The Magic of Exclusivity: Colin Hodge on Behavioral Psychology and Product Growth

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So these principles are things like putting yourself out there so that even though you're uncomfortable, you need to get comfortable with that. And it's a way of like pushing yourself and realizing that that's how you find growth. That's how you level up is when you're feeling a bit of uncomfortable, then you can, you're pushing yourself in the right ways. And frankly, even, you know, I didn't dream of being an author, but when I decided to do this, I was like, okay, this is a good area for me to test myself and grow a little more.

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This is going to be really fun today. My guest, Colin Hodge, has done so much, Colin. You've scaled startups to over 100 million users. You sold a dating app and then you bought it back, and then you wrote the playbook on how user psychology is the engine behind every business that's ever gone viral. So I have your book right here, Outrageous Startup Growth. It's really fun read, and I'm really thrilled to have you to come talk about your outrageous growth method and everything that you're doing. So first and foremost, thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me. I have one of the strangest careers, so I hope we can get into some of these fun stories.

I would love to do that. And first of all, one thing I do wanna note that I hadn't teed up to ask about or talk about is your background, because I think you come from humble beginnings and that's a story that is very relatable to people because I think you even mentioned yet you didn't have a dad who gave you your first million in funding. You really bootstrapped and you started everything on your own. So can you talk a little bit about that and how that turned into the creation of the first dating app that you did?

Yeah, so I, I grew up in Podunk, Pennsylvania. Basically my town had 2,000 people. I didn't, you know, people would make jokes because I was so into computers that I was the next Bill Gates and stuff. But to them, that was basically the guy who was best with computers in the town. Oh, you're the next Bill Gates. I didn't ever dream of starting a company that would get sold and get headlines and grow to 100 million users. So that was the humble beginnings. My mom, you know, struggled. She was a teacher. We were on food stamps some of the time. So it was rough in some ways, but not as rough as some people have it. So I want to make sure I'm fair. As I started to like evolve this mindset of like, Am I just about computers? Am I just about tech? I realized I love to do marketing and build things from zero to one and help other people see they too can do all the stuff that they see in the headlines and that they see the best entrepreneurs doing. So that's really where I came from with my book and with my story when I try to help others is empowering people to see that you want to stand out and anybody can do this.

Fabulous. And the opening of your book starts with you naked being interviewed. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Well, since we're on video today, thankfully I'm not doing that, but so I was being interviewed in the Business Insider studios. It was at the peak of our, I would say our fame for my first startup. And I won't say the name yet, but we'll get to it. A little teaser there. And as I was being interviewed, I was just, I had one of those moments where kind of an out-of-body experience where I thought I was looking down on myself and I was in the studio, the bright lights blasting me in the face. The host was, you know, just like, all right, we have like 3 to 5 minutes, you know, just rapid fire. And I was looking down on myself like, who is this? What am I doing here? And how did this all happen so quickly? So I wasn't actually naked. I'll spoil that teaser in the book, but it comes from that feeling of just being completely vulnerable, being, feeling out of place, but then realizing that no, that imposter syndrome is just that it's a fake syndrome that we need to overcome. And I got off the camera, they posted the video. And I had people texting me like, oh, that was awesome. Good job. I was like, wait, I just experienced something completely different than you. So maybe I'm a little delulu about this.

I love the use of delulu.

Yeah. I'm old, but I'm not that old.

And I think that is, as you said, it's something we all have to go through no matter what our backgrounds are, no matter what accolades we've had in the past. Every time we're kind of reinventing or starting something new or looking to what our future looks like, there is that moment where we go, am I prepared for this? Am I ready for this? Am I the right person? And let's talk about the founding instinct that led you to start an audacious viral product launch in tech history, 6 million users before you sold it. And I'll let you say the name.

I hope you're letting me say it out of grace, not because you're too shy about it. Yes.

Out of grace. Okay.

