Win Today

#261 | [WT Mash-Up]: Creating Social Wealth & Beating A 65 Year Prison Sentence Ft. Sahil Bloom & Damon West

• Season 6

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I wanted to bring these two conversations together because the messages complement each other in such a powerful way. Sahil Bloom shares why building time wealth may be the most important investment you'll ever make, while Damon West reminds us that life's greatest messengers often arrive disguised as our biggest setbacks. 

Damon was originally sentenced to life in prison in the State of Texas and is now one of the most sought after speakers in the USA, in addition to having one of the best redemption stories of all time.

Sahil Bloom is a highly recognized thought leader and the author of the WSJ Best Seller, The Five Types of Wealth.

Their perspectives will help significantly upgrade the course of 2026 for you!

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Welcome And Listener Request

SPEAKER_02

Welcome to Win Today. This show is crafted for those who want to win in every aspect of their lives. Every week you will learn from a renowned thought leader that will share a piece of a winning playbook that you can incorporate into your life. If this show has a positive impact on you and you see value in it, please share it with somebody and leave a rating and review so we can help more people win.

Boston Energy And Mashup Setup

SPEAKER_02

What's up everyone? I am riding off of a high right now, having just returned from Boston at the BookTinkers live event, ran by one of my good friends, Nick Hutcheson, who's been on the podcast a couple times and is the founder and CEO of BookTinkers. Many of the guests that have been on this podcast have come via the BookTinkers connection. And there's a lot to come from that, so many lessons to share. But one thing that hasn't been done in a while on the podcast is a mashup of some of the best guests that have come on that have had memorable pieces of advice. Well, all of the guests have offered memorable pieces of advice, but these are a couple that have really stood out. And the reason why I'm extracting them is because as we're in the second half of the year, I understand that what's present on people's mind is finishing strong, and perhaps the first half didn't go as planned, and you're not on pace to where you want to be. And I want to encourage you all, I'm encouraging you all that within now and December 31st, you can completely reinvent your life multiple times over. And through these couple snippets that we're gonna hear from Saw Hill Bloom, who is the author of The Five Types of Wealth, and Damon West, who is a multiple-time author redemption expert, is going to and overcame a life sentence from the state of Texas. Are we going to share a couple things that really stood out in our powerful conversations that we've had on the podcast? Saw Hill talks about how we can leverage time to the best of our advantage in the second half of the year and a new way to really approach time. And Damon shares how to be aware of the messengers that we have in life. Because some of our messengers will be people that we love, our friends, our family, people that we would expect. And many of our messengers we can be blind to if we don't have the level of awareness to see that we are always being given something in life, and he shares that his messengers in life had guns and his angels busted through his living room with assault rifles, as you'll hear more about in his story. But those were the people that ultimately saved his life. It's so easy to go and live life with resentment towards people not realizing what they may have been attempting to give you in that moment. And it's my wish that by hearing this, that this helps upgrade your perspective and leverage all of the time and relationships that you have and will form in the rest of the year, in the years to come. Thank you so much.

The Time Billionaire Reframe

SPEAKER_02

One thing that really hit hard as I was reading the book about time is this concept of a time billionaire. And I believe that's something that's really memorable. And you talk about how you wouldn't want to trade lives, and many of us wouldn't want to trade lives with Warren Buffett. Now, without without knowing the concept of a time billionaire, some people might think, well, why wouldn't you want to trade lives? He's a billionaire and has all of these things. So can you expand on that a little bit more and put the time billionaire concept in our in our thoughts?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean the concept of a time billionaire, I first heard from an investor named Graham Duncan. And when I spoke with him, um, he basically said that the genesis of it in his life was that he was interviewing all these young people to join his investment firm. And what he recognized was that all of them shared one thing in common, which was that they wanted to become billionaires. They all wanted to make a billion dollars. And what he said was that I realized that they were all billionaires in one very important way, which was they were time billionaires. A billion seconds is about 30 years. So when you're 20 years old, you have roughly two billion seconds left in your life. When you're 50, you have about a billion seconds left. But we don't relate to time in that way. We don't think about the fact that time is actually our most precious asset, that it's the only thing that you can't get more of, that you can't get back. And so that question that I bring up in the book of would you trade lives with Warren Buffett, is a really important way to actually internalize this idea, which is to say uh Warren Buffett is worth $130 billion. He has access to absolutely anyone in the world. He flies around on a Boeing business jet. There's no way that you would ever agree to trade the amount of time he has left for all the money in the world. And on the flip side, he would give anything to be in your shoes, to be your age. He would give up every single dollar that he has to do that. And so what you recognize in that question is your time has quite literally incalculable value. I mean, incalculable value. And yet, on a daily basis, how much are you really appreciating that asset? How much are you sitting around scrolling on your phone, comparing yourself to other people, stressing about things in the future, anxiety over things in the past, you know, spending time saying yes to low-value activities, things that are not bringing you energy in your life, doing all of these things that are wasting the one most precious thing that we really have in our lives. And so internalizing that concept, thinking about that, recognizing that um we all need to tune in much more to our time and really start treating it with that elevated uh reverence, if you will, um, is a really, really important concept and central to this entire idea.

