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Public evidence record

Ethan Smith

Published podcast speaker

Claims
27
Episodes
2
Shows
1
Named items
4

Books, apps, and tools

The evidenced stack.

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book / recommends

Emotional Intelligence

“Number one is Emotional Intelligence, and people talk about the concept of emotional intelligence, but there's actual research and psychology around that. I believe it was published in the '80s, but there's a really good book that summarizes the foundational research around emotional intelligence. And it's very useful when building relationships and communicating with people to understand their emotions. So that's the first one. And doing growth because growth is getting people to use your stuff. And so if you have frameworks to inform how people will use your things, then you can be a more effective growth person. Which brings me to my second book, which is Cialdini's Persuasion book. Robert Cialdini does a bunch of books around persuasion, but again, there's frameworks for how to persuade somebody to sign up, buy something. And so he breaks down his framework for that, and again, it's based on psychology. And I think especially in growth, there's all kinds of psychology research and behavioral economics research to inform tests. And if you just read Thinking, Fast and Slow, Persuasion, Emotional Intelligence, you can basically take those frameworks and apply it to growth in all kinds of different ways. And then the last is How to Measure Anything. So How to Measure Anything is about measuring things that are not immediately obvious to measure. They give this example of they wanted to measure how good an orchestra conductor was and they could survey or they could see the number of standing ovations for each orchestra conductor. And the more standing ovations probably means it's this better one and that you don't need to survey people. But much of growth and business is things that are not immediately obvious for how to measure, but anything could be measured, and so that's my third record.”

Lenny's Podcast · 14 Sept 2025

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book / recommends

How to Measure Anything

“Number one is Emotional Intelligence, and people talk about the concept of emotional intelligence, but there's actual research and psychology around that. I believe it was published in the '80s, but there's a really good book that summarizes the foundational research around emotional intelligence. And it's very useful when building relationships and communicating with people to understand their emotions. So that's the first one. And doing growth because growth is getting people to use your stuff. And so if you have frameworks to inform how people will use your things, then you can be a more effective growth person. Which brings me to my second book, which is Cialdini's Persuasion book. Robert Cialdini does a bunch of books around persuasion, but again, there's frameworks for how to persuade somebody to sign up, buy something. And so he breaks down his framework for that, and again, it's based on psychology. And I think especially in growth, there's all kinds of psychology research and behavioral economics research to inform tests. And if you just read Thinking, Fast and Slow, Persuasion, Emotional Intelligence, you can basically take those frameworks and apply it to growth in all kinds of different ways. And then the last is How to Measure Anything. So How to Measure Anything is about measuring things that are not immediately obvious to measure. They give this example of they wanted to measure how good an orchestra conductor was and they could survey or they could see the number of standing ovations for each orchestra conductor. And the more standing ovations probably means it's this better one and that you don't need to survey people. But much of growth and business is things that are not immediately obvious for how to measure, but anything could be measured, and so that's my third record.”

Lenny's Podcast · 14 Sept 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Persuasion

“Number one is Emotional Intelligence, and people talk about the concept of emotional intelligence, but there's actual research and psychology around that. I believe it was published in the '80s, but there's a really good book that summarizes the foundational research around emotional intelligence. And it's very useful when building relationships and communicating with people to understand their emotions. So that's the first one. And doing growth because growth is getting people to use your stuff. And so if you have frameworks to inform how people will use your things, then you can be a more effective growth person. Which brings me to my second book, which is Cialdini's Persuasion book. Robert Cialdini does a bunch of books around persuasion, but again, there's frameworks for how to persuade somebody to sign up, buy something. And so he breaks down his framework for that, and again, it's based on psychology. And I think especially in growth, there's all kinds of psychology research and behavioral economics research to inform tests. And if you just read Thinking, Fast and Slow, Persuasion, Emotional Intelligence, you can basically take those frameworks and apply it to growth in all kinds of different ways. And then the last is How to Measure Anything. So How to Measure Anything is about measuring things that are not immediately obvious to measure. They give this example of they wanted to measure how good an orchestra conductor was and they could survey or they could see the number of standing ovations for each orchestra conductor. And the more standing ovations probably means it's this better one and that you don't need to survey people. But much of growth and business is things that are not immediately obvious for how to measure, but anything could be measured, and so that's my third record.”

Lenny's Podcast · 14 Sept 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Thinking, Fast and Slow

“Number one is Emotional Intelligence, and people talk about the concept of emotional intelligence, but there's actual research and psychology around that. I believe it was published in the '80s, but there's a really good book that summarizes the foundational research around emotional intelligence. And it's very useful when building relationships and communicating with people to understand their emotions. So that's the first one. And doing growth because growth is getting people to use your stuff. And so if you have frameworks to inform how people will use your things, then you can be a more effective growth person. Which brings me to my second book, which is Cialdini's Persuasion book. Robert Cialdini does a bunch of books around persuasion, but again, there's frameworks for how to persuade somebody to sign up, buy something. And so he breaks down his framework for that, and again, it's based on psychology. And I think especially in growth, there's all kinds of psychology research and behavioral economics research to inform tests. And if you just read Thinking, Fast and Slow, Persuasion, Emotional Intelligence, you can basically take those frameworks and apply it to growth in all kinds of different ways. And then the last is How to Measure Anything. So How to Measure Anything is about measuring things that are not immediately obvious to measure. They give this example of they wanted to measure how good an orchestra conductor was and they could survey or they could see the number of standing ovations for each orchestra conductor. And the more standing ovations probably means it's this better one and that you don't need to survey people. But much of growth and business is things that are not immediately obvious for how to measure, but anything could be measured, and so that's my third record.”

