KHARI X.´S INFERNO
How I Met The Devil And Lived to Tell the Tale…
"You're sick... GET OUT! GO!"
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
The door slammed in my face. Pointless to argue.
Was she right? No way… or, just maybe she was…?
F*** That. I wasn't going to stick around to find out.
8:47 AM. Drunk as a skunk, puke caked on my jacket.
I pulled my jacket close as I stepped into the harsh fall wind, feeling the cold bite through the fabric. Out in the cold world once again. But I was used to it t.
THAT relationship was over and I wasn't going back.
Before this fissure, I'd just landed back in NYC from two years at SUNY Plattsburgh, declared my major at the prestigious City College of New York, and was pumped to dive into advertising.
Years earlier, an ad agency came to my summer camp to run a seminar. That's when the seed was planted. These people could persuade with words and images.
Make you feel anything. Want anything. Buy anything.
I'd always loved storytelling—the way stories made us cry, laugh until we pissed ourselves, better understand ourselves and people, and connect with the world.
Storytelling Was The Key…
But here's what my life actually looked like:
Two jobs. Retail in the mornings—selling discounted designer wear to people who had the money I didn't. Youth center in the evenings—breaking up fights between snotty-nosed kids who didn't give a shit about authority.
All, with school squeezed in between. Dating a few (let's call them interesting) girls who were just as lost as I was. Partying like an animal on weekends, trying to forget the emptiness that was eating me alive.
Typical college sh*t, right?
Except I was miserable. Unfulfilled. Numbing pain from my past that I didn't want to face.
The pay was decent, sure. But capped. I'd need years—years—to even scratch a six-figure salary from either job, working my way up the ladder one miserable rung at a time.
I was grateful, don't get me wrong. But I had bigger dreams. Way bigger. I wanted to do something amazing with my God-given talents.
This wasn't it.
I was following the path already paved. The traditional route. The safe route. The one everyone said was "smart" and "responsible."
I wanted to create my own path. My own journey.
Instead, I was depressed, lost and jaded.
There had to be more to life than this…
Like anyone desperate for answers, I went online, searching for a way out of the trap I'd built around myself.
I discovered Amazon FBA promising six figures in six months. Dropshipping gurus in rented Lamborghinis. Affiliate marketing "secrets" for $997. Social media marketing agencies you could start "tomorrow."
They all flew over my head and seemed scammy as hell (which I've learned through speaking with a few of these creators that they indeed are).
So I went deeper. Days turned into weeks. Weeks into months. I locked myself in my room and studied personal development like my life depended on it. Because it did.
Psycho-Cybernetics.
Think and Grow Rich.
Awaken the Giant Within.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
I devoured them, highlighted them, took notes.
If I was unclear about what I wanted to do, at least I'd have the mindset to act when I figured it out.
I wrote down my goals. My dream life: Six-figure entrepreneur. Laptop lifestyle. Serving people at the highest level. Freedom to work from anywhere, be anywhere, become anyone I wanted to be.
Growing up in East Harlem, I'd watched everyone around me drift through with no real direction.
Work during the week and get wasted on the weekends, then repeat. That wasn't going to be me.
Then one day, searching the web at 1 AM, I discovered something called "copywriting."
The Light Switched On…
Turned out, copywriting was selling with the written word.
Every Facebook Ad that pops up on your feed.
Every promotional email flooding your inbox.
Every commercial interrupting your show.
Every billboard on the highway. Countless bestselling books.
All designed and written to make people take action. To move them up a value ladder—spend more by getting more value. You know what I´m talking about…
Think Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad—selling financial literacy courses and the Cash Flow board game.
Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich—selling lectures, seminars, masterminds, and more books.
Tony Robbins—free books and webinars getting butts in seats for his $10K+ seminars and programs.
The guru I found claimed people were making $10K per month writing emails. "No f*cking way," I thought. How is that f*cking possible?
And those long sales letter pages—the ones that go on for what feels like 100,000 words, selling fitness courses, business masterminds, dating programs—were generating hundreds of thousands, even millions per year.
With just the copy alone.
What if I could master this skill? Earn six, seven, even eight figures per year like
these highly paid copywriters?
But then doubt crept in like poison: "Could someone like me... from my background... my traumas... earn that much money a year?"
I convinced myself—more like psychotically brainwashed myself—that it was possible.
If 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds were making money from copy, if teenagers were making millions from YouTube (this was 2018, remember—now these millionaires keep getting younger), then so could I.
But how do you learn this skill? What books do you read? Who's the best
copywriter to learn from?
