Episode #78 – Jesse Moskel on Living A Total Nightmare To Living The Dream (a copywriter’s zero to hero real life tale)

Hey, it’s John Mcintyre the order responding guy and it’s time to episode 78 of the mcmethod email marketing podcast where you’ll discover one simple thing: How to make money every time you send an email to your list. Now today, I’ll be doing it through Jessie Noskel. Jessie is a fascinating guy he emailed me one day with an epic story. I just sent an email to my list, what was it called “Do you like your green smoothies?” and then I told a story about how I was drinking my green smoothie, I’m actually drinking it right now it’s got eggs and spinach and some green powder and blueberries, its great! Anyway the email was about that and he replied “That was a cool story Rob, I think I’ve got a better one.” And then he proceeded to tell me how he’d been on sort of an interesting journey ended up in Korea, and then ended up in Thailand and went through some incredible stuff. I don’t know what to say, how much I can say without giving away the story so you’re gonna have to listen to the episode anyway it’s an amazing story and sorta sounds like the sort of thing you would hear in movie. Crazy adventure in a way and he was also learning. It led him to direct response marketing. And now he’s a copywriter. He’s having a blast building an advertising agency ok. So the story blew me away and you’re gonna hear it in just a minute. 

To get shown at this episode of the email marketing podcast go to themcmethod.com/78. This week’s mcmasters inside of the week is something that I’m very fond of this idea; and that is Cajun, which from what I understand the idea of a Kaizen comes from Japanese companies: its constant never ending improvement. That means every day, you just show up and you improve something and you do it the next day, next day and the next day. And so what happens is, you know , that’s really how small changes, small changes, small changes add up to add up into incredible changes over time. But if you’re set out to make a massive change you’re really going to fully fall flat on your face and become demotivated and frustrated because no one makes a big change just like that. You have to do it incrementally, well, you don’t necessarily have to do it incrementally but that’s typically how it works. Okay, so that’s the idea, Kaizen When you show up to your business in the morning, when you show up to write an email, just get a little bit better… just get a little bit better. Doesn’t matter where you are today, only that you improve just a little bit every single day. That’s what we’ve been talking about at McMasters and this is sort of something that I’ve been suggesting to people who are trying to get better on email and marketing, traffic or whatever the case may be and yeah, anyway, so that’s Mcmasters. To learn more about McMasters go to themcmethod.com/mcmasters. It’s a VIP training that I have. There’s a form in there, there’s training material, there’s also a fill in the blank templates so that means you can sign up and you can have an order respondent up and running within an hour. You just fill in the blanks with some templates and upload then and while that’s working for you, you can go and learn how to write emails and do this stuff yourself. That’s really where the big money is, okay? So that’s McMasters, www.themcmethod.com/mcmasters. Now, anyway that’s enough of that. Let’s get into this interview so you can hear about this crazy, crazy story from Jessie from law school

 INTERVIEW:

JOHN MCINTYRE:   It’s John Mcintyre here, the order respondent guy and I’m with Jessie Moskel, the direct response copywriter and I think that was a week ago he replied to my emails. I was talking about green smoothies or something like that. Actually I’ve got a green smoothie right next to me right now because it’s actually 9am here in Thailand and you know I told everyone I’ve got my green smoothie and Jessie replies and said, look, that was kind of a cool story and I don’t know if you said you can top that or you’re like, Tell me if I can top that. This tops mine, tops yours. And he goes on to tell me a crazy, crazy story about how he was in Thailand once and it uh, all different stuff, it was very interesting. And then he sort of ended up being a copywriter now so he’s got an agency with his brother. They’re doing copywriting and adwords and all sort of stuff there and I thought I wanted to get in mine because number one, this is going to be a huge deal of inspiration to anyone who’s just getting started or even has just gotten started just finding things slow. I think it’s going to be a hell of an entertaining is a hell of a story. I haven’t heard the whole thing. I just know what you can fit into an email of 300 words so it’s gonna be an interesting little episode. Jessie, how are you going?

JESSIE MOSKEL: Great John, good to be here.