Lenny's Podcast · 14 Sept 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

Claim ledger

What Ethan said.

27 transcript-backed records

01 / recommendation

Recommends Emotional Intelligence. Recommends Cialdini's Persuasion book. Recommends Thinking, Fast and Slow. Recommends Persuasion. Recommends How to Measure Anything.

“Number one is Emotional Intelligence, and people talk about the concept of emotional intelligence, but there's actual research and psychology around that. I believe it was published in the '80s, but there's a really good book that summarizes the foundational research around emotional intelligence. And it's very useful when building relationships and communicating with people to understand their emotions. So that's the first one. And doing growth because growth is getting people to use your stuff. And so if you have frameworks to inform how people will use your things, then you can be a more effective growth person. Which brings me to my second book, which is Cialdini's Persuasion book. Robert Cialdini does a bunch of books around persuasion, but again, there's frameworks for how to persuade somebody to sign up, buy something. And so he breaks down his framework for that, and again, it's based on psychology. And I think especially in growth, there's all kinds of psychology research and behavioral economics research to inform tests. And if you just read Thinking, Fast and Slow, Persuasion, Emotional Intelligence, you can basically take those frameworks and apply it to growth in all kinds of different ways. And then the last is How to Measure Anything. So How to Measure Anything is about measuring things that are not immediately obvious to measure. They give this example of they wanted to measure how good an orchestra conductor was and they could survey or they could see the number of standing ovations for each orchestra conductor. And the more standing ovations probably means it's this better one and that you don't need to survey people. But much of growth and business is things that are not immediately obvious for how to measure, but anything could be measured, and so that's my third record.”
Speaker
Ethan Smith
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

06 / belief

One interesting use case that I think will eventually come would be, I say, "Plan a trip to San Francisco," and decisions are made for you without any intervention.

“One interesting use case that I think will eventually come would be, I say, "Plan a trip to San Francisco," and decisions are made for you without any intervention.”
Speaker
Ethan Smith
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

08 / evaluation

Especially for things like commerce and local and hotels, because they have these rich modules where you can click on stuff and go somewhere, which was not true before.

“Especially for things like commerce and local and hotels, because they have these rich modules where you can click on stuff and go somewhere, which was not true before.”
Speaker
Ethan Smith
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

09 / evaluation

Probably it's because you're so primed because you're having a conversation with multiple follow-ups, and so there's so much intent that you've built.

“Probably it's because you're so primed because you're having a conversation with multiple follow-ups, and so there's so much intent that you've built.”
Speaker
Ethan Smith
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

11 / evaluation

Meaning the amount of questions that are very specific is larger, the share and the volume. And there's probably questions that have never been asked before and questions that have never been searched before, because search can't support lots of really specific, super-specific stuff.

“Meaning the amount of questions that are very specific is larger, the share and the volume. And there's probably questions that have never been asked before and questions that have never been searched before, because search can't support lots of really specific, super-specific stuff.”
Speaker
Ethan Smith
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

13 / evaluation

Companies that we work with started in January and it started, one, because of more adoption, but two is because the answers became a bit more clickable.

“Companies that we work with started in January and it started, one, because of more adoption, but two is because the answers became a bit more clickable.”
Speaker
Ethan Smith
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

14 / prediction

What's different about the tail is that the tail is larger in chat than in search. So the average number of words, I think, Perplexity said this to somebody else, said that it was around 25 words, where versus Google words it's around six words.

“What's different about the tail is that the tail is larger in chat than in search. So the average number of words, I think, Perplexity said this to somebody else, said that it was around 25 words, where versus Google words it's around six words.”
Speaker
Ethan Smith
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

17 / belief

The way that you grow is with programmatic and with editorial SEO, and I think editorial SEO, and by that I mean articles and content, manually written content is underappreciated.

“The way that you grow is with programmatic and with editorial SEO, and I think editorial SEO, and by that I mean articles and content, manually written content is underappreciated.”
Speaker
Ethan Smith
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

20 / recommendation

And your non-SEO traffic is actually an authority signal. So I'll go into Similarweb, I'll put the domain in, I'll look at the total traffic, and I'll want to see at least, I would say, 1000 visits a day roughly for non-SEO, at least.

“And your non-SEO traffic is actually an authority signal. So I'll go into Similarweb, I'll put the domain in, I'll look at the total traffic, and I'll want to see at least, I would say, 1000 visits a day roughly for non-SEO, at least.”
Speaker
Ethan Smith
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

22 / prediction

I think a key part of why SEO especially gets disproportionately blocked is number one, it's not part of the product org, and the changes are oftentimes product changes.

“I think a key part of why SEO especially gets disproportionately blocked is number one, it's not part of the product org, and the changes are oftentimes product changes.”
Speaker
Ethan Smith
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

25 / evaluation

There are expert defined taxonomies and Google has them, but they typically don't use them and they typically will generate graph somewhat on the fly because things will change.

“There are expert defined taxonomies and Google has them, but they typically don't use them and they typically will generate graph somewhat on the fly because things will change.”
Speaker
Ethan Smith
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

27 / evaluation

Or if I have cancer and I'm researching cancer options and this AI content suggests some treatment that is not a good treatment, that's a big problem. And so I think we want to be really careful about how we use AI for content generation.

“Or if I have cancer and I'm researching cancer options and this AI content suggests some treatment that is not a good treatment, that's a big problem. And so I think we want to be really careful about how we use AI for content generation.”
Speaker
Ethan Smith
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast
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