Chris Voss had me on The Chris Voss Show, one of the longest-running daily podcasts in the world with an audience of over 24 million and a top 1.5% ranking globally. We spent 34 minutes getting into what I’ve spent nearly two decades learning: why understanding user psychology is the difference between startups that go viral and those that go splat.
Listen to the full episode here.
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The conversation covers the core framework behind Outrageous Startup Growth — the idea that most founders are optimizing for the wrong things, and that the real leverage is understanding how your users think, feel, and decide.
Some of what we got into:
Why some startups go viral and others go splat
It’s rarely about the product. The founders who break through are the ones who understand the psychology of their users before they build — what creates desire, what creates trust, and what makes someone tell a friend. That’s the foundation everything else is built on.
The mindset behind sustainable growth
Explosive growth that collapses is worse than slow growth that compounds. I’ve seen both. The difference usually comes down to whether founders are engineering for genuine user value or just chasing a metric. One builds momentum. The other builds a leaky bucket.
FOMO, magic moments, and decision engineering
These aren’t gimmicks. They’re the mechanics of how people actually make decisions. When you understand the behavioral science behind FOMO, what creates a “magic moment” for a user, and how to design environments that nudge decisions toward success, you’re not manipulating anyone. You’re just building something that works with human nature instead of against it.
Social proof, friction, and authentic branding
Reducing friction is usually good. But not always. Some friction builds commitment. Some friction signals quality. The skill is knowing which is which. And social proof only works when it’s real — specific, credible, and grounded in actual user experience.
All of this and more is in Outrageous Startup Growth.