JOHN MCINTYRE: Good to have you on the show man, so, before we go into this story give the listdown sort of a background, who you are and what you’re doing right now and then we’ll kinda go back in time and to this story you told me in the email.

JESSIE MOSKEL: Sure. Okay, I’m Jessie Moskel and I’m a copywriter with my brother. We do advertising and marketing for small, medium-sized businesses. I’m based in South Carolina in the US and just enjoying life out here.

JOHN MCINTYRE: Cool man, let’s see, let’s get dive in the story then. You were in Thailand once. This was 20…how many years ago does this story start?

JESSIE MOSKEL: This was actually starts back in 2006, I was 30 years old. I was a salesman working for a big telecom company here in the US and I was just bored. And I looked at my passport I didn’t have any stamps and that really frustrated me. I thought that by the time I hit 30 I should have been around the world at least a couple of times so I looked online and ended up going to a place in Korea to teach English in 2006, 2007.

JOHN MCINTYRE: Okay.

JESSIE MOSKEL: So, when out there, taught English and let me tell you John, life will take you on some funny spins. It’s not really relevant to our story here my co-teachers and I but I ended up getting into some drugs. I like to smoke marijuana back in the days and that whole party thing kinda…you know

JOHN MCINTYRE: This was in Korea? So the English- teaching scene?

JESSIE MOSKEL: Yup, weren’t selling drugs to the kids but my fellow teachers and I would get marijuana for the weekends and smoke and have some beers and go in the city, that sort of thing.

JOHN MCINTYRE: Yeah, pretty standard, I mean, all things said, that’s what a lot of young people do anyway. So it’s not, I mean, I think that’s pretty typical behavior. I heard a lot of people who have been there at certain stages in their life so…Yeah, you were in Korea, you were doing this teaching thing and you were having a bit of fun with the marijuana with some of the English teachers, so what happens next?

JESSIE MOSKEL: So what happens next, I guess the, the drug scene just kind of got a little heavier. We started getting ecstasy on the weekends and this friend of mine needed me to, you know, share it around for my fee. Share it around firm. So what I did was I was selling ecstasy on the side while I was teaching English and I don’t know if you know but over there, as in the States, any sort of drug like that is considered pretty hardcore. What ultimately happened was I was bouncing around Southeast Asia as you made me familiar with doing and I got arrested in Thailand with a quantity of these ecstasy pills.

JOHN MCINTYRE: So you have bees out of your bag. You were in Korea teaching English and you’ve decided to carry these pills for that buddy of yours. Now you end up travelling around Thailand with a bag of ecstasy pills in your back. I mean, that sounds pretty, as mean as bad as my beat looking back on it sounds like it’s going to pretty, pretty thrilling…doing something like that feels like you’re in a movie or something.

JESSIE MOSKEL: Yeah, I guess you could say that. I would say this John, I didn’t do any carrying of the drugs around and I don’t want to get into all that stuff but basically what you’re saying is right. A long story short, the Thai police caught windows from drugs being moved around and they got me and another guy, another American in Thailand. We got arrested in a patia actually so, the next thing I know I was in a small cell with about 40 or 45 other Thai people. No Americans, no English-speaking people and it’s a very hard situation. I’ve never been in Thailand without air-conditioning before. And you know, most people don’t get to Thailand for the men but that’s what I was with. There was a lot of men, it was crowded and they were stinky. There was one toilet and after about two days there was another Thai guy that came in that spoke a little English so he took this document and you know John, Thai language is like cake frosting, alright.

JOHN MCINTYRE: You know when I first saw it, I thought it looked like the Indian script but whoever made it wanted to make it twirly, spotty things on every letter but cake frosting work too.

JESSIE MOSKEL: Yeah, well, I can’t remember where I read that anyways, I couldn’t decipher it. I didn’t know what it was but this guy looked at it, read it and it was two or three pages, then he looked up at me real slow and sadly shook his head and said, “You, my friend, will never go home from this prison.” So what started out as kind of what I would label as slightly innocent drug- dealing turned into a nightmare. A year later I went into court staying in prison this whole time and ended up getting charged with two life sentences plus four years which is a total of 104 years.

