Have you ever been so convinced that something was good for someone else that you just bought it for them? This is something that I actually admit that I have a problem doing this. I very often will buy a book or a piece of software or even something like a particular dish at a restaurant because I want someone to experience that thing. I get that sense from today's guest, David Hoffeld. I get the sense that he would give you his book because he believes in it so much. Don't go on the record with that, obviously. But in this episode, you can really hear David's appreciation for this research that we discuss in today's episode. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. You're listening to Developer Tea. My goal on this show is to help you become a better developer. The way that I do that is by discussing things like behavioral science, development, and how to develop a business. I'm Jonathan Cottrell. I'm a developer at what you should put on your resume. How can you learn to be a better developer by honing your communication skills? These are all things that are relevant to your career. They're relevant to how good of a developer you actually can become. So in today's episode, we're continuing part two of this interview. And part one, make sure you go back and listen to it. You may be a little bit lost if you don't listen to that first. Thanks again for listening. I'm going to get out of the way. We're going to get into the interview with David Hoffeld. Hoffeld. Who's going to pop in your mind? The guy cold calling you, blasting you with emails, or the person that's giving you value at every interaction? We all know the answer. So be someone that gives value relentlessly. Like I said, that's a principle at my firm. If you send an email or make a call and you don't have something of value to give, that's a problem. It can never be about us. It always must be about the client. And that's what will get you a lot of wins and create a deep level of loyalty and referrals. This is one of the reasons why there are nearly 400 free episodes of this podcast on the internet right now. This podcast, I do it for free. And it's obviously a free service to developers around the world. And that's on purpose. It's not because I'm bored. It's there are reasons why I create this podcast. And it is for free for developers. And it's for free for developers. And it's for free for developers. I want to create value in the world. And generally speaking, this is kind of an ethereal kind of way of viewing it. But usually when you add value to a system, you will also receive value from that same system. This isn't always true. It's not like, you know, it's not something that you can just expect that you can go and start a podcast and suddenly your whole life is going to change. That's not at all what it is. It still requires hard work. It still requires thinking. But this is absolutely a principle when dealing with other people that when you give them something, they will have that reciprocity effect. It's so powerful. I actually have a really cool story about this. My wife and I, we recently had our backyard redone. We needed to rip up the grass and put down a patio basically is what we did. So we searched around and we found a couple of really good options for people who were able to, you know, do this job. And relatively speaking, you know, this is not a hard thing to accomplish. We want it done well, but overall, you know, this isn't like a really high end kind of job to accomplish. And the person that we ended up hiring, one of the things as I was reading your book, this became so apparent to me. He uses, I don't even know if he knows that he's doing it, but he uses this concept of reciprocity in the very beginning. First of all, he comes out, the owner of the company comes out and sees the property. He gives you his time. He gives you his time and he gives you his thoughts about the property. He talks about things that he's envisioning on the property, but then he does this really interesting thing. He tells me while he's standing on my property, he told me that he would be willing to design the entire project and it would be free if we chose to work with him. Right. So if we choose to work with him, then the designs are totally free. If not, it's a, it's a fee of a couple hundred dollars for us to take those because obviously, you know, we can take those and work with someone else, but they're free. They're free today. If we wanted to see the designs, they're free today. So this was such a powerful motivator for me because it worked on two scales. One, it was reciprocity. He's willing to do this for free today. He's going to start working on, on the designs for my backyard. He's standing here. He's got ideas. He's going to start working on them. That was, that was thing number one. The second thing that was so powerful was loss aversion. Right. He created this situation where not only is he giving me something, but if I don't choose to work with him in the future, I now have to give up something of my own. I have to pay him to not work with him, which is a very interesting prospect. And it's, you know, he didn't trick me into that. It wasn't something that was a small line on a contract. It was just something that he presented as, I will do this. And then if you choose to go elsewhere, you'll pay for it. And we did end up working with him and the work that he did was excellent. And I don't regret a single step in that process, but I found that to be an incredibly powerful, a step in that sales process that I thought, you know, and it pointed to another thing that you talk about in your book, the progressive commitments. I'd love for you to kind of speak to that. Also, if you have any comments about that particular strategy, I'd love to hear them, but also this concept of progressive commitments. I'd love to hear a little bit more about how we can use