So I, I was in Seattle. I quit Microsoft in about 2011. I spent 4 and a half years there being an engineer, and I just knew I had that calling to be an entrepreneur, to be my own boss. And so I started creating apps, and eventually I had this epiphany that I loved understanding psychology and the sociology of how people meet. Why do we make the friends we do? Why do we become attracted to and form relationships with the partners we do? And, and how do we really make the most of the tools we have? One of which was online dating at the time. So I was using all the sites and I think I was using Plenty of Fish or OkCupid or something, and I went on this awful date. I won't go into the full date story, but it was, it was not very good. And it made me realize that there's gotta be a better way. And so I, said, all right, why not me? Why can't I create a better dating site, a better dating experience than they did? And I started it a year and a half into grinding on that. I got into a startup accelerator in Silicon Valley and about 3 months. So the accelerator is 3 months, you know, so it's a quick sprint. And halfway through that, I, it was a Friday night. I start drinking with my mates in the startup accelerator. And of course, you know, alcohol is a way of being a bit of a truth serum. So I, you know, all my inhibitions were gone and I just admitted all of the doubts that I felt as a founder. Wow. Out loud. I finally got vulnerable with everybody and I said, guys, I, I think my startup's gonna fail. I think Demo Day's gonna come. I'm not gonna raise money. I can't find users. Like, it's just, it felt like a failure. And thankfully some of them leaned into that. They shared their own vulnerability, but they also created like those questions, the, the good conversation that really brought out what became Bang with Friends. And Bang with Friends was a wild name and concept. The whole idea being, you know, is the Facebook app era and everybody was plugging into the Facebook network with Canvas apps. And so you could, you know, use this as a tool to find out, you know, who you're connected to. And for us, we're like, well, what if you could just find out who secretly wants to bang you or hook up with you of your friend group? You know, young, dumb idea, but it was so provocative, so interesting and curiosity-driven that when we told everybody in the accelerator, they were like, let me on it right now. They were so excited. And that visceral reaction that strong reaction in hindsight is something that I chase now with every idea. I want to get a reaction out of people because if they're just kind of milquetoast about it, then that means that you're probably not going far enough. You're not pushing the envelope enough. Not everything has to be sexually provocative. I'm not saying that, but you want a reaction. You know, some people should actually recoil and hate it. Some people should love it. And it's when you're stuck in the middle trying to please everybody, that you don't get noticed. So that was the, the beginning of Bang with Friends and that whole journey that lasted me the last 13 years.

Wow. Amazing. And it took off. I mean, this was, I do remember that era very well. I remember all the games, the Farmville and all the different things that helped people discover Facebook and start using it in different ways from the original intention and just help them grow. Then you took it off and it's still now an app today. So can you talk a little bit about, you know, selling it, then going and leading global growth at Seventeen Live as Chief Growth Officer, US CEO, and then eventually deciding to reacquire your company and totally, yeah, that's where we are today.

Yeah, it's been a rollercoaster journey. So after Bang with Friends was launched, we grew so quickly and we rebranded very quickly to Down. So now, and even today, our app name is Down Dating App. And we did that for, to widen the market, right? So Down is just casual dating. It's, it's kind of like, you know, every app feels so serious about you have to plan your future and all that stuff. So we like to say plan for Friday, not forever, because there are those people and we're all in those phases sometimes where you want just something for right now that fits in your life. And that's what Down has become. And, and we've now have over 17 million users just on that app alone. So that rollercoaster journey, you know, started with growing to 6 million users organically. I really dove in and, you know, took off my engineering hat at some point and put on the marketing hat, learned how to grow organically, how to master App Store optimization, how to master press, all that stuff. And when I found a buyer, a Singaporean company, they acquired us. I joined them and I moved to Asia. And as part of that move, it, everything just happened so quickly. Pretty soon before I knew it, we merged with a live streaming app, that live streaming app, and, you know, all the shareholders had ambitions to go public in the US. And, you know, as an Asian company with no product in the US other than down, which was part of theirs now, they were talking to the bankers and the bankers are like, wait a minute, hold on. So investors in the US will only know you because of this app that used to be called Bang with Friends. They, they were scared shitless, to be honest, and pardon my language. They were just like, you've got to sell that so fast. So they sold it off in a fire sale and an engineer at that company was able to buy it for cheap. And through some negotiations and some lucky happenstance, I knew him. I grabbed the app from him and resuscitated it because it was, it was like crashing. They didn't even realize it. They turned off monetization completely.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. And just, oh, why, why is our revenue falling? Well, that's why. So fast forwarding through that, we spent many years just trying to build the basics back. Into the app, you know, how do we make sure users aren't hitting the, the biggest points of friction or even walls that were preventing them from success? How do we revive the organic marketing that had kind of fallen apart? How do we make sure that it can sustain itself with, with revenue? Building the team. And then of course COVID hit shortly after that. So then adjusting to COVID, which for dating apps actually was a boon and we did quite well during that time. And then now we just keep growing every year and it's kind of inexplicable. We have, like I said, 17 million users. Our revenue is at all-time highs, but most importantly, our user metrics are at all-time highs. So the matches they get, the conversations they get, their probability of getting success, all of those things have gone up and that's what we're focused on the most.

Yeah. Fantastic. And I, I appreciate that you have the swipe up or down instead of the left or right. It's a lot less confusing, right? To, to just, there's only, you can remember which way you have to go.

Yeah. We, we try to stand out that way. Part of the, the reasoning is we think that the individual that you're swiping on might appeal to you in different ways. There might be some people you're like, you know, I would just wanna get down with them, but I know they're not long-term dating material. And that's who you swipe down on. And then there are the others who you're like, I, I could see myself dating this person long-term. And that's why we, we want the two options. And just in general, we wanna enable people just to be more honest with their intentions. So hopefully that's one aspect that they can bring out their true desires and true profile, true selves in our app.