JOHN MCINTYRE: Damn.

JESSIE MOSKEL: So, it’s one of these things where I kind of thought…

JOHN MCINTYRE: So does that mean you’re 130 years old right now?

JESSIE MOSKEL: No, that’s the good part. I’ll get to that but basically what happened was I ended up spending all my money paying lawyers and I was sentenced to 27 years when I was 31. So, and let me process this because this is an email marketing podcast right? So while I was in prison for the next 5 years I wrote a lot of letters and it’s kinda interesting when you think about it because if you’re behind this wall you’re kind of separated from the whole world and so the only way that I was able to communicate by large was through letters that I would send out from the prison. On these few occasions I have family members travel around the world to visit me. Again, they would come through a window and I would have to yell through the window and through the bars and the chicken wire for 20 or 30 minutes and that was it, and they were gone again. So, you learn this economy of words and you learn that you need to say exactly what you wanted to happen in order for you to reap the desired effect. So unbeknown to me I guess I was getting a bit of a copywriting education at this time.

JOHN MCINTYRE: That’s one way to develop your copywriting skills, go to prison. 

JESSIE MOSKEL: Yeah! I highly don’t recommend it. So I met this guy while I was there and he had several millions of Baht in his bank account and I think I mentioned this story to you before but it sounds better when I say several millions of Baht in reality its worth about £15000 or $30000 US but he was a multi-millionaire in prison and the way he did this was with a sales letter.

JOHN MCINTYRE: He was a Thai guy… or?

JESSIE MOSKEL: No he was an Iranian.

JOHN MCINTYRE: Oh, that’s right, yeah you mentioned this guy. Coz you mentioned Baht I was thinking a Thai guy but I think a million baht would be about $30000 so a hundred grand would be three million.

JESSIE MOSKEL: So he had this sales letter and he would send it out to various concerned groups such as churches and charities and they would donate to his cause and het got rich behind bars! With this simple sales letter that you know, really pulled on heartstrings. So the elements of my copywriting experience back there.

JOHN MCINTYRE: SO, did you talk to him and was he like well, you wanted to find out how he was making his money and then you sort of..

JESSIE MOSKEL: Well, I didn’t really have to do that same thing too… Indirectly, I mean he wouldn’t share the letter with anybody but he told us how he was doing it. Anyway, it was a sign that a lot of money could be made with copywriting. Anyway, the story that I have is, once I got here and I thought I was gonna stay in this prison for 27 years, I decided that no more could I live the kind of life that brought me there. I changed in the letters that I was sending out. I changed my FROM address from Bumba prison I changed it to Bumba maha witthayalai which you may know is, you know that word?

‘

JOHN MCINTYRE: University.

JESSIE MOSKEL: There you go. So the prison I was in was Bumba prison it became Bumba University and every day I got out of bed I started studying the Thai language and I started applying, you know,  every minute I could to educate myself and changing who I was. Basically what got me to prison was kinda having this head trash and going in a circle instead of a path, you know. Being involved, being mixed up with drugs, some people say its fine, it’s okay, when you’re doing it while you’re young but some people, and unfortunately I was one of those, it just became that circular path and, you know, ultimately it once destroyed my life.

JOHN MCINTYRE: I think there’s lot of people like that…This is one of those things where it’s all fun and games until someone gets hell. And most people won’t have trouble with it but the people who do, like; it has a huge, huge downside. It’s one of those things where the upside is not that big and 99% of the time, the downside is not that big EITHER, YOU’LL BE FINE. But that 1% of the time when something goes wrong, there’s an overdose, or you get arrested, or you get to prison, it gets real, real bad.

JESSIE MOSKELL:Yeah, indeed. And this was, you know obviously this was the worst case scenario situation. I hope that it doesn’t happen to anybody that’s listening to the show but basically, the message that I started living was these horrible things happened to me but one of the small ways that can turn it to my advantage and one of the small ways that I can improve even though I’ve already very screwed up and gone down to this horrible path, how can I make it better? 