progressive commitments. Even when we're doing this, we're not doing it for the dealing with, and this deals with other, you know, interpersonal relationships. How can we get buy-in of team members, for example, through progressive commitments? Yeah. Well, the first to go back to your comment. So yeah, that's a great example of reciprocity and progressive commitments. You're exactly right. It's much easier for you to make a decision on a small decision than a big one. So having him draw up plans is much easier for you to decide on doing a large job, but he knows if he gets the one, the other will follow. And that's very, very predictive of how our brains make choices. We often think that we make them, you know, a big decision at the end of a persuasive message or after we've evaluated all kinds of products and services. That's not true. The research is pretty conclusive on this. Decades of it shows that small commitments are the building blocks of large decisions, meaning that small commitments, small decisions are our reference points that our brains use to, build a large decision. In other words, the best way to get someone to make a big decision or a big commitment is to first guide them making a series of small commitments that are consistent with the larger one, because that's how our brains form choices. And so it's incredibly powerful. And so trying to guide people through that process of those incremental commitments in the book, we talk about exactly how to do this. And really a key is what do you do before you ask someone to make a choice? Before you ask for a commitment, and this is often where people don't think about, and it's a, it's a key predictor of how they're going to respond to a commitment or a choice is what comes directly before it. Why? Because our decisions are made contextually. There's a whole study of this in behavioral economics called choice architecture, which says, how do we architect choices in ways, ways that are aligned with how our brain makes them? And one of the key principles is something called priming, which basically says that, um, what we hear about in the book is that we're not going to make a choice. We're going to make a choice. What we hear before a choice saves our perception of it. It kind of primes us to make a choice. So the long and short of it is this before you ask someone to embrace one of your ideas, guide them in affirming the idea that the commitment is based on or the decision is based on, right? So for example, we talk about, um, science-based selling. That's what, that's what I'm selling, right? So I'm talking about science-based sales training and consulting and so on. So I might present to you all about science and you go, Ooh, and on, we talk about it. And then I might say something to the effect of, does it make sense why so many organizations just like yours, when they learn about science-based selling, that that's kind of the option they decide to move forward with as far as for sales training? Yeah, that makes sense, I guess. And then I can follow up with a commitment right there, such as, well, would you ever want to use any other type of sales training that wasn't based on hard scientific evidence? No, no, I guess I wouldn't. So I'm much more likely to get a good commitment there, because I primed you for it. So you can use that in any area of life, not just in business, but anything. What comes before a commitment shapes the perception of it. So give thought to that. And instead of just asking for commitments, architect them. Instead of giving choices, architect them. And the way you do that is prepare people, help them, help their brains process the information, the ideas of value that the choice is based on. And when you do that, it makes it cognitively easy for them to make the choice. And that's what I'm talking about. Take the next step and actually make the choice in your favor. That's so important. I want to clarify something with you here. Buy-in does not mean a buying decision, right? It doesn't mean a monetary decision. Buy-in or commitment doesn't necessarily, in exactly what you're saying, you're asking them to commit to ideas as much as you are asking. And really, money, if you look at the reality of what an exchange of money is, the point isn't to get somebody to give you a bunch of paper, right? It's to get them to buy into an idea enough that they act on that buy-in, that commitment to a concept enough that they act on that concept. And resources can be money. It can be time. It can be energy. It can be any number of resources. It can be somebody agreeing with you and having your back. For example, in a company scenario, and saying, hey, I actually think this person is the right person for this promotion or whatever it is that you're working on in your own career. So this concept of commitment or progressive commitment, it's not just limited to getting somebody to write a check, right? The progressive commitment is about getting people to buy into one idea at a time. Yes, you're exactly right. And that's what all this is about. It's about influence. All of us want to be more influential. Everyone, and what is influence? Real simply, it's getting people to take what you say seriously and then act on it, right? All of us want when our ideas are presented, regardless of who we're talking to, we want people to listen and take what we say seriously, not to be very dismissive. Well, that's influence. We want them to act on it, right? We're constantly presenting ideas that we would love if people responded to in our personal and professional life. Well, what makes someone act one way or not another? And that's what this science reveals. It's all about just understanding ourselves and others more effectively and how we work so that we can present our ideas and ourselves in ways that are aligned with how our brains perceive value and form choices. And so that's when it's really