Yeah. And I think especially as people discover the app who are maybe a little bit older vintage, not old, but right, are trying to dip their toes back into the dating world after not having dated for a while. It takes out a lot of the complexity of what words can you use or not use on certain apps because my sister went through this experience and she didn't realize some of the signals that she was giving based on what she was putting in her profile and let it sit her down and go, okay, wait. You know that this really means this. And she's like, oh, so I think that's really important. And I obviously the growth speaks to the intent that you've put behind it and the fact that people are comfortable and, and this is what they're looking for. So I wanna talk a little bit about the two pillars of your book, right? You have a mindset and user psychology. So let's talk about mindset first and why having the right mindset is so important to the growth mindset.

Absolutely. So as I was writing the book, I realized that even though I apply so much user psychology, so understanding what your users feel, that stuff is almost not worth the squeeze unless you first have a strong foundation as a marketer, as a founder to push through, to know how do you approach your daily work? And then how do you, once you do that, then how do you use these tactics for the users, right? So these principles are things like putting yourself out there so that even though you're uncomfortable, you need to get comfortable with that. And it's a way of like pushing yourself and realizing that that's how you find growth. That's how you level up is when you're feeling a bit of uncomfortable, then you can, you're pushing yourself in the right ways. And frankly, even, you know, I didn't dream of being an author, but when I decided to do this, I was like, okay, this is a good area for me to test myself and grow a little more. So put yourself out there is a big one. Resiliency is another one. I tell a story in the book about early Bang with Friends days when we were, we, we grew to a million users in about 3 months. And soon after that, we were the top of the App Store above Tinder, right? So we were like really going bonkers. And then within one week, everything came crashing down and I found myself sitting at the bottom of my shower just like, you know, water beating down on my head, crying because I was just overwhelmed. I was burnt out after, you know, a hard 4-month sprint of not much sleep, probably too much partying, but also way too much work and stress. And Apple had just kicked us off the App Store without any explanation. That's super stressful when it had become our biggest source of users and, you know, the way that we could reach people. And then soon after that we got sued by Zynga for our trademark, for our name. And so all these things just felt like, you know, I was getting hit left and right. And out of that, I realized that there's a resiliency that we have to, if you're creating anything, you need to tap into that and realize like, this is a big part of your job is just to keep going, to fight through, to navigate around the obstacles that, you know, you can't move, you know, platform dependencies, let's say, and, you know, go through the ones that, you know, that, you know, that you have a chance of winning or a chance of persevering. So I, I think resiliency is a big one. And then another one I want to bring up is just empathy. So as a founder, as a marketer, like as a product person, if you develop empathy, not only will your company build better because you're gonna attract the right people and you're gonna know how to attract them, how to keep them, and how to get the most out of them, but you'll also start applying it to your users and to understanding where they're coming from. What are the real pain points? What are they going through? And you know, one of the things I've learned marketing the book is how busy everybody is. Even the people that I think love me. They're like, dude, I have a million things going on. Make this super easy for me and remind me 5 times. So just empathy for where people are at, meeting them where they are. That's, that's another key pillar of this.

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And speaking of this, one of the reasons you wrote this book was to think about your past self and what would you have wanted to tell that little Colin or that little Colleen. I think that's so important. And before we jumped on, I was talking about how I think this should be reading for all of my students in the grad programs I teach for, because it is snackable. You are very relatable. You share a lot of really great stories, but you, at the same time, you've had all of this success, but you do bring this humbleness with it. So thank you for that. And so I would love to, you know, talk about a mistake. That you made that you wish somebody had saved you from? You wish you could go back and rewind time that you think somebody might get the, you know, the info they need in the book to not make that mistake?

Yeah. Well, first, thank you so much. I'm, I'm so glad that the, that, you know, what I produced actually touched you in those ways and it stood out because I really did wanna reach all of the aspiring entrepreneurs and, write it for myself or for anybody who really dreams of maybe they too can become successful in these ways and define success differently than just being a billionaire, differently than just who gets all the headlines these days. So I think one of the big mistakes that I wish I could, you know, go back, travel back in time and prevent would be, I wish that I had bit more perspective when I was going through the acquisition process. So we actually had bankers approach us, you know, basically a year after we had launched and they said, we, we're gonna shop it around for you. We're gonna do all this stuff. And none of those acquisitions came to pass and they wasted a lot of time and it was probably too early as well. So that was the first stage in acquisition. I wish somebody had said, are you really like, here's a process, here's a clear checklist or reflective process that you can go through. And I, I try to make one in the book and share it with readers so that they too can ask themselves all these questions and better evaluate, is now a good time for this? If I had done that, I would've realized that I still had so much more to explore in solving this problem, in building this product or pivoting the product, and I probably wouldn't have wasted as much time with a lot of those, you know, acquirers that never panned out. The second intervention is also related to the acquisition. I got a letter of intent from our acquirer and I felt I'm somebody who maybe sticks a bit too much to my integrity. So I felt like, oh yeah, I said yes to the letter of intent, but soon after that, I started implementing revenue in our product for the first time, and it went way better than I expected. So our valuation was based on zero revenue, but maybe potential for something, and everybody was skeptical of the revenue to, you know, very quickly making $75 grand a month. And I just saw the chart and I was like, oh no, what did I've done? So yeah, I think I could have either gotten a better evaluation from him or a better deal with like you know, more cash involved, or maybe just waited it out and said, I have other options now because I can keep running independently. So those are two intervention points I wish I had. Now, having said that, I learned so much through that process, so it is kind of hard to feel like it's a regret, but if I could go back, maybe that's what I would do.