JOHN MCINTYRE: That’s a cool little lesson there for anyone right now whose listening right now who’s trying to get somewhere. I think before you can move past a bad situation or a situation you don’t like in life you really got to get to a point where you appreciate it, as bad as it might be for the lessons that it can give you and that applies to getting into learning copywriting because you might not be a writer. Some people can be like; I’m not a writer but pony up, figure out how is that a good thing. But this philosophy is also, this is kinda, this is a very inspirational podcast, man. This isn’t just about me and marketing. This is about life!

JESSIE MOSKEL: So, the great part of the story is after I spent five and a half years here I got accepted to transfer back to the US. Fortunately, the US doesn’t look upon the drug situation quite as dramatically and as drastically as Thailand does so they brought me back to theoretically serve the rest of my 20 year sentence in America. And two months after I got back they came and knocked at my cell door and said “Hey, we’ve got great news, we’ve recalculated your sentence and we’re gonna give you time served.”

JOHN MCINTYRE: Nice, so what does that mean?

JESSIE MOSKEL: Well, basically it means, the time, you know the sentence was 27 years. I’ve been in there that time, that point for 5 and a half years but the American court was saying basically, you’ve done enough time and we’re gonna let you go home.

JOHN MCINTYRE: Well, how did that feel when that happened?

JESSIE MOSKEL(Whistled) Well, I just told you I’m a copywriter but I’m probably lost for words on that one.

JOHN MCINTYRE: So you went out, you got back, did you spend any time in prison in America or did you just get back and like, alright, we think you’re done?

JESSIE MOSKEL: Yeah, no. I had to stay for two months.

JOHN MCINTYRE: That was it. Two months, then you were out?

JESSIE MOSKEL: Yup, so I got back to America, stayed in prison for two months and walked up the front door in LA and went down and got on a Greyhound bus. I don’t know if you know this John, this is the big brand. Greyhound in America so I had to make a bus trip from the West Coast of America all the way to the East coast and it took four days! And after the first day, I wanted to go back to prison really, really bad.

JOHN MCINTYRE: Really, why? So, what after how many days? Four days?

JESSIE MOSKEL: Well, you can imagine sitting on a bus for four days with no shower and with people that are, like, can’t afford to fly on planes. It’s not a pleasant ride. 

JOHN MCINTYRE: Okay, yeah. I can imagine but you’ve been in, so was it like an overwhelming sense of freedom or just felt like you’d be more comfortable to be back…

JESSIE MOSKEL: Oh no, it was wonderful. But the funny thing is John, anybody who has been in that position where your movement is restricted, all you want is freedom from that thing. And once you get it, I wasn’t ready for the surprise. I thought that all my problems would go away and everything would be magically healed but that was actually the beginning of another journey that was, in a lot of ways, is more difficult. In prison, everything’s sure. You’re gonna go down stairs, you’re gonna go back upstairs into the cell and you do the same thing the next morning. Nothing changes. But in life, you gotta go out and make a living; you gotta worry about certain things. And you know it was a challenge re-adapting to life outside.

JOHN MCINTYRE: I can imagine. Yeah, but how is it now? I mean, how long ago has this been? You’ve been out for 5 years? 

JESSIE MOSKEL: I’ve been out for thirteen months and I gotta tell you, it’s uh, if anybody can take anything from this, I want to say this because when I came out I know that I wanted to share this story and I know that it would be inspiring to some people because first of all, drugs are kind of a big deal and we in America, we want to fight the war on drugs but the truth is we don’t put drugs in prison. We put people in prison and these people are often your little brother, your mother, your father, your cousin or your friend down the street. Everybody knows somebody that’s affected by this problem and I think what happens whether it’s drugs or any other thing that sets you back that you feel ashamed for it and the problem is, when I came home I wanted to share this story but I felt ashamed and embarrassed about having been to prison. And I was worried, you know, maybe if some of my clients hear this, you know, coming out, maybe they’ll say “ Hey, we don’t want a former drug addict or drug dealer writing our copy.” It’s all about realizing that things happen to us in life and those things aren’t us but they do, you know, they are just things that happens to us and that’s all they are. So when you can see it that way, you can really overcome them and make these things a positive in your life.

