The Head Start Spell

Have you ever added a skill to your LinkedIn profile just to fill up the little bar?

Nobody had asked for that skill (Microsoft Word, very important), and nobody would ever check it. Still, the bar sat one notch short of full, and walking away from it bothered some part of us we didn't know was there.

LinkedIn never said a word; it just drew the bar. We cast the spell on ourselves.

That pull is this week's spell, the Head Start Spell: we finish what feels already started, even when someone else did the starting. So one of the easiest ways to get people to finish anything (a signup, a project, a loyalty card) is to make sure they never start at zero.

Welcome to Growth Grimoire, a spellbook of the hidden forces that make people buy, build, and believe. Each issue turns one piece of psychology into something you can try at work.

📜 The Lore: one loyalty card, four forces

A coffee card is a tiny psychology lab, and we're the lab rats. Four forces take turns as the stamps fill up: one gets us started, one carries us through the middle, one pulls us over the finish line, and one drops us the moment we cross it.

1. The start: give people a head start, and more of them finish. At a car wash in 2006, marketing professors Joseph Nunes and Xavier Drèze handed out two kinds of loyalty cards, each needing eight washes for a free one.

• Half got a blank card with 8 spaces.
• Half got a card with 10 spaces, 2 already stamped. Same eight washes, different card.
• Months later, 19% of the blank-card group had earned their free wash, against 34% of the head-start group.

Two stamps turn "maybe someday" into "already underway," and people who feel underway keep going.

📖 The endowed progress effect: we work harder to finish a goal when we feel we've already made progress on it, even when someone handed us that progress.

2. The middle: show whichever number is smaller. Psychologists Minjung Koo and Ayelet Fishbach (2012) found that early on, "2 done" motivates more than "8 to go," and near the end, "2 to go" beats "8 done." One more stamp doubles "1 done" and halves "2 to go," so the small number makes every step look big.

📖 The small-area hypothesis: we stay more motivated when we track whichever number is smaller, what's done or what's left.

3. The finish: keep the finish line in sight. At a Columbia University café the same year, Ran Kivetz, Oleg Urminsky, and Yuhuang Zheng watched customers with "buy ten, get one free" cards come back faster as the free coffee got closer, shrinking the gap between purchases by 20% on average.

Psychologist Clark Hull first spotted this in 1932, watching rats run faster as they neared the food. We're fancier than rats. Slightly.

📖 The goal-gradient effect: effort speeds up as the finish line gets closer.

4. After: have the next goal ready. Back at the café, customers slowed down right after their free coffee and sped up again only as the next one came into view.

📖 Post-reward resetting: motivation can dip after a reward, before building toward the next one.

✨ Practical Magic

Same card, same four moments, now at work.

At the start, for leaders: hand over a template with the first section done. A blank document and a deadline usually produce a team staring at a blinking cursor. Fill in the first section yourself, and the template shows what you mean and what belongs in the rest.

In the middle, for marketers: give the onboarding checklist two numbers. Most checklists open at "0 of 4," though the customer has already created an account and confirmed an email. Count both, and the first screen reads "2 of 6 done"; past halfway, switch the label to "2 steps left." Test it against the old checklist on completion rate.

Near the finish, for anyone selling online: show the distance. "Free shipping over $50" is a rule. "You're $8 away from free shipping," shown in the cart, is a finish line.

When a sales team hits its quarterly number, the confetti and the cliff arrive together. After the win, for sales leaders: put next quarter's board up at the same meeting, already showing any deals signed for next quarter, then compare the first month's pace with last quarter's.

☠️ Curse Collection: the reset button

The instinct: progress is ours to design, so we can redesign it. New tiers, a clean slate, everyone happy.

Starbucks tried it in March 2026, rebuilding its rewards program into Green, Gold, and Reserve tiers sorted by the Stars each member had earned in 2025. One member who had held Gold status since 2013 balked at starting over as Green, and a TikTok video criticizing the change drew more than half a million views within a day.

Progress people feel they've made is progress they feel they own, so taking it away lands as theft. That's Issue #001's endowment effect, back for the sequel.

The counter-spell: when the rules change, carry people's progress over. If a reset can't be avoided, give loyal members a head start on the new card: matched status for a year, or a few stamps on day one.

🎟️ The whole spell, on one card

• Never hand anyone a blank card: count what they've done, or stamp the first space yourself.
• Show the smaller number: what's done early on, what's left after halfway.
• Keep the finish line in sight, with the distance in plain numbers.
• Have the next card ready before the free coffee is poured.
• Never tear up a card someone's been filling.

⚗️ The Trial: back to the wand shop

Last issue's wand shop had customers returning wands that "didn't feel like theirs." (Missed it?) My fix: an interview to narrow the choice to three wands, a free handle the customer carves themselves, and a holder for the mantel. Helping pick it and make it is the IKEA effect, and nobody returns a wand that's on display.

The fixes worked. The returns bin is gathering dust, and one customer has named their wand Kevin. Kevin is thriving.

So you launch the Wand Care Club: ten polishing visits earn a free phoenix-feather upgrade. Most members come in twice, collect two stamps, and are never seen again, which leaves a drawer full of cards that are 20% done.

Every option keeps the same rules: ten visits for the feather (the phoenixes are strict), and no extra feathers in the budget. Existing visits carry over in every option.

Test your judgment: which spell would you cast? I'll share my answer in the next issue.

• A) A 12-space card with 2 spaces already stamped, one for the wand and one for the interview. Members still make ten visits.
• B) A plain 10-space card, plus a fireworks party for every member who reaches visit ten.
• C) A plain 10-space card whose counter shows "visits done" until visit five, then "visits left."
• D) Something sneakier.

Tell me in the comments on LinkedIn how this shows up in your work. Where could a head start get more people to the finish line: a signup flow, a team project, a sales quarter?

Mary Poppins had it right: well begun is half done.

A head start costs almost nothing, and it's often the difference between "someday" and "done." Go pre-stamp a few cards.

Until next time, may your funnels be full and your cards be half-stamped.

Claire, sometimes wizard 🪄