So, I enrolled in a copywriting course from some copywriter-turned-coach who claimed to make $100K per year (Much later, I realized that his copy sucked, but first you have to learn the hard way, right?).
Anyways, I practiced the exercises and followed the trainings in his course, following it to a tee.
But, something crucial was missing. The puzzle was incomplete. I had the pieces but couldn't see the bigger picture.
So I went deeper down the rabbit hole, searching for the real masters, the guys who'd actually made themselves and their clients millions with their words.
And I Found Them.
Dan Kennedy. Gary Halbert. Gary Bencivenga. Sabri Suby. Ben Settle. Dan Henry.
These were the guys.
Each had a unique, impactful, persuasive style. But they could also mimic their clients' voice flawlessly, disappearing into their brand while amplifying their message.
These were the new masters.
I devoured their material. Their copy. Their courses. Their seminars.
Through them, I discovered the world of business—Brian Tracy, MJ DeMarco, Michael E. Gerber.
A whole new world opened up, showing me what was actually possible.
But this was just the tip of the iceberg.
I quit my position at the youth center and went all in, burning the boats behind me so there was no safety net. It was all in or nothing.
Becoming a freelancer wasn't easy. Most advice online said to grind on Fiverr and Upwork. But there, youre competing with thousands of other writers.
Then, I learned about cold outreach. Turns out you could actually find the contact addresses of people and companies you wanted to work with. Crazy right?
I sent my first 100 emails sending custom examples—emails, landing pages, blog posts—written specifically for their business, tailored to their audience, solving their exact problems.
Zero responses.
Discouraging? Hell yes. But I persisted, sending another 100, then another, adjusting my approach with each round.
My employee mindset was dying.
The entrepreneurial mind was being born.
I kept reading—Think and Grow Rich, The Success Principles, Awaken the Giant Within, The Millionaire Fastlane, The E-Myth Revisited.
Devoured book after book. Tested what I learned. Optimized. Refined. Built simple systems around writing, outreach, and productivity.
Slowly, my skills improved. Clients started appearing like light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel.
They paid me a couple hundred bucks for blog posts and website copy. Not much. But I'd earned it without a "9-to-5," without asking permission, without sacrificing my freedom.
This Was The Way.
During this time, I was also screenwriting. It became my obsession.
I read 700-800 screenplays and scripts, studying structure, dialogue, character
arcs, the mechanics of storytelling that made audiences laugh, cry, and shiver.
Wrote screenplays, treatments, and show bibles. Created unique worlds, stories, characters—modeling them after my favorite shows, hunting for patterns that separated the hits from the misses.
But screenwriting isn't an easy industry to crack.
It takes connections. Usually luck. Being in the right place at the right time knowing the right people.
I was in New York City, but to really make it as a screenwriter, you need to move to Hollywood, get a job in a mailroom or as a writer's PA, and sell your soul to pay rent.
No way.
Then, browsing Craigslist, stumbled upon a random ad Tuesday afternoon, I stumbled on an add: "Ghostwriter needed for stage play."
I answered it and met a successful Black entrepreneur—photographer, stage producer, director, writer. Let's call him T.
We hopped on a call. Chopped it up. He laid out his vision: a two-hour stage play. 120 pages. And he wanted to write it less than three weeks.
"Three freaking weeks???"
I was entering new raging waters, but I dove in headfirst anyway because that's what you do when opportunity knocks.
We hammered out the details. Compensation. Timeline. The boring but essential stuff. Then...
We Got To Work.
I completed the stage play in less than a month. Two drafts. Multiple revisions. T was ecstatic about the final script, and I was happy he loved it.
Then came my biggest project yet: A complete lead funnel for a tech entrepreneur's new personal development book.
Landing page. 22-step email course.
Ghostwritten social media posts.
30-page lead magnet.
This guy knew encryption, firewalls, malware inside and out—had built his entire career in cybersecurity. Writing about motivation and goal-setting?
Totally new territory for him.
He had a vision—he wanted to help people break through their mental blocks and achieve their goals—but lacked the digital marketing strategy to reach them. He was a genius in his field but invisible to his ideal audience.
He had the expertise. I had the words.
I immersed myself in the personal development market, spending 10-hour days studying what SEO keywords, funnels, and content worked for successful self-help creators. Reverse-engineered their strategies and built his game plan.
Two weeks later, we'd completed the entire campaign.
He loved it, but it wasn't just the service.
It was showing him how the entire marketing journey worked for his offer.