Relationships As The Best Investment

SPEAKER_02

You share a study between two groups of folks in Boston, uh groups of young males that come from uh more fortunate upbringings and then those that come from less fortunate upbringings. And they're looking at the relationship between that and the relationships that they have later in life. On page 137, this study led to the key to aging, the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships. The study has found that strong, healthy relationships are the best predictor of life satisfaction, far outpacing other hypothesized predictors such as social class, wealth, fame, IQ, and genetics. I'm curious as to the relationships that you have cultivated in your life today that have influenced you and helped you get where you are. Um, what are some things that tips you have in terms of captivating deep, meaningful relationships that we can take away?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, the study you reference, uh, it's called the Harvard Study of Adult Development. I would personally argue that I think it's the most uh important study of the last hundred years. Um, you know, the most salient finding is that uh they followed the lives of 2,000-ish people, 1,300 original participants and then 700 descendants over the course of 85 years. They found that the single greatest predictor of physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50. It wasn't your blood pressure or your cholesterol or your smoking or drinking habits. It was how you felt about your relationships that determined how well you aged. And that idea is so important because what it reminds you of is that investments in your relationships are really the single greatest and most important investment that uh you need to have in your life. You need to remind yourself on a daily basis that investments in relationships compound just as well as any financial investment. What happens to a lot of us when we're young is we realize that we need to build this financial foundation, we need to set ourselves up, which is true and that is accurate. So during that period while we're beginning, we stop texting those old friends, we stop getting the group of college friends together for the annual trip. Uh, we don't take the five minutes to call our parents when we're on the ride to work. All those things start to get sacrificed as we're focusing on the one thing. And yet, those things, those relationships scientifically, are the one thing that's gonna have the greatest impact on how well that we age and on the texture of our life. I mean, you think about uh the one type of wealth here that has more of an impact on all the others, social wealth is it. No one dreams about being on a private jet by themselves. You know, like what good is it to be healthy if you can't go for a walk with a friend or go on a hike with someone that you love? Like all of these things are added, like have added texture when you have people to actually enjoy them with. And so, winding myself back to your actual question, I think the fundamental uh answer to it is you need to recognize that anything above zero compounds positively. Anything above zero compounds. The tiny thing, the tiny little thing that you can do in your relationships is better than doing nothing. Ambitious people, we allow optimal to get in the way of beneficial. So we tell ourselves, if I don't have an hour to work out, I'm just not gonna work out today. Or if I don't have an hour to spend time with this person, I'm just not gonna do anything. But the reality is that the little thing still stacks up positively over the long run. So on a daily basis, find some way to invest in your relationships. That could be as simple as sending a text to a friend when you're thinking about them. If you think something nice about someone, let them know right then. Send the text, send the message, do the two-minute phone call when you're on your walk to work. Do that little thing, and it'll stack up positively in your life.

SPEAKER_00

But

Be A Coffee Bean Under Pressure

SPEAKER_00

he tells me this allegory. He said, Prison is like a pot of boiling water, and you get three choices how to respond in this pot of boiling water. You can be like a carrot that goes in hard and becomes softened by the water. An egg that goes in with a liquid inside, a soft inside, but in that pot of boiling water, that egg will become hardened, much like a hard-boiled egg becomes hardened and boiling water. Your heart can become hardened. He said, or you can be like a coffee bean that changes the water to coffee. He said, the coffee beans the only thing that changes the water. It's the change agent. The powers inside the coffee bean to change the water around the coffee bean. He told me the coffee bean was the smallest of the three things, but it had the power to change the water when nothing else did. Everything was else, everything else was changed by the water. And he told me, he said the coffee bean can't even do its job until the water gets the hottest, until the pressure gets the highest. And that's what he told me in that jail cell in Dallas County Jail in 2009, before the prison bus came to get me to take me to prison. He said, if you're gonna turn this thing around, you're gonna have to be like that coffee bean. And the last words he ever said to me were be a coffee bean. And that's what I want people to take away. Like this story that I tell, you know, my buddy Ed Milet, Ed says this phrase, he says, Facts tell, stories sell. And so I want people to understand that this incredible power is inside them. So I wrap up all of this inside this story about this guy that actually took the coffee bean message to the biggest pot of boiling water there is a level five maximum security prison in Texas. And there's nothing more scary, more dangerous than a level five prison. And and I I was able to take this message of the coffee bean and test it in the biggest pot of boiling water. And the the message that it well by the time we get to this end of the end of the presentation or the end of my books, the end of anything I do, is that if I could do it in there, you could do it out here. Because if I could transform that pot of boiling water into a pot of coffee, then what's holding you back from transforming your pot of boiling water into a pot of coffee?

SPEAKER_02

So regardless of where we may be right now, regardless of if we came up from the greatest family or if we come up through the roughest family, the roughest neighborhoods, what I heard you say, Damon, is that everybody, everybody, regardless of who, what, when, where, why, can be a coffee bean and has that power inside of them. And that's really resemblant of your story.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. And everybody deserves redemption, Ron. Everybody deserves redemption, but you have to go out and earn some of that. You know, nothing in life is going to be given to you. You've got to go out and earn that.