not about selling. We apply the science to selling, but you could apply it to education. I know people that apply it to marketing. I know people that apply this to marital counseling, that are marriage counselors. So the application can change, but the foundation is this, wealth of data. And you can use this. I train salespeople and sales leaders and business people all the time who always say, oh yeah, I've used this to get my kids to clean their room. Or yeah, I use this in personal areas, even dating. I just had a salesperson tell me he was using some of the things for dating and was successful. So I'm like, well, good for you. There's so many ways you can apply it. And it's exciting because it's all based on human beings. So if you're curious about what makes people work and you want to become more influential, the good news is you don't have to guess. Not anymore. There's thousands of scientific studies. And the exciting thing is people like myself and many others have read these studies and kind of put them in layman's terms and given you actionable strategies that you can use to instantly become more effective. Yeah. And so this is actually really interesting to me. This field is very young. And David, you are among a smaller group. of people in this field than what people may realize. The founders of behavioral economics are still alive, right? So it's not like, for example, a lot of the science that we think about has been around for many, many years. We think about physics. It's been around for many, many years. But this is new. This is a very new and budding field. And there's new information that is clarifying and continuing to, kind of bolster these arguments. And part of the reason you haven't heard a lot about science in selling or really science in things like dating is because of its newness, the novelty of it. People tend to not trust something that's new, or they tend to dismiss something that's new, or quite simply, this is probably the most important factor. They just don't know it exists yet, right? They don't know that it's a real and viable thing. So I highly recommend that people check out, David's book, Science of Selling, and also just get into this field in general, right? Go and find resources in this field because it is really compelling and eye-opening. You will see it in yourself. I was actually going to ask you, David, do you have a story or an instance where you saw this stuff playing out and you realized intuitively that you couldn't have predicted it, but you saw it play out and you saw the proof of, right before your eyes and it blew your mind? Is there any story like that that you can share? Yeah, there's many of them where it's given me a deeper understanding of why I've been successful. But I'll share with you, actually, this is interesting, a principle that I use from science that I leveraged as I wrote the book, The Science of Selling, and actually helped me get it done because I'm busy. And it's hard to find time to write. It's hard to find time to do most things, we're all busy people. So how do you do that? How do you, find the time to do something like writing a book? And so what I did was using a powerful scientific principle that's been proven to radically increase the likelihood of doing a behavior. It's called an action trigger. And this is fascinating. They're very simple to do. What action triggers do is they are pre-established decisions that link a behavior with its environment. So for example, for me, in English, what that means is I decided I was going to write, the majority of my writing would occur, in the evenings after my children went to bed. So I created an action trigger, meaning after my children went to bed, I would go and write every single day. And that's what I did. So I linked, rather than say, when do I feel like writing? When do I have the time to write? And try to fit it in throughout the day, because we all know that doesn't work. Things come up unexpectedly. I created an action trigger, meaning as soon as my kids were in bed, after I put them to bed, I would write. And that took the decision out of it because all of us suffer from things called mental fatigue, meaning, as the day gets on, we get more and more tired. Our resolve weakens. In fact, behavioral scientists have found that our resolve is actually like a muscle that can become depleted. And so it's hard for us to do those things we want to do. All of us know that like exercising, right? So many people start out with good intentions at the beginning of the year to exercise or lose weight. And we usually, most people may find fall away. Very few actually follow through on a new year's resolution. One way to radically increase that or any behavior you want to engage in is, use an action trigger. Don't hope that you decide to exercise or write a book or whatever. Link it up with an environment. So for example, if I want to start exercising, I'm going to say, on my way home from work, I go to the gym. Every day I'm going to drive home from work, and that triggers me to go to the gym. I don't have to decide when am I going to go to the gym I know when I come home from work, I'm going to the gym. And so doing that simple thing has been proven in many studies to radically, by as much as 74%, increase the likelihood you'll do a behavior. And it's one of the key reasons why I would say when I get the book done is every day I wrote as soon as my kids went to bed. I never thought about it. I just did it because I had that linked up to that environmental stimulus that prompted me then to write. You know, it's funny. I actually implemented and talked about something very similar on this podcast. Before I really knew this study, I just kind of discovered it accidentally. And it's called useful defaults, right? And this concept was, I wanted to go to the gym more often than not, right? That was kind of my goal is on more days than