Yeah. I think, you know, so many things that you're saying are things that I see every day when I talk to other entrepreneurs. From the mindset and going, oh, you say you wanna start a podcast or you need PR, you need this or that, or you need some business strategy, but you actually need mindset work first. You need to really feel strongly that you're in the right position at the right time and that you have that foundation that you talked about. And then the next phase of, you do have to make some mistakes. There is a lot of trial and error that goes into owning a business. Maybe not as much as when you go through an acquisition and you don't get the right valuation, But, but again, these are all things that are very relatable to people. And you do have this method mindset technique that talks about our mindsets, but also the end user's mindset and that emotional immersion in the user experience. So can you talk a little bit about how you crafted that and how it takes a founder or an entrepreneur into the head of their customer? Because we can get all the outside data, analytics, psychographics, demographics we want. But that doesn't mean we're gonna hit the nail on the head.

Absolutely. So we mentioned empathy and how important it is to grow your, yourself and your startup. A big part of this for me is realizing how short in supply the world is right now on empathy. Yeah. And how you could grow this muscle yourself. So, you know, it's one thing to say, oh, we all need more empathy, but as a founder, as a marketer product person, how do you do that? So the method mindset technique is something that I, I put a label to after I did it a few times with various startups. And one of 'em was with the live streaming app that we merged with. That one. So I mean, I was a 30-something white guy living in Taiwan, working, flying around Asia. So Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, et cetera. And trying to relate to these content creators, these influencers who were going live on our app basically for 2 to 4 hours at a time and just constantly on camera. And they need to be engaging, they need to be friendly, but they need to like cultivate fans who have a strong attachment to them. And I wasn't even on Instagram at the time. I deleted my account because I was just so sick of social media. So I was basically like the furthest thing from who they were. And I realized I needed to get into their shoes, get into their minds. And by doing this, by developing this technique, it was basically similar to the method acting technique that a lot of actors use. They try to live as their character for an extended period of time. So I started to be a live streamer. I set up, you know, I had to research like, do I want a ring light for better lighting? Do I, want, you know, what microphone should I use? What phone, et cetera? Do I need an assistant? Sometimes I did. What content am I going to do? How do you keep people glued to their screen for hours on end and like build that connection? It's really hard. So I definitely gained like a new appreciation for what they did. That was the first thing. So I, that was building that empathy. I knew, okay, at first I'll be completely honest. I didn't have much respect for it and it came across as pretty like vain and you know, just people are like so involved with themselves and their looks and think that they're gonna be some big celebrity. But as soon as I started doing it, I realized this is hard. This is something that doesn't come naturally for everybody and myself included. And then I started to lean into it and I said, oh, I love to sing. I love karaoke. I do that when I'm not on camera. What if I do it on stream? And then I roped a friend in and we did it together and it was just like, experimenting, doing the same thing I do with marketing and startups, trying to solve the problem and learn through experience. And that was so much better because afterward I knew how to recruit more of these influencers. I knew how to keep them happy. I knew how to design prizes for them so that they would compete against each other and really strive. So like we put a, I think she was like a 5'1" influencer model from LA. Once we expanded to the US, we put her on the fashion runway for London Fashion Fashion Week, and it's never been done before. Like, you know, you imagine a fashion model should be like 6 foot, you know, super skinny, all that stuff. And here she is just like smiling, beaming as she's walking the runway. And we made that dream come true for her because she outcompeted everybody to get that prize because we understood the mindset and we really hustled to make it happen. So that's one example of like the Method Mindset technique.. And I think when people try to step into this, even if it's not your product, sorry, even if it's not like a product built for you naturally, you can live a few weeks in that, that sort of mindset and develop empathy for them.

Hmm. Yeah. That's such a beautiful example of really putting yourself in the shoes of the people that you're working with, but then also gamifying things to make it fun and incentivizing. And you do talk a little bit about some of the things that like Duolingo does and other companies do in your book. I wanted to ask a little bit about the behavioral science part, right? Social proof, scarcity, FOMO. Let's do it. How do we engineer these triggers, right? Instead of just trying to slap a timer or make something feel like people are gonna miss out and, and the scarcity mindset that's not really actually there because a lot of business owners use this superficially, but How do we actually make these happen?

