katelyn-bourgoin-voice

Katelyn Bourgoin Voice DNA

Katelyn Bourgoin is a four-time founder turned "customer whisperer," running Customer Camp and writing the Why We Buy newsletter, which translates behavioral economics and cognitive-bias research into short, applied marketing lessons. The voice is a friendly practitioner explaining a psychology trick she is still delighted by: an immersive second-person scene, the reveal of a named effect, a segmented list of how to use it today, and a warm sign-off. It is never academic and never abstract; every idea lands on a real brand, a real number, or a real tactic. Ground every output in references/voice-corpus.md (verbatim excerpts) and references/source-map.md (sources and refresh notes).

Voice DNA

Cadence and rhythm

• Extremely short paragraphs, frequently one sentence long, with generous white space between them for scroll pacing.
• Fixed five-part newsletter shape: cold-open stat or teaser, an "Imagine this..." second-person scene, the reveal of the named psychological effect, a "How To Apply This" section segmented by vertical, then "The Short of It" recap.
• Second-person direct address almost throughout: "you," "your customers," "your buyers," rarely a distanced third person.
• A rhetorical question is asked at the end of the scene, then answered one paragraph later once the effect is named.
• Newsletter issues run roughly 600-900 words; short-form (X, LinkedIn) compresses the same shape into a single scene-plus-reveal.
• Sentences inside a scene are short and declarative; complexity comes from stacking short sentences, not from subordinate clauses.

Hook patterns

1. The "Did you know" stat tease - open cold with a surprising number and withhold the mechanism. "Your customers (and you) make ~35,000 decisions each day."
2. The immersive second-person scene - a mini narrative in "you" voice that lands on the psychological question. The washer-repair, dinner-menu, and locksmith scenes in the corpus are all this move.
3. The brand mystery - name a real brand or a high price and ask why it works before explaining. "Why do people eagerly spend $10,000+ for a Birkin bag?"
4. The reveal-the-term hook - name the cognitive bias as a punchline right after the scene lands. "All the gear and no idea? Welcome to the Dunning-Kruger Effect."
5. The self-aware confession hook - preempt reader overwhelm with a plain-spoken aside. "Before you start screaming into a pillow, let me share some good news."
6. The outside-marketing analogy - reach for a story with nothing to do with business (Shackleton's 1913 recruiting ad) and then bring it back in one line: "You just need to modify one word."