not, I want to end up at the gym, which puts me at the gym at least four days a week. I've fallen off the bandwagon just for complete honesty on my own show. But at the time, this was really effective. So what we did, my wife and I, we work at the same office. She works at Whiteboard with me. And what we decided was we decided that value first. We agreed that this is something that we want to do. This is a goal. So let's align ourselves to make it happen. What we found ourselves doing was anytime we wanted to go to the gym, it was very easy for one person or the other to not feel like it and then talk the other person out of it, right? So we would ask, you know, towards the end of the day, around 4, 4.30 or 5 or whatever time that we finished work, we'd say, hey, you know, do you feel like going to the gym? Do you want to go to the gym today? Is that work for your plans? And, you know, we'd say, well, I don't know. We'll do it. We'll do it. We'll do it. We'll do it. We'll do it. We'll do it. We'll do it. We'll do it. And a lot of the time we would end up saying no. So this was, you know, we're set up for failure, basically. So what we decided to do was ask, instead of asking, do you want to go to the gym today? We would have to ask, do you not want to go to the gym today? We would have to ask the opposite question and assume that we would be going to the gym. So the effort was put into convincing not. And figuring out if we weren't going to go to the gym. And if we didn't send that message, if we didn't address the subject, then the default was going to the gym. And it made things so much simpler. We had our gym clothes in the car. We were ready every day to go to the gym. And the days that we chose not to, it felt like a little bit more of a reward, but it also was more difficult. It was not the default decision. We had to justify not going to the gym then. That's excellent. Yeah. There's something in, it's a powerful motivator behavior called the status quo bias. We talk about it in the book. And this is the tendency, the bias all of us have to do nothing. In fact, I tell salespeople that they have lost more business to nothing than to someone. And it's a reason why if you go to any gatherings on a regular basis, maybe it's a meeting at the office once a week or church or networking function or whatever it may be, you always, usually you sit in the same place every time. And if someone sits in your seat, it just feels kind of odd. And you're like, well, I usually don't sit over here. It kind of perturbs you a little bit. And that's just one example of the status quo bias that we like what we like. And so we usually stay in that same position. So to your point, leveraging that in your favor. So I know I have someone I know who, for example, wants to work out first thing in the morning. So what he'll do, at least at the beginning, when he was trying to really create this habit and get this social norm is he'll sleep in his gym clothes. At first. So now if he doesn't work out, he has to change out of his gym clothes. And he says, well, I'm already dressed for this. I might as well just just do it. And so he he found it radically increased. Not only did he have an action trigger, but the more and more of this science you can leverage in your favor, the more persuasive the behavior becomes and more likely you are to do it. So now he leverages status quo bias in his favor rather than against himself. And so that's a powerful thing. In fact, one example of this, my favorite one is they did a study recently on organ donations. And this is fascinating. We talk about this in the book, too. They looked at why some countries have 85, 90, 95, some 97 percent organ donor rates and other countries like the United States have very low organ donor rates. They go, what's going on? Why are some countries so open to giving the organs and others pretty much almost hardly anyone is doing it? I mean, under 10 percent. And they said, what's the difference? They looked at the socioeconomic status of the people, religion, all kind of factors. They found this. None of it mattered. What mattered was one thing. When the form when you're asked to be an organ donor, if you're asked to check if you want to donate your organs like it is here in the United States, people will say, well, I don't know. That's a big commitment. I'm not sure about that. I'm probably going to pass. Let me think about that. I'll let you know. And of course, we don't do it. The countries where they had almost universal organ donation, the form said, well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to donate your organs. And people said, well, I don't know about that. That's a big decision. I think I'll think about that. I'll let that go. I'll pass on that. And so they wouldn't check the box. And so that is the reason why some countries, it's fascinating, are almost everyone donates their organs and others almost no one donates their organs. It's simply choice architecture. It's how you ask the question. Yeah, that's amazing. And that's that is exactly what we found. over and over in personal experience. And you'll probably, if you're listening to this episode and you've never heard of this stuff, it's probably blowing your mind a little bit. Hopefully it is blowing it enough that you're gonna actually invest some time into learning about it because it really is powerful, compelling stuff. And the most educated economists know that this stuff applies not only to the people they're talking about, but also to themselves, right? I heard Daniel Kahneman talking about this same discussion and he talked about how he made a particular decision and he was kind of studying himself as a subject and trying to decide what biases were affecting him at that time. And I thought that was so interesting. So it's really important that we grasp this stuff, not in terms of how we're observing the world around us, but