So I have a confession. Okay. I still, uh, I still get jealous when I see other products, other apps go viral and take off. So if you remember Clubhouse, they were the talk of the town for, I don't know, was it 2021, 2022? Uh, they took off during COVID and I, my first feeling was like, Oh, why didn't I come up with this? Why didn't I create this? But then I leaned into that feeling of jealousy and I started to explore how did they actually create this cycle? Because I was being pulled into the FOMO. Everybody I knew was, you know, just to rewind for people, everybody seemed to be talking about, do you have an invite? Do you have an invite? Did you, are you in Clubhouse yet?

Oh yeah.

And then there were clones of Clubhouse and all this stuff. So I leaned into that and I said, all right, I need to reverse engineer how did they create this FOMO? And what I figured out looking at the Clubhouse case study, looking at what Duolingo does, what others do, even what we did for Bang with Friends to get it off the ground a bit, was there are 4 elements to FOMO and they all are related and interconnected and they create this positive feedback loop that really strengthens as you add each element. So the 4 are, uh, first of all, I, I use USES as the acronym because it just helps me remember it. So urgency, how do you create urgency so people feel like they need to join or take action on this thing very quickly, very soon? And Clubhouse did it obviously because one, you only have these scarce invites, I think 2 per person who was already on the platform. And two, th— those, those invites go away. So if they share, if a friend gave you an invite, you wanted to use it cuz otherwise they have another friend who's asking for it. So urgency to join and then urgency to join the product and join in that conversation because it was live audio. So you missed the conversation if you weren't there. Yeah. So urgency is the first one. Social proof. Oh my gosh. So social proof is so important because for them, they, they had a leg up, let's be honest. They were former founders of another successful company. They were connected to all these VCs. They were, you know, it wasn't a, a big jump for them to get people like Elon Musk and others at the time onto the platform hosting conversations and make it interesting. But they did have that social proof. So that reinforced the urgency because, oh, if you get an invite from somebody like that, or if you want to hear what they're saying, when they are just live and stream of consciousness sharing, then you gotta hop on. Exclusivity. So that's the next one that is so important because you were part of the in-crowd and because there was scarcity, then it was harder to join, right? So last one being scarcity. So only 2 tickets, only, only 2 invites, I should say. And then you really felt like there was a limit, I think, on the chat rooms and all this stuff. So all these things, you can see how they reinforce. They, they make more scarcity, adds to the feeling of exclusivity, but scarcity alone doesn't work if you don't have social proof. So all these things really build into each other and the most effective viral products create this FOMO and it actually helps them scale as well. So it has that side benefit. Of, okay, we can scale carefully. We can make sure the product is not crashing as much, that it is a good experience, that we're getting the right people in here, all that stuff. So I love like creating FOMO for this, but only for real cases. I, I know a lot of companies try to artificially create it, and I think a lot of people can feel that. So, you know, does it make sense to create scarcity? Only if, you know, it, you're trying to scale it carefully and, and you have a high quality experience for users to back that up.

Yeah, and I will say there are still people who are using Clubhouse every day. Um, there's actually a podcast that— the quality of the audio, sorry if you guys are listening, isn't fantastic. They— I'm sure they know that, but they do a live every morning, the podcast morning show, and then they take that and put it onto the RSS feed for their podcast. And they started on podcast and they said we're gonna— on Clubhouse Clubhouse and they said, we're gonna keep it on Clubhouse. And I mean, that's the only one I know of that's still on Clubhouse, but like more power to them and the fact that it had some lasting power. And there's still prob— there are probably other examples of people who are still really utilizing as a platform, especially in this day and age when, you know, I think people are saying, oh, this platform's gonna go away because of US regulations. So everybody's fleeing to this one or this one, and then other ones are popping up and people don't really know where to go. Um, because nobody's really hitting the mark.

Yeah, exactly. And I use the Clubhouse example also because it shows how you can create FOMO, but it can also burn out if other things go wrong. So it's not a guarantee just because, you know, with Bang with Friends, like we had so many times, like we could have died and we basically did crash for a while and then had to revive it. So these sorts of things, you know, they're not bulletproof, they're not a guarantee it's gonna last forever, but with Clubhouse especially, they really captured the moment. And that is something that helped propel them, that creation of the FOMO cycle.

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And then talk about magic moments, converting somebody to an active, loyal customer, because that's another place where I think a lot of companies just go down, right? They get it wrong. They get somebody in, but then the customer lifetime value is weak because they haven't been able to continue like surprising and delighting their customer base.