JOHN MCINTYRE: I guess the tough thing with that is that you can get to that realization but it doesn’t mean that clients are going to hear it and not be resistant to the idea of hiring you. Like some clients are just gonna wanna lack it. Religion is one of things and I don’t even want to talk about religion at least in my scene anyway, but what they believe, because if you go one way, or the other, you know, it’s like politics, as well, it’s touchy issues. I guess prison is sort of like that as well. I mean, once you say it ,it doesn’t really matter in the ground especilly as far as copy goes but it’s one of those things that triggers resistance in people. But I like that. I think that’s a really cool lesson to know you gotta get to that point so you can really move forward in life with anything because, well, this isn’t so much about email marketing now but you have to get to that point. And you’re not beating yourself up for it. You know, it’s in the past. It’s done and it’s not really you, it’s like life happens and stuff happens and you gotta deal with what you can to solve the problems. 

JESSIE MOSKEL: That’s right, John. I mean, life is so short, you know. Nobody knows how long we’re going to be here and I think it’s just important for me to go embrace who I am and you’re right, maybe I’ll lose a business with this admission but the truth of the matter is I should be in that prison for another twenty years, so number one, I shouldn’t even be here. And number two, it’s something I do on the side and I don’t really talk about it much but I speak for free. And I do this for kids, I work for kids and schools and sometimes at risk kids as well so it’s kinda a gift to be able to give back and do something and say “Hey, I’m really lucky.” And a lot of people don’t make it through what I did so if I can tune anybody away from a negative lifestyle or I can inspire people who are going through a tough time to pull through and keep up the fight. That makes it all worthwhile for me.

JOHN MCINTYRE: That’s cool. I hope if someone is listening to this, this is helping them. Or if they know someone who might be going through something like this or even something tough in life after sharing this, this is bad ass man. So just to recap on this, you’re in Korea, started taking marijuana with the English teachers, and started getting involved in ecstasy and get caught up in drug trafficking somewhere in Thailand so you get to prison and then you started calling it your university instead of prison and you mentioned in your email that you sent me that your brother used to send you direct response books so you can sit there and it sounds like you really studied hard when you were in prison and now you’ve come out you’ve got some marketing jobs which you’ve turned into a marketing legacy.

JESSIE MOSKEL: Yeah, I’m having a blast with that. You know John, two more things I wanna touch on. Number 1 is when I went so summer cam when I was 14 or 15 years old there was a couple of chances where I kind of fell in love with a young girl that I went to summer camp with and when you get home, you kinda write letters together. You know maybe she lived across the country and I remember a couple of times we wrote letters back and forth frantically every week. This was before email really. And as time goes on, the letters become less and less frequent and you have to move on with your life but I just feel like that copywriting and marketing is kinda like in my DNA because all this letter writing I’m talking about, how different is it really that what we do, you know what you and I both do on marketing every day. We’re trying to romance companies either for ourselves or on behalf of our clients, and if you think about it, when you write a letter to a woman that you’re in love with, at the end, you’re going to put you most powerful language into persuading that person to be with you. And at the end maybe a special PS that summarizes everything you want. You know, you’re gonna draw a little heart, color them maybe. If you like me, you know the D doubles and the etc.

JOHN MCINTYRE: Oh, you’re a romantic huh?

JESSIE MOSKEL: Yes, sir but you know, it’s how far we move this from what we do, writing copy?

JOHN MCINTYRE: I’d say from doing marketing and copying sales files, it’s just like dating, just like seduction. And it’s so many parallels and I’ve notice that too. Like when you start understanding body language and social dynamics and sort of that side of the human sphere, a lot of that carries over very easily into podcasting like this, or it could be writing an email to the list. There are so many parallels. It’s not even a parallel. It’s just the same thing really. It just depends on who you’re trying to romance, is it a girl, or is it a company, or a customer. So what’s the plan, what’s the the future plan for Jessie Moskel, are you coming back to Thailand to do the…like this, you know, they call us the “digital nomads” over here. Laptop warrior, I think sounds cooler but a bit cheesy as well but anyway. You go into coffee shops and you travel and you work and you do all that. That seems to be one direction that people want to go in with their internet business but what’s your plan? Are you gonna stay in the US and put up the agency or are you going to travel, or get married, or romance or what?