how it affects us as well and how you can take this stuff and recognize how your brain works. Recognize, for example, how you can affect your health, how you can affect your job around you. It's not just figuring out other people's brains, it's figuring out your own. There's so much to learn about how you think through this stuff. And so influence, we're not just talking about influencing other people, we're talking about influencing yourself. And influencing yourself is sometimes the hardest job that we can have, right? People do things that they don't intend to do all the time. People do things that they don't intend to do all the time. They do things that they cognitively don't want to do all the time. And this is certainly applicable to those kinds of things as well. Oh, absolutely. I think that's one of the things that gets people addicted to this. It's wonderful to help other people achieve their results and their goals. And that's what drives everything I do. But to your point, it works on all of us, including ourselves. And I know it's helped me a tremendous amount to understand why I do what I do, what I do, what I do, what I do. What biases I have, things I need to work on. Because all of us want to be, for example, more influential. All of us, at times, we don't feel confident. We don't feel good. We're in a negative, we call it emotional state. And how do I still perform effectively when I don't feel like it? On one of those days where you just don't feel like getting out of bed, or you don't feel confident, or something negative happens to you, but you have to go into that meeting and do that presentation. And you have five minutes to prepare yourself for that meeting, and you just want to leave and go home. And never come back. But that's not an option, so you have to go into the meeting, what do you do? And this science gives us insights on things you can do right away to up your performance. It gives you ways to help foster confidence when you don't feel it. And so you're not just on this rollercoaster of feelings, but you can kind of start to be in control a little more and recognize what's going on in your own life and work on changing it and improving yourself. And so I think you're exactly right. This science is, I think it's addicting. And I can tell you're addicting just from the conversation we've had here. Once again, a little bit. That's what I found. I read an academic journal many years ago now, and I thought, wow, this is so applicable to what I do. And then I read another and another, and then I became obsessed with it. And it was pretty much what I spent my evenings and weekends doing, and I was applying it at work and in my own life, and I got results. And then I just went overboard. Not that anyone needs to go that far, but it's addicting. And so the good news is you don't have to. You don't have to anymore. And there's so much of this research has been dusted off, taken out of the academic journals and applied into the real world that you don't have to do what I did over a decade ago now and read these journals to figure this stuff out. Now it's a book away or it's a podcast away. So it's much more accessible now than ever before. And that's really the exciting thing. And it's continuing to move. And that's also what's exciting is following people like David. If you follow his blog or you follow his Twitter account, and also even this show, we talk about development, but we also are talking about this stuff because this isn't like a niche field. This is applicable in many very universal ways. So you're going to hear us talk about behavioral science for quite a while on this show, probably for the duration of the show because it is explaining, like you said earlier in the show, science reveals reality. And that's what we want to learn from. We want to learn from science. We want to learn from our experiences. We want to learn from people. People like David who have done the deeper dives on science, on these journals, on this research and really figure out ways that we can use that stuff to make the world around us a better place. That's a very lofty dream, but that starts with making ourselves better. It starts with making our clients better, making what they do more effective. And so that's such an important thing to understand that we can use science, not just to learn, but to apply these principles. So David, thank you so much for coming on the show. I have two questions that I like to ask every guest who comes on the show, if you have time for those. Absolutely. Let's go. Question number one, if you could have people talk to you more about one thing, and this could be anything, it doesn't have to be related to anything professional necessarily, it doesn't have to be related to behavioral science, or behavioral economics or anything like that. If you could have them, talk to you about one thing, if somebody meets you on the street, what do you want to talk about? This is an easy one, and my answer will reveal how sad I am, which is exactly what we're talking about. Science-based selling is something I'm obsessed with. You mentioned it a while ago in our conversation, how much selling hasn't been based on science, and there's very few people even now that are doing it, just because, they don't know it exists, and up until, as far as applying it to selling, that hadn't been done, for the reason that you'd have to read academic journals to do that. People have applied it in general areas, but as far as to sales, very little has been done. But now my book and a few other people are getting into this, and really starting to build on each other, but I think this is such a, I see so many of the sales behaviors that we've already talked about, the bad feeling a lot of people have towards salespeople, a lot of that is, because the way people have been taught to sell, violates how our brains create buying decisions, and