How to position his solution.
How to speak to his audience's pain.
How to move them from cold strangers to raving fans who'd buy anything hed offer them.
I'd helped him see the path from invisible to irresistible.
And then? I fucked it all up.
I blew through the money in a weekend.
The Devil Had Returned.
He stared me right in the mirror, laughing at me. Irresponsible, reckless and untamed.
¨Hurry up in there!¨ someone yelled from outside.
I wobbled in a filthy bathroom covered with faded band stickers and handwritten messages. Drake and Future blasted in the bar outside.
The negative influences re-entered my life like vultures circling a dying antelope. Fair-weather friends who only showed when I had money. Vices that promised escape but delivered only hollowness.
The next morning, instead of waking up in bed, I woke up to blinding morning sunlight on concrete steps. Clothes soaked in beer and mouth tasting like sh*t.
No idea where I was, what time it was, or who I was.
I sat up groggily, head pounding like someone was using my head as a drum. Looked around. Metropolitan Avenue.
Queens. OK.
Checked my phone. Three missed calls. Battery at 8%.
I turned around to see what building I'd been sleeping against—where I'd left a nice little present of half-digested halal food decorating the steps.
A Pentecostal church.
A Sign.
God Will Test You Before He Blesses you.
I had to go back to my roots, to the foundation I'd abandoned in pursuit of money and hedonism.
I prayed. Listened to the music I was raised on—music that soothed me,
reconnected me to my heart, reminded me of who I was before the B.S. Gospel, R&B, Pac and Elton John.
Trained calisthenics every day, pushing my body, building a NEW MAN.
Attended mosque and rediscovered my relationship with God. With myself, really.
Over the next two years, I focused all my efforts on learning funnel flows and architecture, web design, online business systems, storytelling... and copywriting.
The real kind. The kind that moves people to action. Changes lives and businesses with words and online systems.
I got better. Faster. Worked with more freelance clients. Built systems that worked while I slept. Expanded my skillet. Created offers people actually wanted to buy.
But there was one last thing. One fractured relationship still broken into a million tiny pieces.
I Had To See Her Again.
When I walked in, she was different. So was I.
We'd both grown. Both changed. Battled our own personal demons and had defeated them in our own way.
THIS time, I was ready.
I'd returned a new man. Someone she could listen to and respect. Someone who'd done the work, walked through hell and met my devil face-to -face.
The conversation was long. Intimate. Full of tears and truth and things that needed to be said. I won't get into it here.
But this time, new tears filled her eyes. And mine.
"Thank you," she said.
Whooooo. Thats alot. But it taught me about life, taking care of my health, managing my money and nurturing relationships,.
Here's something else I learned, that they don't teach in university advertising programs: Real, effective, conversion-focused marketing and advertising that drive action isn't about theory.
It's not about skimming the surface, memorizing frameworks, or following templates.
It's about understanding your audience so deeply you can speak their language better than they speak it themselves.
It's about creating sales funnels that actually convert clients and move them up to your higher-priced services, building trust at every stage of the journey.
It's about persuading people without sounding salesy, without triggering their defenses, without making them feel manipulated.
Heres a little secret…
I don't write copy for my clients.
"Huh?" ¨So what the hell DO you do?¨.
Let me explain.
I create devilishly seductive copy. Spanking good copy. Sexy copy that makes you irresistible in the mind of your prospects.
HOW? By knowing your audience and speaking their language. Creating tension, a push and pull dynamic in their mind.
"Should I, I know I really shouldn't?" "F*ck it, why not…?" And they pull out their wallets, eager to get what you're offering.
Most entrepreneurs, small business owners, creatives, and coaches can't do this. They know their stuff—they're brilliant at what they do—but they can't translate that brilliance into words that sell.
Think about it. How many business owners do you know? Dozens? Hundreds probably, right?
Did you buy from them?
Probably not. And WHY not?
A lack of a personal touch.
Thats what all great businesses have. Nike, Apple. McDonalds. .
A one-on-one connection to your audience that makes them feel seen, heard, understood.
It's about understanding your ideal customer's pain and solving it in a way that feels like magic.
Now I see everything through the lens of direct response:
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Where's the open loop?
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What framework is this copy using?
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How can this headline be improved?
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Is this copy or site design driving conversions?
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Does the target audience understand the true value of this business?
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Is this business doing everything it possibly can, in its messaging, to speak directly to them?
That's what I help small business owners, entrepreneurs, coaches, info-product creators, do - sell their story with direct response copy & marketing.
To Your Success,