Season 3, Episode 9: Damon West

<p>For this episode, Danny talks with keynote speaker Damon West. </p> <p data-renderer-start-pos="170">Damon West, M.S. Criminal Justice, is a college professor, internationally known keynote speaker and <em data-renderer-mark="true">Wall Street Journal </em>best-selling author of <em data-renderer-mark="true">The Coffee Bean: A simple Lesson to Create Positive Change</em>, which <em data-renderer-mark= "true">Forbes’ </em>listed in the “Top Twenty Books You Need to Read to Crush 2020.”</p> <p data-renderer-start-pos="454">His autobiography, <em data-renderer-mark="true">The Change Agent: How a Former College QB Sentenced to Life in Prison Transformed His World</em>, vividly tells how he transformed the pot of boiling water that is a Texas maximum-security prison into a pot of coffee.</p> <p data-renderer-start-pos="620">During their conversation, Damon talks about the experiences that changed his life. At 20 years old, he was a Division 1 starting quarterback at the University of North Texas, when he suffered a career ending injury. He turned to hard core drugs to cope with disappointments of life. After graduation, he worked in the United States Congress, was a national fundraiser on a U.S. Presidential campaign and eventually trained to be a stock-broker for United Bank of Switzerland (UBS). One day at UBS, he was introduced to methamphetamines; he became instantly hooked—and the lives of so many innocent people would forever be changed by the choices he made in order to feed his insatiable meth habit.</p> <p data-renderer-start-pos="1303">After a fateful discussion during his incarceration with a seasoned convict, Damon had a spiritual awakening. He learned that, like a coffee bean changing with the application of heat and pressure, he was capable of changing the environment around him. Armed with a program of recovery, a renewed faith, and a miraculous second chance at life, Damon emerged from over seven years of prison a changed man. His story of redemption, grit and determination continues to inspire audi