unfortunately, it's not just one or two behaviors, it's so many across the board. And so, I think that people have been misled unintentionally, but regardless, salespeople, and they want to present themselves effectively, they have not been given the tools to do that, because literally the way they have been trained, is based on ideas that are from, boy, decades and decades and decades ago. And the problem, with that is, we now have this science that reveals reality. So, I love talking about this. What I love about what I do, is I get to, it's my favorite part of the day, it's what I think about, I dream about it. And so, if someone were to walk up to me on the street, and talk about this, I'd have a hard time pulling myself away, because I find it to be irresistible. And because I think it's such an important topic, it has the, it impacts people's lives. I have seen salespeople and businesses, literally, turn around. Salespeople that weren't done with the profession. Businesses that were on the verge of bankruptcy, some small businesses we've worked with, that within months, turn around, I mean, radically, where the owners are in debt, they're not taking paychecks, and all of a sudden now, they're making six figure incomes. And it just, the lifestyle changed, what it means for their families, what it means for customers, it gets addicting. And so, I love it. I have hobbies, yeah, but my real hobby, is what we're talking about now. So, I'm extremely passionate about it, and it's what I love, it's my passion. And, I don't want to say this too much, but I would do it if no one was paying me. And in fact, I was for many years. No one paid me to research this stuff. Yeah. I was addicted in doing it for free, for years. Luckily, I'm in a position where I don't have to do it for free. But, I almost would, just because I love talking about it, every day. Yeah, yeah. That's so cool. And, developers who are listening to this, you probably have something that you love that much, and, you know that, buying into something like that, is such a powerful thing. So, I really appreciate, the candidness of your appreciation for this, and the fact that you're doing work in this area, and helping people like me, and other developers who are going to go and end up buying this book, or, you know, following your stuff online. That you're helping us understand this stuff, but you're doing it from a perspective of real conviction. And that it's not just, you didn't go and write a book in order to write a book. It was, you wrote a book because this topic was so compelling to you. And that's such a powerful situation to be in. So, thank you again for your contribution on this. The second question, real quick, that I love to ask people on the show, because it really gets at the heart of, you know, what people think and want to contribute. If you had 30 seconds of advice to give to developers, who are listening to the show, regardless of their background or experience, what would you tell them in that 30 seconds? The same thing that I say a lot now, more and more, and there's some really interesting research that bears this out, but it's very practical advice, in that oftentimes we assume success. And what I've learned, and what there's some really interesting science on as well, is that there's a price for success, and you pay that price upfront. That if you want to become extremely successful, as a developer, or in anything, it doesn't matter if it's a hobby, you want to learn a musical instrument, you want to get good at the sport, you want to, whatever it is, it doesn't matter, have a great relationship with your significant other, it doesn't matter. No matter what, there's a price for all that. You know, just get it, there's always a price, and you pay it upfront, and it comes in time, and energy, and sacrifice. And I meet so many people now, that want success, but they're not willing to sacrifice. And I don't take them seriously, and you know, neither does the marketplace, because to become successful, we're in a hyper-competitive marketplace. This is the reality. And to become successful, anyone can do it. That's the great thing about the world we live in right now. All of us have a shot, but there's still a price, and it's, you got to pay that price. You have to ruin the sacrifice. So when I ask people, I never ask people, you know, if they want to be successful, because when I go and talk to a room of a thousand people, let's say, all of them want to be successful, every one hand would go up. What I ask them is this question, what are you willing to sacrifice to be successful? And that's what it's going to take. And the person that will sacrifice the most, more often than not, is the one who will be successful. And so, that's what I have found in my life. That's what I've seen in so many others. There's some really interesting science that bears this out, on delay gratification, and putting in the hard work now to get a payoff later. Some really interesting research. But that's what I would say. Don't assume success. Ask yourself, not do you want it? That doesn't mean anything. So, too many people think that if they want something, that the universe will just give that to them. Here's reality. You have to get it. What are you going to give up to get it? What are you going to do to get what you want? And for the man or woman who says, I am willing to sacrifice to achieve this goal, I say watch out, because that's the person that will create ripples, right? That'll achieve some amazing things. So, I would say, remember there's a price for success, and you pay it upfront. It always comes upfront. And that's the price. Yeah. That's really strong advice. And I love this because, you know, it really gets at the heart of some more science. And because we've been talking about science on this whole episode, I want to continue with one more piece here. And that is that the