000 copies of a book because if you think you can sell 10,000 copies now it's time to go talk to a publisher and
But if you don't think you're going to sell more than 10,000 copies, self-publish this thing. Because there's nothing wrong with self-publishing a book, you know? But if you want to go into being a writer, first of all, you need to go into it with the mindset that the likelihood of you making money being a writer, you might want to find a second job. Because there's not a lot of money selling books. And Dan, I mean, I've sold a lot of books. The Coffee Bean's probably sold half a million copies. I've made good money selling it.
But the thing I know about books is you've got to keep writing books to be an author. And like I'm right now, I'm like I'm under a deadline with my publisher to produce another book. It'll be my sixth book. I've written five now. I got to do my sixth book coming up. So you got to keep feeding the beast. But sitting down to write a book, this is what I tell people to the very first like pages of a book. I give an author seven pages to get my attention.
If you don't get my attention in seven pages, you're out of there, man. And I got that in prison. I read probably a book every other day in prison. I read voraciously when I was in prison. And I give an author seven pages. If it didn't work, I'd throw the book at the cell wall. That was done, man. You've got to catch people's attention right away in a book, especially with these short attention spans. I think you call it the ADHD attention span that people have. Think about social media, how quick they want to change screens. In the first couple pages, you've got to get people's attention. So you've got to do something. I believe...
storytelling is one of the best ways to write any kind of a book and you can write a business book whatever you can write a informational kind of book using storytelling to do it you know you have a principle you tell a story behind that principle then you have the application of the principle it's almost like the the formula that john gordon uses for all his books he uses storytelling a lot to tell about these principles and i think that's what people like it's they can digest and
And break it down into, you don't want long chapters. You don't want a long book. You talked about this on one of your shows the other day, long text messages. Think about the same thing with a book. You don't have to have long chapters or a big book.
A lot of people look at a big book. Overwhelmed by it. Overwhelmed by it. But 140 pages? They can knock that out. So I think the formula is to keep it simple and keep it as short as possible. Both my books are under 100 pages and they look like a guide. How to set up your business for under $1,000. How to set up your personal brand for under $1,000. And I'm writing my third book, which will be my final of the series, called How to Set Up Your Events for Under $1,000.
And same thing, maybe under 100 pages, nice and easy. But so many people tell me, yeah, I breezed through the book in one day. I'm like, perfect. Good. I'm not trying to overwhelm you. Okay, so we talked a bit about speaking. We talked a bit about being an author.
Now, you've got money. You start to make some money. You're getting $10K, $25K, $50K, $100K, $10K, $25K, $50K, $100K. That adds up when you're doing a lot of events every single month across the country. Like you said, you're doing seven figures a year. And I've done events for all those numbers you've done now. Right. All the way up to $100. Exactly. When is it the time for you to start thinking about investing in things? And what interests you from the investing side of the world?
Good question. So here's the deal about investing, too, is like I came from a world where I was a broker. I was studying to be a broker at UBS, getting ready to take my Series 7 when I first get hooked on meth. Right. So I understand investment of money in the traditional sense through the exchanges. I understand that. But I don't want to be responsible for my money. So I have a broker. I'm not going to be the one to make this. It's kind of like the whole idea that, you know, anybody, anybody that represents himself in a court of law is a fool for a client.
So on my end with what I've been through and the rules, the SEC, and this is just strictly with me because the Security Exchange Commission does not like felons near stock market. So I don't want to get their attention in any way. So I've turned it over to a broker. Now that's a very small percentage of the money that I make. The other thing I've done with my money that I've made is I've invested in, first of all, I want to say this.
Keep the main thing the main thing is what I learned a long time ago. Like if my main thing is the speaking business, how do I pour in more into the speaking business? And so there were different ways that I could do to invest in me and grow my business, and I've done that. I'm still doing different things. One of them was getting a publicist out of Beverly Hills to help me get more exposure out there, and they recently got me a People Magazine article. So investing in yourself. Investing in yourself. Right.