So I think a lot of people have probably heard of the aha moment as another thing, or a magic moment for things like Facebook, Slack. So Facebook's was famously adding 7 friends within the first 7 days made it so much more likely that person, that user, would be retained, would stay and see the value of Facebook. So It's the moment when the value clicks for you and you're like, I get it. This, this product is, I'm gonna stick around. Right? Slack was an organization, so not an individual, but the whole organization sending 2,000 messages collectively. That's when, you know, almost every organization, I think over 90%, saw the value and ended up sticking around. They saw the value over other platforms, but usually just over switching from email.. And so this is a, what I call a major magic moment because it is such a big moment and click for people that they're almost, you know, guaranteed to stay around and to become a loyal customer that creeps, uh, creeps, uh, keeps creating value. And for maybe, maybe that was a Freudian slip cuz I'm thinking about Zuckerberg. Excuse me. Um, so that's a major magic moment. I walk through in the book how we actually found it. For a segment of our users in the live streaming app. So with live streaming, the big difference for users is actually compared to YouTube or other video platforms is it's not meant to be a passive video consumption experience. It's interactive. So how, how do we bring people into that and help them see the value of that? Well, we, we just segmented it and we said, all right, if you're a passive viewer who has never really commented, never sent a gift, which is just like a virtual animation. And you know, the, the streamer gets points then from that gift. Then how do we bring you out of the shell and like help you to see, help you see this clicks for you and that there's a value here. It's a different type of media. And we developed, we, we tried lots of hypotheses, but looking at the data, what we saw was when people first actually received some attention from the live streamer and then they sent them a gift and they got recognized for that gift. That was a huge moment for them. And we armed our streamers with actually the first step of this. So as they're hosting, we let them send like a little poke to each viewer. And so it would be like, Anika, poke. And then you would see like your name pop up in front of the chat, in front of everybody. And they might, they probably even say your name out loud as well. And say, hi, welcome. They poke you and suddenly that interaction has changed. Now you're part of the show. Now you feel recognized. So it plays to your ego, your identity a bit more too. And then with that poke, you're gifted the credit to poke the streamer back. And so now you can do it again at a time of your choosing and be part of the show and get recognized again. And so that really ended up being a huge moment for our passive viewers to turn them into active viewers who were spending money on gifts and helping support the streamer, commenting on the show, and eventually retaining and sticking around much longer. So that's a major magic moment. And then briefly, I'll talk about the minor magic moments because these ones I think are probably much easier for everybody to do. If you think about the mood, the journey that your users go through, they're probably going through all sorts of stuff. So there's, you know, the hope when they first join, there's confusion about, you know, part of the setup process and maybe a little frustration if they have some early success in the app, like in a dating app, somebody likes them or shows attention or they message with somebody, there's that renewed hope and excitement. So they're going through this journey and each of those little moments, even the negative ones, are opportunities for you to experiment with some sort of intervention to try to get more value or try to add more value to their experience. So as a quick example, in our dating app with the initial hope, we really have experimented and tested that users, we, they need to create much better profiles than what they want to create by default. So that's the time we ask them to invest more because when they invest more, then, you know, add 4 photos instead of 1, uh, add more of a bio and coach them and how to do that. That's when they are a lot more likely to do the investment and then become successful and become retained in the app. So if we had asked them, you know, a bit too soon, so before they even logged in and all that, maybe it wouldn't work. And if we asked them at a point when they're frustrated, it definitely won't work. So we need to test out when is the best time to ask them these investment questions and get them more progress. Those are the minor magic moments. They don't multiply your retention and they don't create this cohort. Not everybody who adds 4 photos is going to stick around forever, but they do lean into something that's called the IKEA effect. And it's basically, you know, that frustrating furniture. If you spend half an hour picking it and then 2 hours putting it together and fighting with it, You care a lot more about that $50 table than you would one that you buy from somebody else who built it. So that's the idea is like invest in these minor magic moments. Those can boost your retention, your sales, all that stuff. And then after you do those, you got the basics covered. You can start to look and see how you can build a magic moment that is much bigger and can do things like the poke action did.

Yeah. Nice. How much data did you need to aggregate to come to these conclusions? Yeah.

And that's, I'm such a sharp question because the major magic moments, those ones do need a lot more data if you want to try to have a better hunch and hypothesis before you start experimenting. So those, you know, you need a lot of data. We had at the time, probably you know, hundreds of thousands of users coming through every month. So we could do a lot of experiments and dig through the data and see what do they have in common if they stuck around versus they turned, all that stuff. For the minor magic moments, the beauty of those is, especially if you move to the top of the funnel, like, you know, the very first part of the signup process is you don't need as much data because you're not looking to maximize it for everybody. You're looking for this one segment, you know, say for our dating app, we might want to maximize, all right, women who are 18 to 25, how do we get their signup rate to over 90%? And then we start to look for how we can play to their moods to actually increase that investment effect or give them something for free so that they feel they want to reciprocate all that stuff. Those, you don't need as much data. You really just need a signal here or there. So you don't need to be huge, you know, you don't need a p-value that is so confident and you need something that just says this is clearly trending better than the others. So keep investing in that area and see if it can build.