people, the highest contributing factor to success over the years, and I can't remember exactly what study this is, but the highest contributing factor to success, and we're not talking about Facebook, you know, the overnight success, and we're not talking about the multi-billionaires who, you know, hit the market just right or whatever, right? That is luck for the most part. The highest contributing factor to success is the number of tries taken, right? Let's think about that for a second. The number of tries taken, that quite simply means that trying and failing and then doing it again and again and again, the number of iterations of that try and fail that you do is directly correlated with your overall success factor. Why is that? Well, because ideas can come and go, right? The way that the world is going to attach themselves to your idea or to your thing is not going to be necessarily directly in line. What you're saying is exactly right. Assuming success is one of the worst things you can do because if you assume that an idea is good, if you assume that an idea will be successful if you act on it and it isn't and then you quit, then you just failed. You're done, right? And when you find out that success is not a given, when you find out that success is the result of a lot, typically, on the average case, is the result of a lot of trying and failing, then you'll recognize that the number of tries is directly correlated to your success factor. It's a very simple concept and that means that you're going to have to try again. And that means that you're going to have to try as many times as it takes, which often leads to the fact that you need to sacrifice. This is a very simple fact of success, a very simple data-related fact of success, actually. It doesn't sound like it on its face, but it is. Yeah, so this is something that is a constant and it's something that you're going to see over and over. I did a little bit of studying on this during my master's degree and it's not a new idea. It's not a comfortable one. We like this story of success that is the result of some brilliant idea that we turn around and the developer codes all throughout the night and drinks 40 cups of coffee to stay awake and comes out of the other end with something that somebody's willing to invest a billion dollars in. This is something that we like thinking about, but really, that's more of a mood thing. It's not a movie than it is reality. Reality is trying and failing over and over and over. Absolutely. Yeah, for our listeners that want to get more into that, there's some interesting research. The terms you want to look up is for perseverance, there's a lot of research on grit. Angela Duckworth is a well-known social psychologist, done a great, a lot of research on it. She has some studies out there and a book as well with that same title, Grit, that summarizes a lot of her research as well. And then you're exactly right about looking at failure not as an indictment against you, that you're a failure, but as feedback that shows you how to adapt and become successful. And we talk about that in the book with what's called a growth mindset. Very, very important. Successful people, it's very hard to become successful without a growth mindset because as you mentioned, failure is, it's part of success. I mean, none of us get it right the first time. We're constantly, it's how our brains learn. We try things, it doesn't work. We adapt, we try again, it doesn't work. We adapt, we try and then eventually, we unlock the combination of success. And that growth mindset matters. Meaning is, in the context of whether it's being a developer or a salesperson, is it something you're born with or is it something you developed? Which side do you lean more towards? And people that say it's something they weren't just born with, they either have it or they don't, they have a hard time with failure because when you fail, that means you don't have it. And they take it personal. And so they don't take that well. Whereas someone that says, I certainly have natural ability, but my success is like a muscle that I must continually develop. And if you adopt that mindset, you look at failure as feedback, not an indictment against you. And it allows you to say, okay, what do I need to do differently now? And that question opens your mind and allows creativity and really to flourish and allows you to really think around how to get to a higher level than someone that stops after a couple of fails. Yeah, absolutely. That's such, and that research from Angela Duckworth is fantastic by the way. She wrote a book called Grit, I think. Another really good resource. Did you mention that book? I don't know if I've- Yeah, I did. Yeah, yeah. Really, really good stuff that she has done. She's also involved in another project that was mentioned on a Freakonomics episode recently. I recommend listening to, well, really listening to that podcast in general, but there's a couple of episodes related to grit on that podcast that are worth listening to. David, thank you so much for your time today. I know the listeners are going to appreciate you having taken the time to speak with me and the ideas that you've presented and the challenge that you've presented to be willing to sacrifice for your success. Thank you so much for your time. Oh, thank you. It's been my pleasure. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. And thank you again to David for joining me on the show. David Hoffeld wrote the book, Science of Selling. Make sure you go and check it out. You can find it on Amazon, pretty much anywhere really. I have the e-book copy, but of course you can also get the physical copy as well. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you don't want to miss out on future episodes, make sure you subscribe in whatever podcasting app you use. Thanks so much for listening and until next time, enjoy your tea.