TCC Podcast #49: The Brain Audit with Sean D’Souza

For the 49th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Sean D'Souza is here to talk about about the psychological tactics that get people to respond to your sales message. Kira and Rob go deep with Sean asking about how he started his business and what he wants from it today. Sean talks about: •  how he got into copywriting, then out, then back in. •  how a short presentation inspired by Jay Abraham inspired The Brain Audit •  the seven “red bags” of The Brain Audit and how they work together •  the questions he asks when creating a sales page •  the “x-ray vision” problem that books and courses suffer from •  why teaching is the best kind of selling •  how to establish yourself as an expert •  what kind of testimonials you should have on your sales pages (would you believe they should be 1500 words?) • and more... Perhaps most importantly for overworked copywriters, we asked Sean how he manages to take three months of vacation every year and how his morning routine helps him maintain his energy and effectiveness. These are ideas we need to try. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Leo Burnett Psychotactics Good to Great by Jim Collins Jay Abraham The Brain Audit 5000 BC Superman Article Writing Course Six questions for testimonials Mixergy interview Michael Phelps Bob Bowman The Three Month Vacation Podcast Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hangout with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 49 as we chat with author, speaker, cartoonist, and copywriter Sean D’Souza about psychological triggers that get customers to say yes, creating brand fanatics, how to become an expert in any field, and why he takes so much time off to recharge. Welcome, Sean. Thanks for joining us. Rob: Hey, Sean. Sean: It’s a pleasure to speak to both of you. Kira: Well, we’ve love to start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter and a business owner? Sean: I always wanted to be a copywriter. When I was in university, that’s what I wanted to do. I had this goal, when I was going to be 30, I was going to be in this agency. I was going to be creative director of that agency. So it was very clear to me, which is why in university when I was studying accounting and stuff, my grades started to go down for the first time in my life. As soon as I left university, I went to Leo Burnett, which is the … I lived in Mumbai, India, and the kind of branch of Leo Burnett that was there. I went and spoke to the creative director, and she said, “You know you’re just a cartoonist. You’re not a copywriter.” I said, “Yes, I know that, but here’s what I’ll do. I’ll work with you a month and at the end of the month, you decide whether you want me to stay, and then you pay me. Or you know if I don’t like you after a month, then I’ll leave.” So it was pretty brash, but they took me on and that was the start of working with several advertising agencies. We’re going back now to 1995, I think, so it’s a long time ago. So I worked in a couple of agencies, and then, at some point, I started thinking, “Well, this is not what I want to do,” and I went back to cartooning. At that point, I was drawing cartoons for these magazines, but also for these organizations. What I found was their copy was really bad, and that my cartoons were getting kind of mutilated or defaced or destroyed because of their bad copy. That’s when I got back into copywriting and I started enjoying myself. I didn’t think I would enjoy myself as much as just drawing cartoons, but I started enjoying myself. Then, once again, I just started doing that for a living, and I left the country. I left India and I came to New Zealand in the year 2000. At that point, I had no interest in copywriting. I had no interest in anything, but cartooning again. So it’s been pretty much a rollercoaster ride before we started up with Psychotactics. Kira: Why did you leave copywriting twice? It sounds like twice, or maybe more than that, and go back to cartooning. Was it burnout or were you just kind of tired of it and wanted a change? What triggered those changes for you? Sean: I always follow the things that make me happy and I’ve always had that deep within me. That I need to do the things that make me happy, not that makes everybody else happy. In the first agency, I just jumped ships really. I just went to the second job because it paid more. But in the second agency, the reason I left was because I had went through this workshop and this guy said, “You can write TV commercials and you can do it very quickly,” and he was showing us this stuff. I thought, “You know really this is what I want to do,” and then I joined him and I started writing TV commercials. I did that for nine months, and then I was sitting on a beach one day and thinking, “Well, if I were to die this weekend,” this is without reading any self-help book, by the way. “If I were to die this weekend, what would I rather be doing?” The answer was, “I would rather be drawing cartoons,” so I went back into cartoons. Then, just as easily, I’ve been jumping back and forth. But it’s not like I leave it. It’s almost like I went for a great meal, now I’m going to take a break, and then I’m going to go back to that great meal. There wasn’t any specific strategy. I don’t think you have that kind of mentality when you’re just out of university and stuff. You don’t have that, “Oh, what’s the long-term strategy here?” Rob: So it sounds like it was sort of serendipitous, following your bliss. How did you come to start your own business? Sean: So we got to New Zealand and I read a book by Jim Collins called Good to Great. He said, “What can you be the best in the world at?” I thought, “You know what? What I’m the best in the world at is retaining clients. I’m very good at getting a client and then keeping that client for literally for life.” But then, I didn’t have a very long life back then. That’s what I decided to do. So I called, and this is the whole kind of thing that comes to haunt me every time. The first company was called Million Bucks. It shows you my mindset. Right? Because now I am so far away from that point, as in, that’s not my goal. It’s just happens to be that we earn more than enough, but the point is that that’s not the mindset. So I started that company, and I was wondering why nobody seemed to sign up, obviously. From there on, we started up Psychotactics. Now Psychotactics was literally a presentation. It had nothing beyond that. I sat down one day and trying to figure out how am I going to get this message across? How am I going to write this copy? Why is it that I struggle every single time I sit down? Why is it that I’m struggling? By that point in time, I bought a lot of stuff from Jay Abraham, and he used to sell enormous amounts of stuff. The internet was just barely started at that point in time, so it was all direct mail. So I’d go through his sales letters, and I’d buy a lot of his stuff. We bought probably $15,000 to $20,000, maybe even more … $15,000, $20,000 worth of stuff from him. So it would come in these big boxes, and I’d go, “Why do I get so excited with these boxes? Why do I get so excited with all these sales letters?” So I started to deconstruct everything and when I deconstructed it, I realized that there were just a few things that were really pushing all those buttons. When I put those few things down and gave a presentation, and at the end of the presentation, someone came up to me and go, “Can I have the notes to that presentation?” I said, “No, I don’t have any notes. It’s just a presentation.” She said, “I can’t remember what you just said.” So I sat down. I wrote it in a PDF. Gave her 16 pages. That was the start of The Brain Audit. Today that’s sold well over a half a million dollars worth of just The Brain Audit. Rob: So without going into too much detail about The Brain Audit, what are some of the things that you had deconstructed, that you shared in the presentation, that were so impressive to people who heard it? Sean: I was trying to find how your brain goes through the decision-making process. That’s really what I was trying to do. I was trying to say, “What are the steps?” If I could freeze-frame those steps and they’re really: the problem, the solution, the target profile, the objections, the risk reversal, testimonial, and uniqueness. Essentially, what happens is the first half or the first half of this brain audit is all about getting the client’s attention. The second half is just mitigating or reducing or eliminating the risk, and then that final little box is, “Why you?” I said halves, but let’s say thirds. So getting the client’s attention, getting rid of the risk, and then saying, “Now that I know this stuff, why should I pick you?” Rob: Obviously, you’ve done a lot of work in developing The Brain Audit since then, and a lot of other products. Are there other psychological triggers that you like to talk about or write about that get customers to say yes, when you’re selling a product or a service? Sean: There are lots of things that actually end up causing the customer to buy. My goal is to find out how … See the thing that crosses my mind a lot is that as a copywriter, as a marketer, I want my stuff to be redundant,