That was very helpful. Thank you. Because I, I love using data and making sure that we have the data, but we also have to of course have the psychological component and and the, the emotional component and marry the two. And you know, that's how we get to exactly what we're talking about, behavioral science. So I, I wanted to go back to Bang with Friends and achieving 300,000 monthly downloads on App Store optimization with no paid advertising. Can you talk about how you got there? Because I, I think in today's world, you know, a lot of us I mean, I know when I am teaching people about podcasting, I say, yeah, you want to grow organically, but you also want to make sure that you're covering all your bases. So you're doing some paid, you're getting out there with earned media, shared, owned, so that we have that full funnel and that, you know, full display of who we are across all channels. Okay. So talk about how did you achieve that without any paid advertising? Because that's incredible. And because I think there are lessons in there that probably apply today too.

Yeah, I think a big part of this was having the curiosity to dig in when I saw any spark of growth and figure out where it came from. So I think it was Brazil that I noticed a spike of downloads and we didn't do anything extra there. And usually when we saw a spike, it was from press. So, you know, we got so much press coverage and a lot of it, they didn't even reach out to us anymore. They just, somebody wanted to write about it. Or do a video about it, whatever it was at the time. And in Brazil, I could not hunt down, you know, the standard process was I'll go and look for all the press coverage. I couldn't find anything. And so I was kind of at a loss and I was like, huh, well, where's this coming from? And then I dug through our App Store dashboard and I saw there was a big spike of downloads on basically just like a week and it wasn't stopping., and so that doesn't match the press pattern as much. And I started to dig in and I was like, oh, okay, so maybe, maybe something started ranking for the search terms. And as I looked, it was a dating-related term that we were ranking, I think, top 5 in Brazil for one of the dating terms. All of a sudden, we didn't do anything. It just, for whatever reason, took off word of mouth in that group, and then more people converted when they saw it. So that's my entry into the App Store optimization world. And I started to really dig in and see, wow, we are so under-optimized. Like all of our, you know, our title, our subtitle, our screenshots, our icon, et cetera, all this stuff, we hadn't really touched it. We just did what we wanted to describe it as. And in Brazil for Portuguese, I think we even did, I just paid somebody to translate it as best they could from English, but that was it. And so as we started to optimize the Brazilian Portuguese one, I also did our US English. And after 2 to 3 rounds, we were just going crazy with downloads because, you know, all it took was we already had some momentum. That's, that's a fair part of it. But once we did that, we were just pouring fuel on the fire and we started to rank for the term dating app. We were number 2, I think for a while. Then we got to number 1 for the dating term. And so these things start to feed on themselves as well in a positive way. So strong and, uh, so frankly, like obvious in hindsight, you know, it's kind of like you put up a webpage, you wanna optimize it for SEO, right? But didn't think of it at the time. And now the way I talk to entrepreneurs and marketers about it is, um, if you're on the app stores, you're already paying to be on that storefront. They're taking 30% or, you know, 15% for if you're making less, but like they're taking a chunk of your sales. So if you're paying for the storefront, why wouldn't you want to display the best things you can there? And you might as well optimize it. So we got to, we just kept building on that in the US and other countries. And eventually that was driving, like I said in the book, 300,000 new downloads just every month. And we weren't spending on ads. Now, a lot of these downloads, uh, they were people just discovering it when they searched dating terms and all that. So it didn't always match the TA that we were looking for, but it did help us to reach more and more people and then figure out our revenue cycle and all that stuff. So, It was a really good stepping stone for us.

Nice. And are you seeing any difference in the way you have to approach things now that we also have, of course, AI search, generative search, and everybody's using LLMs to discover the next big thing?

So we are not, I would say, leaning into that a whole lot. We're doing a little bit. App Store Search is still really strong for us because there's such strong intent. I think a lot of times with LLMs, when people are searching for stuff, it is much more using— I, I talk about in the book, uh, Daniel Kahneman basically came up with System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 is just your fast thinking, emotional pattern matching. It's the one that we use for most decisions. System 2 is our slower thinking, logical, and even, you know, after a decision's made, it rationalizes it. So I think a lot of LLM usage is pseudo System 2. People, the people are using it as that conversation partner to more carefully evaluate which, what they want to use and all that. Whereas that ends up being a much different type of user, I think, than somebody who's like, I know I'm on the App Store, I want to search for a dating app or casual dating, or I want to something to do tonight, whatever. Those are all different intents and different use cases. So for us, as we're thinking about AI optimization, we're starting to think, okay, may— we don't probably don't want to be the general one for that. We want to be a very specific use case. If somebody is having a conversation with AI and trying to find, for instance, you know, they're a 30-something woman, they just are out of a breakup and they want to find the best app for them that doesn't pressure them, doesn't make them feel like they need to you know, rush into marriage or rush into the next relationship, that's where we wanna rank. But maybe, and, and be mentioned first, right? Probably not for the general user who's just searching, hey, what's the top dating app in my city? Because the chances of that actually resulting in what we want right now is probably not, we're not optimized for that.

Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. I wanna think about, 'cause a lot of people who are listening to this show have businesses fairly well established in many cases, but they're small businesses, right? Or they're leading marketing for companies or they're building their personal brand and they don't have huge budgets. So when we think about social proof, friction reduction, magic moments, what are some things that anybody who's listening could take and apply wherever they are in their journey?