Keep the main thing, the main thing. And while this business is building, then you have extra money. The next investment I made was my wife, my wife, Kendall. She runs the business side of the speaking company, but there was an opportunity there. We were getting ready to build this house. We're working on building a house right now and we're in the process of it. But when we were clearing the land, this guy that came out there with the excavators and everything said, hey, I'm looking to sell my company. Do you know anybody want to buy it?
So I sat down with my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, and my wife, and I said, hey, we could buy this thing, and we could actually put it in my wife and mother-in-law's name. And it's a female-owned business, and it's a demolition and construction company called Divas of Destruction. So, yeah. So my wife and my mother-in-law have their own company, and some of the money I've made and my father-in-law's made have seeded this company. And, you know, start a business is tough, brother. I mean, it's, you know, this business is right under two years old, and
And you can see when someone has to make payroll, that's a really like wild thing to watch, man. I've watched my wife and them, um,
you know, making that payroll every week. And it's, um, that's somebody that when, when someone's had to make payroll, I'll listen to them about business stuff, you know, because that's a hard thing to do. I got thousands of employees. Yeah. So you, you, you know, this man, when you talk to all the companies, yeah. When you were talking about that with the merger that y'all just, you just did with the events thing. I mean, that's a lot of people, man. And making payroll is, is tough and they don't have thousands of, well, they got like 30 employees now, but I mean, there's a lot. Yeah. 30 is a lot.
So there's been struggle, growth. A lot of lessons you learn, some of the best lessons you learn are when your money's involved and you lose it because you make a bad investment. So here's why I made some bad investments, right? And this is why I say keep the main thing the main thing. So as we're building Divas of Destruction, my father-in-law says, hey, let's go build some houses, you know, because now we control some of the construction equipment, stuff like that. We'll go build some houses. This sounded great in 2021.
The houses got finished in February of 2023. Guess what people aren't buying right now? Houses. You know, your interest rates going up, what, 7-something percent right now? So people are scared off from the market, which to me is a little bit crazy. Like, if you want to buy a house and you're saying, well, I'm going to wait until the interest rates go down—
That's a little bit nutty because interest rates may never go down. Not during election year. Yeah. So we just have a couple years. If there's something you really want to do, just go do it. And you can refinance later. Right. But I'm sitting on three houses in Bridge City, Texas right now. They're luxury homes that my father-in-law and I built. And Dan, in December, they turned one years old. And we haven't been able to sell any of them. And so that'll be a million dollars that's lost if we can't sell those houses. Yeah.
But you're gonna make some some bad investments along the way, but you'll learn some big lessons from that, too So since Damon mentioned payroll, I'm gonna walk you guys through my payroll life because I like to give you guys behind the scenes exact details I tell you about my houses my cars my investments my animals I spend ninety two hundred bucks a week and hey from feeding my animals outside like I walk you through real life details So on the payroll side, I have elevator studio, which is also the masterminds and everything beneath that which is 18 employees and
Now with this new investment in the partnership with Aspire Tour and Collective Influence, a parent company, we have 85 employees and growing, mostly based in Jacksonville, Florida. Cards and Coffee. We have nine retail stores, 36 employees. Most of our employees range from $3,000 to $10,000 a month in salary. Mostly it's $3,000 to $6,000, and then some executives would be around $8,000 to $10,000.
On some of the other companies like Elevator Studio or Masterminds, et cetera, you have some employees that are making $10,000 a month, $12,000 a month, and the super high level are getting $20,000 a month, $25,000 a month because to keep them, you've got to make it competitive.