Rescued By Gunpoint Perspective Shift

SPEAKER_02

Another thing you talked about, Damon, or you recognized July 30th, 2008 as the day you got rescued. I see that as another level of self-awareness that yes, what the public saw is that the uptown burglar got arrested. What Damon says is that he got rescued by gunpoint that day. Was that something, Damon, that you were able to quickly recognize as, hey, I got rescued, or did you think for a while, hey, I got caught? And then eventually you realized that, oh, actually, I got rescued. And talk a little bit about that day as well.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's a good question. Um, that day, uh, July 30th, 2008, I knew the heat was coming down. Uh, they picked up my partner in crime, Dustin, 10 days before that. So they've got my partner in crime and custody, which means it's only a matter of time before before they're gonna have me in custody. Because here's the truth about crime: everybody talks. Everybody talks in crime. When those DAs and those prosecutors, those cops, they start throwing out big numbers of time in prison, people loosen their lips up. And that's just human behavior, right? Human behavior. We want the best for ourselves. We have a preservation of life instinct in us, and it's natural for people to talk in a situation like that. So I'm not throwing any shade at Dustin or anybody, the end of the people that testified against me. I mean, they never gave me the opportunity to talk to anybody else. I was the guy at the top, you know, and I can't promise you that I wouldn't have talked too if they'd have given me a deal. So they got Dustin in custody, you know. I'm on the couch of my dope dealer that day on July 30th, 2008, and the window shatters, and there's a flashbang grenade bouncing across the floor. And, you know, I see it, I react to it, but those things have a fuse, man. It blows up in my face when I'm trying to get out of the living room. Boom, bright white light, loud noise. And when I came to when I could see and hear again, there's a cop standing over me in full swipe riot gear, his boot is on my chest, the barrel of an assault rifle is digging in my eyes so I could, his fingers on the trigger, man, and he's screaming, don't move, don't move. And I'm like, man, don't worry, don't worry, right? It's over. You got me. And one of the SWAT team officers screamed out out loud, we got him. We got the Uptown burglar. And um, you know, that day, July 30th, 2008, as I laid on that floor, I remember thinking back to a day about 30 days before that, when I was laying on that same floor. I was, but I was laying on the floor that day in June because I was out of dope. I had finally come down off of about a three-year high. I was hurting, I was miserable. And anybody that's ever been addicted to a substance, you understand your body is going through these cravings, you're aching for it, you've you're you're fiending for it. And I remember laying on that floor about 30 days before that SWAT team raid and just telling God, man, look, I'm done, man. I'm I'm sick of living like this. I hate this life, and this is miserable. Just, man, just free me from this. And I remember when the SWAT team had me and they were zip tying me on the floor. I thought to myself, man, this is not what I was praying for. Well, this is not what I meant, right? But be careful what you pray for, man, because you know, God has ears. Um, listen, I didn't understand that immediately. I didn't fully grasp what was going on in my life. I didn't understand that my angels don't have wings. My angels had assault rifles and shields and helmets. My angels came through the window, that my angels busted the door off the hinges. I didn't understand that the SWAT team could come and rescue me from a world that I was in. I thought I thought I was just arrested that day. It took me years to figure this out. But here is what I extrapolated from that while I was inside that dungeon, inside that prison, and I finally had this aha moment that they didn't just arrest me that day, they rescued me that day. I believe that in life, the SWAT teams of life, they come for all of us in different ways. A SWAT team can be a divorce, it could be a bankruptcy, it can be a marriage failing, it could be a job lost, it could be something happened to one of your children, it could be something happened to one of your pets. Life-altering events are what I call the SWAT teams of life. But here's what I would challenge everybody to do that when the smoke clears and the SWAT team is gone, what was the what was the opportunity in all that adversity that the SWAT team ushered in? Because I believe that inside of every adverse, difficult situation in life, there's some kind of opportunity there for you to grow, some kind of opportunity if you become a better version of you.

Finding Opportunity After The SWAT Team

SPEAKER_00

Our good friend, Chris Singleton. Chris Singleton's life changed. What was it, 2015 was when his life changed in Charleston, when uh Dylan Harris goes into a church and wants to start a racial war and just starts shooting black parishioners. And one of those people that he shot that day was his mother. And Chris Singleton was a minor league baseball player, living life to the fullest, man. But Chris has this same story in his story. Like I told you ago, I my story has some extremes to it, but so many people have this element in their life. Some big event happened and it knocked them off their feet. It didn't happen for Chris right away. Chris didn't understand that his purpose in life was to be a positive influence and show someone the power of love over hate. But Chris understood that over time and he started building this platform and he started going sharing the story, and now people are knocking down Chris's door to have him come share his story of love over hate. But so many of us have this story, and that's why I like to always bring it back. Like, look, my story's got some crazy elements in it, man, a real SWAT team in your living room. But SWAT teams are always coming for us. Everybody deals with a SWAT team at some point in their life, but you have to figure out why the SWAT team was there. What opportunity are they going to usher in?

SPEAKER_02

Right.

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Ryan Cass

Host