Yeah, so a lot of these cognitive biases and psychological tactics that we talk about you can apply them even without a budget. So whether you're running ads or not, if you have any sort of storefront, your website, app store, et cetera, this is a place where you should be using these tactics. A big category that I like to share with people is everything. So the environment that we make our decisions in really affects everything. And so I talk about decision engineering. How do you engineer that decision to Have the user, one, discover you, try your product, and then two, stick around longer. And, uh, a big category of that is called framing effects. So when you're looking at, you know, let's say they search for a workout app and you're, you don't have much of a budget, you're not running ads. How do you compete against all the other ones in the market? Well, how you frame that decision and think about how your potential users are thinking about it really matters a lot. So if they are, you know, somebody who's just like exasperated by every, they've tried every workout, they've tried everything and they're just sick of that. Well, you want to talk to that mindset. You want to talk to that frustration and try to come up with how do you contrast with the experiences that they're frustrated with. So contrasting in your marketing copy, in the screenshots, in the colors you use in the words of the title and the order of the words, all these things really help you to stand out from the crowd and also do it in a way that speaks to where the user is or the potential user is in that moment. So framing effects are big, contrast effect being one of them. And another one that I really, you know, we see this in brick and mortar shops and we see it online as well, But one of my favorite effects is the reciprocity principle or reciprocity effect. And it's the idea that when somebody receives a gift or something that they perceive of value for free, they're a lot more likely to follow up with that, to actually pay it back, to give you more of their time and attention. So that's why free trials exist. Of course, that's one form of it, but there are other things you can do as well, like you could go above and beyond with customer support and give, you know, a dozen of your customers just the handholding, the best concierge experience to make sure they get the most out of your product. That is something you can do to build early traction, and that traction often turns into a 5-star review and things that build the social proof that you don't yet have. So that's, that's what I mean by like thinking about how you can apply these effects, and you don't need money. You don't need to spend a huge budget.

Yeah. It's fabulous. Well, I really appreciate you being here today and sharing so much with us. I did want to go back to, you know, you didn't set out to be an author, but then you decided to write a book that's now a bestseller. Did you know it was going to become a bestseller? And how has the book changed your trajectory if it has?

I dared to dream it would be a bestseller, but I didn't count on it. And I'm so, I, I was blown away that not only was it a bestseller, but like it stayed there 2 weeks and that's more than, yeah, I think the numbers are absolutely stunning. So 0.05% of authors become bestsellers and it, I, I even smaller percentage have 2 weeks in a row. So those books that you see there every week, I mean, hats off to them. It is wild. And you're competing against every book that's out there, every genre. So from romance novels, kids' books, I think Dr. Seuss is still on the list. So like they're selling so many books and you know, you're just a, a no-name author. So it's hard. I'm so grateful that people are liking the book and reaching out to me and sharing it with others. So I guess I would, I'm, I love the writing process in general. I tell marketers and entrepreneurs, like, it's a really good idea just to start the writing habit because that helps you to formulate your thoughts and be able to con— like communicate and just convey them so much better with other people. So I'm definitely, you know, hoping to write another book at some point when I know I have a topic that really strikes me. And I hope people just enjoy the book and share it with others if you do like it. Leave a review. I read every one. So I might even, yeah, if you give a, the best review, I might reach out and try to give you something in return.

So, wow. Okay. Challenge accepted. And everybody who is listening can follow along with that as well. So obviously we have your book. You also work with a lot of organizations. What is the best place? Should we have everybody go to colinhodge.com, find you on LinkedIn?

Yeah, you can go to my site. That's probably the easiest place, but feel free to add me on LinkedIn as well. Add a message, by the way, 'cause LinkedIn is so spammy these days. So let me know why you're adding me. And that's one of the ways you can contrast with others, by the way, stand out. And I also write on Substack now. I have about 40,000 followers. So if you want to join the group there, it's going strong and I share a lot of these psychological tips, insights, and just stories from my career.

Fantastic. And do you have a favorite quote, verse, poem, mantra, family motto?

Oh, wow. I guess the first one that came to mind when you said that is the, the best time to start was yesterday and the second best time is now. And I have to remind myself this all the time because I'm like, Oh, why didn't I do this yet? But then, you know, a little nudge and you're like so grateful that you actually started it. So yeah, that, that would be it. Just get started on whatever you've been putting off.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Colin. This has been really fun. And for everybody listening, thank you for being here. I know that everything that Colin said is really useful advice, whether it's a confirmation of what you're already doing or a little nudge to do that little bit of extra. So with that, have a great day, have a great week until I see you again. And don't forget to leave us a rating and review. That really helps with discoverability of this show. And don't forget to check out Colin's link and book and leave that review for him so that you may be the winning review that gets a special prize of some kind to be disclosed at a later time.

Thanks for listening or watching. To this episode of Your Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out at yourbrandamplified.com.

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