That's a lot. That's a good salary. Right. So you can start to add up what's happening here on Everbull side. Me and some friends own 17 of the locations. There's 140 employees amongst those locations. Parent company. I don't even know anymore because we have 70 something locations open. There must be between 600 and 800 employees now. Everbull is a parent company. I don't own that. I'm just one of the big investors in it. I do own the majority of six or 17 of those locations with 140 employees.
here at the ranch we're at black site ranch the wild jungle we have 12 full-time employees just to focus on the animals not to counting the landscaping and everything that goes on with 26 acres here at the ranch so that's elevator cars and coffee we got the ranch the mastermind business we have the spiratory collective influence i'm trying to think i got some other companies
And then from the investment side, obviously, I don't count those as my payroll because that's not my monthly overhead. But those companies collectively have thousands of employees because I've done 43 angel investments personally. Last two years, our syndicate, Elevator Syndicate, you guys can see that at elevatorsyndicate.com, raised $44 million for those companies. We put in $3 to $6 million per company. They've now hired hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of more employees, which is almost like charity to me in the sense of,
It's kind of like the teaching the fish instead of you just give them a fish. By funding $44 million in companies the last two years, we're creating hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of jobs, hopefully thousands of jobs.
so that's a little bit of my behind the scenes on the payroll side i'm trying to think of what i'm missing there's a lot of moving parts here of my world but i want you guys to think about most of the time for your overhead your employees are going to make between three and five grand three and six grand two grand four grand five grand a month depending on the city or state that you're in okay that's going to be higher in california lower in some midwest states and an average out or dollar cost average based on the state you're in also based on the income and taxes the tax bracket that you're in based on your state
When you go get high level executives, you're talking about six grand and 10 grand a month and more, especially if you're in California, Miami, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, some of these top tier cities, you're going to have some people you're going to try to wrestle with to get them for 10 grand, 12 grand, 15 grand a month, which is crazy to think about when you need more than one of them.
So really consider for yourself the most biggest reason, the main reason that a lot of companies fail is their overhead gets too high. So if you think about from my perspective, when I walked you through Elevator Studio, this is a company that's done over $60 million. I have 18 employees.
where vayner media has 900 employees or more gary's probably got a thousand plus employees now it's a very big overhead but he's building a multi-billion dollar company there's risk reward to that scenario i did elevator studio i have no partners no investors no shareholders just me and my ceo are the only ones that own that company but i don't want to scale it i like the 60 million dollar number i like 18 employees i like low overhead even with cars and coffee
Every one of our stores that we open is three to five employees. That's it. Yeah. I keep our rent between three grand, eight grand a month. I keep our overhead of three to five employees. Let's scale it. You look at Everbull. Those stores are like 500 to 1500 square feet. So your rent's like two grand to six grand a month. They
The employees make $15 to $20 an hour. You just think about what the things I'm trying to scale, I need to be able to replicate it. And that's why I'm so obsessed with Everbowl is I don't have to hire chefs. I don't need managers. I can hire high school kids and college kids that are happy to work there. They're making a good $15 to $20 an hour serving blueberries and raspberries and strawberries. And you have an endless source of potential employees whenever you need to fill in the spot because you're going to have to do that.
You lose a chef at your fancy restaurant, phew. That's tough. Good luck finding another chef. That's really tough. Anyway, so I digress. We're going to go over to the last section, which we're going to talk about charity. Can I say something about that real quick? Heck yeah, go for it. Because I listen to all your stuff, man. And so my wife and I were listening to one of your episodes, and you were talking about the payroll side. Because one of the things you said you've done is you've helped companies make payroll. So their company, Divas of Destruction, they do a lot of work in the—they have a lot of refineries where I live in Southeast Texas. Biggest refinery in the world is in Port Arthur, where I was born. Yeah.
But they do a lot of work inside the plants. Well, here's the deal when you work inside the plants. You get paid net 30. So if you're making payroll every week, but you get net 30, you've got to be able to cover payroll for four straight weeks without any money coming in. And you said that you've done that with companies before, too. And we didn't do that. We got this close to having to do that with a company to help us make the ends meet on that.
But that was a lot of out-of-pocket expense that came from the speaking business to fund that because, you know, 30 people covering payroll for four weeks before you see your money back on that first week. For sure, it's a lot.
That was tough, but we've, we survived it. We got through it, Dan. We got through it. And I mean, you know, knock on wood, you're going to have overhead. You're going to have events happen, stuff like that. But yeah, man, it's I learned a lot about starting a business by making mistakes. And I've learned a lot about watching other people's mistakes and not want to make those. And I learned a lot from listening to shows like yours, brother. Last section. We talk about charity. How do you give it away to the people?
