Is Your Soul For Sale?

I was 20 years old, and only about 2 years into my copywriting career.

All I really wanted to do was make money and be able to get my own place.

I had been living with my good friend Kyree for a few months and recently started coaching with him.

A lot of our first couple of coaching sessions were all about business, how to get clients, how to network, and so on and so forth.

We started diving into the personal development stuff, but it’s hard to focus on that when you’re broke, all I was really concerned with was getting clients.

So I was hammering cold outreach like a psychopath…

Sometimes for 6-8 hours a day with little breaks in between.

And one day I got in touch with the company that changed the trajectory of my career forever, and not in the way you would think.

Long story short, these guys hired me to write a video script to sell a product that was basically convincing old white Christian people that the end of the world was coming…

And that they should buy their $17.99 ebook on how to survive the apocalypse.

I think I offered to do it for $6,500 and they didn’t even blink at the price, they paid me the next day.

That was the most money I had ever made from a project…

And that was really all I was focused on, I didn’t really think about the moral side of what I was doing all that much.

I was supposed to use The Book Of Revelations to help build my argument, and if you don’t know, this part of the bible is exceptionally creepy.

Basically, it says that there are Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse…

The first horseman symbolizes death…

The second is famine…

The third is war…

And the last one is conquest.

Keep in mind this was before the whole BOVID ordeal, which if we’re going to get a little biblical, I think that’s the first horseman…

But hey that’s not what this article was about.

Back to the story…

So one night, Kyree and I went off to go grab some Chinese food, and on the car ride back I was telling him about my research and what I was planning on writing.

He looked me dead in the eyes and said, “You know you’re fear-mongering right?”

“What’s that?”

“You’re using negativity and fear to sell a product people don’t need.”

Shit.

Well, it doesn’t sound so innocent when you word it like that!

I don’t think I slept all that much that night.

I kept tossing and turning thinking about what were the consequences of my writing about this stuff.

Over the next few days, I kept working on the project, trying to ignore what Kyree told me.

And then came our weekly coaching session…

We liked going on drives and doing our sessions mainly because it helped both of us get into a flow state pretty easily.

And this time we decided to go up north…

But before we left, I took about 2.5 grams of mushrooms.

Yeah, things are about to get rocky.

So the first part of our session was pretty normal, we reviewed some networking calls that I had and Kyree pointed out a few different things I need to change about our approach.

Do doo doo doo….

Nothing to talk about here…

Please don’t ask me about this project, I can feel the mushrooms kicking in…

Kyree did it anyways.

“What are you thinking about the fear-mongering project?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Why?”

“I just want to get it done and be done with it.”

“Hmm…do you think that’s going to take a toll on your conscience?”

Damnit.

“I don’t know man.”

“Okay let’s talk about it…”

“I really don’t want to talk about it.”

But Kyree kept poking my bubble…

And poking…

Until we got to Woods Canyon Lake up in Prescott.

The mushrooms fully kicked in.

“N***** Bleed by Biggie Smalls” started playing and everything hit me really fast.

I came face to face with the fact that if I shake hands with the devil there’s no going back.

I would be a part of everything I hated in this world.

Spreading negative energy for profit.

And I just completely lost it.

I was an absolute mess, to this day I’ve never cried harder than that moment sitting in that parking lot.

The mushrooms were hitting me hard.

My vision was pulsating, I looked in the side mirror and didn’t recognize who I was looking at.

With bloodshot eyes, “Who are you? This isn’t you Nick.”

And the words of my first mentor Jason came back to me…

The memory was so clear, I continued to drown further in this pool of emotions.

We were on his porch, he lowered his glasses, looked at me, and said, “Nick, money will be your downfall. You now know, don’t let it happen.”

“This isn’t me.”

“This isn’t me.”

“This isn’t me.”

I kept trying to stop the thoughts, but something took over at that moment.

Without a doubt, God was with us in that car telling me to focus.

“FEEL this pain. There’s no going back, are you with me or against me?CHOOSE.”

I couldn’t breathe, I told Kyree, “I can’t do this man”

“Why?”

“I’m selling my soul.”

Kyree let me sit with that.

“I gotta tell these guys I can’t write for this project, it’s not worth it.”

We talked through what that conversation would look like, how to navigate it, and I started to calm down.

I knew which path I had to walk, it was difficult, but I knew it would be worth it.

The funniest part is a few minutes after, For Sale? by Kendrick Lamar came on…

The lyrics go…

“My name is Lucy, Kendrick

You introduced me Kendrick

Usually I don't do this

But I see you and me Kendrick

Lucy give you no worries

Lucy got million stories

About these rappers, I came after when they was boring

Lucy gone fill your pockets

Lucy gone move your mama out of Compton

Inside the gigantic mansion like I promised

Lucy just want your trust and loyalty

Avoiding me?

It's not so easy I'm at these functions accordingly”

Lucy, Lucifer, do you get it?

The next day, I ended up talking to the guy who hired me and we worked out a deal where I worked on a different project that wasn’t so based on “fear-mongering”

If he wouldn’t let me do that, I would’ve had to send the money back.

So I started this post off the post saying how this company changed the trajectory of my career forever…

This was the defining moment where I decided I wasn’t going to sell my soul for money.

And since then, it’s served as a good compass for me on what I will and will not do for money.