JESSIE MOSKEL: All of the above. Yeah man, after sitting still and doing nothing, I really want to do everything. I want to just , I’m so excited to be alive right now. There’s a second story I want to tell you quickly John. One day, when I was really depressed I was waiting to see if I got a hundred year sentence or if I was gonna go home or any other of not very appealing options came through court, I’ve decided one day and you’re surrounded in prison by a lot of negative people. People that are upset with themselves for making the decision that they did to get there… I decided one day after all this complaining going on around me, I said “You know what, I’m gonna be the happiest person in here today.” I know it sounds silly but it was clear who was the saddest person there and I thought, you know, there’s really no competition for being really happy in here but let me try this out one day and if it sucks I’ll go back to being miserable tomorrow. So I carried that position through me because obviously it worked the first day, and the second day it worked, and the smiles came easier and the right people sort of get magnetized to me and I really started having a lot of fun while I was there. I’m not supposed to admit that but it was not as bad as everybody thinks it is by watching tv and movies and and so forth but it’s all about attitude, and that position I kind of molded to myself and now that I’m out here, I’m still the happiest person. You know, I really embrace life. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’d love to get married, I’d love to build an advertising business, I’d like to consider myself a junior Ogilvie. Who knows? Life is just one big party and I’m glad to be here.

JOHN MCINTYRE: I’ve been through that before, Well, not the prison thing but that whole, trying to be real happy is everyone is back in the office and I had a job and I used to make a similar challenge like trying to be the happiest dude in the place and I always wanted to be the guy who would go out and party with people and I don’t know what it is to this but say, suppose I don’t want to drink alcohol that night and to go out and have people and basically party harder and laugh more and dance more and be happier crazier and wilder even without drinking. Like sometimes, if people ask you how you’re going and you say “Fantastic!” I don’t know if people are serious enough but if you’re a really happy guy and you cultivate that kinf attitude people start to wonder, they make jokes like “Are you on drugs?” And I was like, “What was wrong with you? Just calm down, and it was funny because why would you want me to calm down when I’m the happiest guy around?

JESSIE MOSKEL: Absolutely. It’s really people’s default position that they are moaning and complaining about everything that’s wrong in their life when really, there’s just so much to be grateful for.

JOHN MCINTYRE: Hm. Cool man, and you mentioned a podcast, in your email that it was helpful. Obviously I wasn’t around when you were in prison but it has been helpful in the last year when you have been building your business? 

JESSIE MOSKEL: Well you know, I’m a really big fan of Knock and Gladwell. I’ve read all of his books and when I was in Thailand, one of them talks at length about the 10,000 hours hypothesis where, you know if you spend 10,000 hours on one discipline then you can consider yourself, if not an expert then at least of professional capacity. For me, getting home was the beginning of that 10,000 hours so you know when I discovered that I can listen to email marketing podcasts while I was driving to the gym and keep it going through my workout then my hours went up considerably within the day so you know, I’m just a student of the game ,I’m learning and I spend a lot of money on Amazon these days, every time I get a payment from a client I dump a bunch into new books and research and everything I can to learn more.

JOHN MCINTYRE: Nice, nice. Cool man. Thanks for coming and sharing your story and I really hope that I think it’s going to be someone who’s listening to this, or at least a few people who would get a lot of value from this so thank you. Before we go, if people want to, say someone wants to email you, you said you do speaking, or if they want to ask you about the agency or they want you to do some work for them or maybe just want to chat and hear some more of your story, where should they go? Where do you want to point people to?

JESSIE MOSKEL: Thanks John, The easiest place to find me is at moskel.com

JOHN MCINTYRE: Cool, great. Well we’ll all have the link to moskel.com at the show. It’s at the Mcmethod.com so you can go there and get the link. Thanks again, man. 

JESSIE MOSKEL: John, it’s been a pleasure.