Now, as I've mentioned before, charity is not only about money. It can be your time, effort, and energy, the power of your cell phone, the power of your actions, the butterfly effect of inviting a bunch of people to get behind a cause, whether it's a toy drive, Thanksgiving food drive, helping the homeless, helping children, helping people in prison. Walk us through why you're passionate about it. I think I know why you're passionate about it, but walk us through how you do it. What's the concept behind you and prison reform? Yeah, so...
Whenever I was in prison, Dan, one of the hardest things to see was these men I'm locked up with. They would get letters from their family or on the phone. They have prison phones and their phone calls or visits. And they would come back there crying. They're broken men. And I was like, hey, what's wrong? Man, it's my son or my daughter. They're doing this or doing that. They want to get involved with this or that. We can't afford it. I'm in here. There's no dad at home, right? And I'm...
Um, and there's the concern you could see it in these men. They're going to, those kids are going to get on the same path as them because generational incarceration is a very real thing. And I always thought to myself, man, if I ever get out of prison and I build a platform up, this is one of the things I want to address. So, uh,
I started a foundation called the Be A Coffee Bean Foundation. It's a 501c3. And what I would tell people about giving your money away, there's different levels of charitable organizations. I think, you know, the ones like mine, you can get 60% back. You know, it's a 60% tax deduction. There's no 100% one that I've seen out there. But 60% is where you come in at the 501c3 level.
But I started this foundation off because I was like, okay, I'm going to address this. And my wife and I put our money into it. We raised money for it. We have a program called Coffee Bean CARES. CARES is an acronym. It stands for Cultivating Activities and Relationships Through Extracurricular Scholarships. What we do at CARES is we say, hey, look, any child in America that has an incarcerated parent anywhere,
You are eligible for a one-year scholarship for $2,500 per year for any extracurricular activity you want to do. Say a little boy wants to play t-ball or baseball or select sports or a little girl wants to take dance or a little boy wants to take dance. Whatever. Piano lessons, guitar. We've got a little girl that wanted to take guitar lessons, so we bought her a guitar, found her a guitar teacher. You know, her dad's in prison.
We give the family member, the guardian, the parent, whatever that's taking care of the kid, $2,500 a year, and they can apply it. And it's an honor system. We don't track it. We don't make sure he's in his receipts and stuff like that. But up to $2,500 a year, we will provide to make sure that they have access to extracurricular activities. That's one of the reasons we do it, to keep the kids busy. But the other reason is we want the parent that's incarcerated, the man or woman that's in prison, to be able to take credit for this scholarship.
So now they have something positive to talk about in phone calls and letters from prison, right? Now the visits and visitation. You know, the dad can say to his daughter, how's those dance lessons I got you? Because a guy in prison doesn't have any money. You know, you can't pay for dance lessons with soups and coffee and stamps. You know, you can't pay for select sports. And select sports are expensive, man. My little stepdaughter takes, you know, dance competitions. Select dance. It's expensive. But we want to rebuild that parent-child bond. That's one of the things I think is really important. So we put a lot of effort and our money behind...
that initiative um another thing we do is we try to help out locally with you know youth football in our area youth sports in our area just different things that people reach out to us and say hey you know can you donate some time or some money to this we do a lot of money to that locally one of the things that all right so this is one of the things i got really heavy with and during covid the texas department of criminal justice who is the people that own me till 2073 they have my parole they reached out to me the parole board reached out to me and said hey listen
Could you create a curriculum for the prison system that can teach other men and women how to think like you? Because they said this could be a huge shift in the mindsets of prisoners. If we could teach them how to have the principles Damon West has in life, then you can change the way people think. And that could change their family trees forever. Could you build a curriculum? I'm like, I've never built a curriculum, but I'll figure out how to do it. So.
