TCC Podcast #381: Psych Informed Copy with Csaba Borzasi

Want to make your copy better? More persuasive? More conversion-oriented? The way to do it may be understanding the psychology of your reader. In the 381st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with copywriter Csaba Borzasi who explained how he uses psychology to make his copy better. And maybe more importantly, Csaba also explained how he uses a scorecard during his prospecting calls that helps him close almost 100% of his prospects. This is definitely one you'll want to stick around for. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: When many of us start out as copywriters, we're interested in the words. How do we organize them so that they sound right or so that they sound better? Which words should we use to communicate this benefit or this feature? Or which phrase will make the best call to action? But after a while, we tend to become less interested in the exact words, although they are still important, and we still do get a lot of joy out of writing them. And we become more interested in the psychology behind the words. We start asking questions like, which emotions should my reader be feeling as they read this? What beliefs do I need to shift? What do they need to know or think or feel in order to take the next step?  Hi, I'm Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club, and on Today's episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed Csaba Borzasi, a copywriter with extensive training in applied psychology and plenty of experience helping shift beliefs and with writing emotional copy. Csaba shared how psychology applies to what we write every day. He also shared his process for diagnosing his client's business problems that virtually guarantees that they're going to ask for his help on a project. And by the way, this single bit of advice that he gives, this insight could be worth thousands of dollars in new work for you in the coming year. So you're definitely going to want to make a note of it.  Finally, we talked about why his welcome sequence is nine months long. There's some good stuff in this episode, so get out your notepad and your pen because you are going to want to take some notes.  Now, this is when I normally jump in to tell you all about The Copywriter Underground, all the copywriting business trainings that are in there, the monthly coaching calls, the weekly copy critiques, the community. If you've been listening to the podcast for very long, you've heard me mention all of those things over and over, and yet you still haven't jumped in. Don't wait any longer. If you've got plans to grow your business in 2024, visit thecopyrighterclub.com/TCU and find out more about this vibrant community of copywriters who are working hard to do the same thing that you want to do. And now let's go to our interview with Csaba. Kira Hug: All right. So Csaba, let's kick off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter? Csaba Borzasi: Yeah, so great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Well, I was basically born and raised in in the Transylvania region of Romania. So but I'm not a vampire, I promise. But as an ethnic Hungarian, actually. So it was a totally different culture compared to what you might consider conducive to becoming a copywriter, especially in English, especially on the U.S. market. Right. So basically, I like I always liked to read. I was always a little kind of like a black sheep in my family because they don't even speak English, unfortunately. And they were always telling me, like, why are you learning English? Like, where are you going to use English? And I was like, no, no, no. But I can get better information this way. So I always loved getting information.  And then during my studies, I studied psychology, first business, then psychology. And then I landed a job at IBM, which was like the typical corporate job that everybody complains about. So I kind of, I think I've been there for more than a year, one and a half years or something. And then I felt like this isn't for me. Then I became a direct salesperson for a wealth management company, a supposedly prestigious wealth management company, but turned out it was kind of a scam. Well, not necessarily a scam, but they were still ripping people off with stuff and there was lots of dodgy things going on.  So then I had a friend who was already doing copywriting, on Upwork and he said like, Csaba, you like psychology and I know that you like to read a lot, you like communication and persuasion and just studying it, so I think this could be a natural fit for you because you could combine marketing and business and psychology and I was like, but aren't copywriters supposed to like do legal stuff, you know? the typical thing that some people think. And then he kind of showed it to me, like how it works and how he's landing clients on Upwork.  And I was like, well, that's pretty cool. So I gave myself two weeks to actually get as much info as possible on the topic and then start landing a client. And I think after like three weeks, I had my first client, which was a sex shop. So I really learned the concept of writing desire building bullets for all sorts of weird thingies. And that's a story. Rob Marsh: You've given us a lot. Yeah, exactly. Lots of options here. So before we jump into any of the history, there are a lot of people who want to be copywriters who do not start out speaking English. And America, Britain, Australia, they tend to be the biggest opportunities, the biggest markets for copywriting. So how did you bridge that gap? Obviously, you knew English before you started as a copywriter, which certainly helps. But what advice would you give to copywriters who are not necessarily native English speakers so they can polish that language so that it doesn't show up, you know, the way that it often does and puts them at a disadvantage? Csaba Borzasi: Sure, that's a great question. Well, obviously, the better you are at English, the better it is and the easier it is to land clients, especially nowadays when clients are, I think, used to zoom calls or interviews or, you know, stuff like that. But ultimately, I think if you can convey that you're easy to work with, you know what you're doing, and you're just you can solve a problem for a client. They just give you money and you solve their problem. And you start small. You are kind of like, you don't have a big ego. I think it doesn't necessarily matter that much, especially if you maybe bundle something else with just pure copywriting. Maybe you do email list management or something. Maybe you do the button pushing part. Maybe you set up sequences. Maybe you do A-B tests on landing pages or something like that. I think these things are relatively easy to learn and can give you like a one-two punch when it comes to landing those clients and them seeing you as more than just a vendor. Kira Hug: So you gave yourself two weeks to land your first client when you sat down and you're like, I'm going to be a copywriter. What were you doing during those two weeks specifically to then land that client? Csaba Borzasi: So I mentioned that before this, I was working at a job as like a salesperson for a wealth management company and their whole pipeline of commissions. I was working based on commission. Everything took like three to four, maybe even sometimes five months. So for me, landing an appointment and generating a sale for them, it took like five months for me to actually get paid. And when I got laid off from there, they didn't pay any commission. So I had lots of deals in the pipeline and it was just, that's it, like we're not going to pay you anything. And it was, I don't know, like more than $10,000, which was a lot of money for me at that point, a lot of money.  So I basically had like one month savings. And that's why I felt the natural urgency to do something, like I cannot just mess around with this. I have to make it work. So for two days, I started Googling. I went to YouTube. I tried to consume every piece of free, sometimes even paid, like lower priced information that I could. Fortunately, I didn't land on like Dan Lok or, you know, someone like that who was selling copywriting at that time. But I landed, I found the Ben Savenga bullets, for example. I found the Boron letters. I found some stuff from John Carlton. Surprisingly enough, I found a Clayton Makepieces blog. And obviously, I realized that this is huge. I have to focus on one thing there.  And then I think I already had a knack for selling because, as I said, I was a direct salesperson before that. I was making like 50 cold calls per day, which I hated. But still, I mean, it gives you like a natural way to persuade people. And yeah, I think I was also fortunate enough a little bit because I, that friend that I mentioned in the beginning, he also gave me some templates like outreach templates and how to write your proposals. It still took some time and manual labor, but yeah, two, two, three weeks. And I was, you know, ready. Rob Marsh: And since we're talking about that first client, which was the sex shop, tell us a little bit about that experience and what it takes to, obviously, a sex shop has items for sale that are not necessarily boring, but you may have to talk around some things in order to sell them. So tell us about that experience and how you made the products attractive and turned that into additional assignments down the line. Csaba Borzasi: As I said, one of the first things I read was Bencivenga Bullets, and the whole concept of bullets was new to me. So I started Googling, like, what are bullets? What are fascinations? And then I realized, oh, if you can write these desire-building bullets,