The curriculum launched last year. It's called Be the Change Prison Curriculum. It's all out of my pocket. I have a partner in it. We pay for it. Everything's out of pocket. And every four months, we graduate a class with 30 men. And these graduation ceremonies are incredible, Dan. And I put a lot of money into these ceremonies because I want them to be something that people talk about in prison.
On one side of the chapel in the prison are the 30 guys graduating. They all have caps and gowns on because a lot of these men have never worn a cap and gown. They've never graduated from anything. On the other side of the chapel, there's 30 men that are about to take the class next. They're seeing what success looks like.
And so the warden, the prison directors let me run the graduation. What else do you want, Damon? Well, here's what I want. I want family members to be there to see these men in caps and gowns. So the family members are there. Their mothers, their fathers, their wives, their kids get to come in to see dad dressed up in a cap and gown. They see the success. Another thing we do at the ceremony is I have really nice food brought in. Food's a very big motivator in prison, Dan. It's hard to get good food in prison. Like food is horrible in prison by design.
So I bring in, I cater in, I get a good meal. And I always have to cater or bring the meal in about 30 minutes into an hour's presentation, an hour of graduation ceremony. Because I want those guys to start smelling that food. Because once the guys start smelling, it's like a Pavlonian response, man. You start drooling and stuff like that. And when the ceremony's over, I tell all the guys that are just graduating, all right, you men that have graduated,
we're going to practice some of the stuff we learned. Servant leadership, Dan, I think is the secret to life. The secret to life is serving others, helping other people reach their goals in life. When we're helping other people, that's when we're at our best. So I tell these guys that have just graduated, you're servant leaders now, and leaders eat last. You're going to get up and serve everybody in this chapel, all these other inmates, all the other family members, everybody there, the guards, everybody. And when you're done serving everybody, then you get to eat too. And trust me on this, there's enough food to go around. Because the first thing they're thinking is, man, there won't be any food left.
There's plenty of food. I buy extra. But I want these men to understand that delayed gratification, self-control, and service above self. That's what it's all about, man. Serving other people. And so I do a lot with that. Another thing I do. Got to wrap it up.
Okay. I want to keep it under 40 minutes. We're already way over. So another thing I do is the guy that taught me the coffee bean story in county jail, Mr. Jackson. I went out to try to find him when I got out of prison. He was dead. So I found his family and I started a scholarship in his name. He's from the inner city of Dallas.
So in his old high school every year, Dallas Lincoln, I put $10,000 every year into a trust for a scholarship in his name. The James Land Baker II Bia Coffee Bean Scholarship. His family picks the winner every year. So one little boy or one little girl gets that scholarship every year. And then the last thing is I've got four guys that were really good to me in prison. One of them is the guy that taught me how to use the law library.
every month I put $100 in their books. They don't have family to take care of, but they were just kind to this person named Damon West that passed through their life one day in prison. And because of that kindness, I reward them every month with taking care of them for the rest of their lives.
All right, guys, you're listening to the Money Mondays here with Damon West, three-time bestselling author. Check out his book called The Coffee Bean. Also visit us on themoneymondays.com. As you know, we do a Zoom call every Monday at 4 o'clock PST where I do live Q&A. Either myself or one of our executives will do speeches there. I'll probably get Damon to jump in there one of these Mondays.
to do a speech and then he'll do live q a in there so you can go to moneymondays.com to join us there that does cost 200 bucks a month we then donate all the proceeds to the toy drive we have the world's largest toy drive coming up in december from december 2nd to the 17th we're going to 10 cities in 15 days don't ask me how but we're going to do it for our 10 year anniversary so as i always say we all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money i think it's rude to not talk about money and that's why we're here talking about
literally every detail from prison to rent to payroll, overhead and everything in between to have these blunt discussions because it's important to have these topics talked about since we grew up thinking that we couldn't talk about it. Now we can. That's the concept of this podcast. So keep sharing it. We've been number one on the entrepreneur category for 136 days in a row. That's all because of you guys commenting, liking, sharing, reviewing. Forward to your friends. Repost us and we'll see you guys next Monday.