Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Ancestry CEO Deb Liu

I recently interviewed Deb Liu on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is the leader of a multibillion-dollar business. Deb is the CEO of Ancestry, the largest genealogy company in the world. Deb is also the author of the new book, Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work. Deb, thank you for joining us.

Deb: Thank you for the invitation.

Adam: You grew up in Hanahan, South Carolina, as the daughter of two Chinese immigrants. Your hometown wasn't exactly known for having a booming Asian community. And the fact that you look different and felt different, played a key role in defining your sense of self. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What were the key experiences and lessons that shaped your worldview, and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Deb: That's interesting. I actually was born in Queens, New York, and I lived in a place where I was very unexceptional. My family lived nearby and had aunts and uncles and cousins. And then when I was six, we moved to a small town in the Deep South, eventually landing in Hanahan, where no one around me looked like me. And I just felt like the other every single day. And if I forgot that I was different from everybody else, there was always someone to remind me. They were constant. People said that I ate strange food. I was constantly asked, “What are you?”. I just remember feeling so alienated and being in a place where less than 1% of the population at the time was of Asian descent. And my parents had come to this place where no one looked like us. And we really struggled with this. I learned to suppress my voice. If I just kept my head down, and nobody noticed me, maybe they wouldn't comment on it. If I just tried incredibly hard to not raise my hands or have anyone notice. And that really shaped a lot of my early days. I realized that my life was better if no one could comment around who I was.

Adam: Fascinating. And your style has evolved so much over the years. You are not a natural extrovert, by any means. How did your style evolve? And what advice do you have for anyone listening on how to evolve and develop into their best selves and into the best leader that they can be?

Deb: When I was growing up, it never occurred to me that I would be a leader. If you looked around, what did the leaders look like? Definitely not like me. And if you look at CEOs of companies today, even many years later, they don't look like me. I've been to a CEO conference where I was the only woman of color in the entire room of hundreds of people. And I really had to figure out what my place was going to be. But the one thing you touched on, is I was extremely introverted, partly because I was trying to hide who I was. And I realized that that was working until it stopped working. And we treat introversion and extraversion like it's some sort of fixed fate. But actually, you can learn to speak up just like a skill. And at one point, I was really stuck in my career, I realized that I needed to learn to speak up. I was in consulting and part of it was connecting with clients, and I just hated it. And I realized that I was doing a disservice to myself and to the clients. And so, part of the work I did was I was gonna teach myself to learn to speak up and learn how to use my voice. And it was a process. I think the thing I learned from that whole experience is that almost anything is something that you can learn as a skill, as long as you treat it as such. If you treat it as fixed, you're definitely never going to grow and change. You're just going to say, well, this is just the way I am. But I realized to reach the place I want to go in life, and to have the success that I wanted, I was going to have to change.

Adam: Can you talk a little bit more about what that process was? What did you do? What can others do?

Deb: Well, one of the things that I really struggled with was not just the extraversion, but it was speaking and also connecting. We talked about extraversion like it's comfortable speaking to other people. But the most important part of it is not just speaking, but actually connecting and building relationships. And that's what I struggled with most. I had to first learn to speak up. But second, also warm up, so that I could open myself up to others. I was such a closed person as well. And so, one of the things that I really had to do was actually force myself to say, okay, did I speak up in this meeting? And then to ask myself, did I connect? And at different points, I actually kept a little tally of how many times I was speaking during different classes or during different meetings. And I was forcing myself to treat it as a skill. And then after I started doing it, I started reading myself, how good were my comments? How good was I connecting? And by treating it as a learning process, I got better and better over time. And now I feel much more comfortable. I no longer have to do that.

Adam: It really starts with self-awareness. It starts with understanding who you are, understanding your strengths, understanding your weaknesses. You obviously have great strengths, but not only focusing on your strengths but identifying the fact that you had a weakness that you were intent on improving. And being willing and eager to push your comfort zone to get there and doing whatever it took to get there. Doing the hard work day in and day out.

Deb: Yeah, I think that one of the hardest things is first being aware of what your gaps are. And then the second thing is actually taking the steps every single day to make a little bit of progress. You don't have to turn into an extrovert overnight. You don't have to connect with people overnight. You don't have to climb the ladder immediately. But if you just make small motions, it's a game of inches, the kinds of changes you need to make. And then once you get there, you'll look back and you'll realize one step at a time. You look back and you see how far you've come. And today people say well, you must be an extrovert. You do all these talks, you do all these events, you do podcasts, you're on Thirty Minute Mentors. I'm on Thirty Minute Mentors and I would never have seen myself do something like this 20 years ago. But every day I got a little bit better. And I'm now really comfortable speaking in front of an audience. And a lot of that was due to the fact that I was climbing this path that was very hard. But once you get to the top, you realize, wow, I went further than I could have ever imagined.

Adam: Climbing the path, getting to the top, sounds a lot like your career. You spent nearly two decades working for America's biggest tech companies, from PayPal to eBay to over a decade at Facebook before becoming the CEO of Ancestry. What were the keys to rising within your career? And how can anyone rise within their career? 

Deb: Well, first and foremost, do the work. There is no substitute for hard work. And absolutely, I always tell people to do the work. But there are other things that were missing, not just putting your head down and doing the work. But also amplifying that work, talking about it, seeking out mentorship and support, learning to ask for what you want, whether it's resources or promotion or opportunities. I think all those were really important keys to getting to where I am today. A lot of it was really having the courage to say hey, I think I can do more asking for someone to actually support me. And then the other thing is, and I think we shy away from saying this, so much of success is actually having sponsors. Someone who is in the company who says, you know what? I think she could do more than she is doing today. Let me open that door for her and see what she's got. And that sponsorship, it seems really unfair. And it seems like a really kind of hidden system. But that's really how a lot of careers are made. And I had incredible sponsors, who kind of saw the raw talents and a lot of the rough edges and said, you know what? I can give her this opportunity and see if she shines.

Adam: How can anyone find a great mentor? Find a great sponsor? In your case, perhaps your most notable sponsor was Sheryl Sandberg. What can anyone do to, if not cultivate a relationship with someone at the level of Sheryl Sandberg, cultivate a relationship with someone who can change their career in the way that Sheryl Sandberg was able to change yours?

Deb:  Well, you know, Sheryl has been incredibly supportive. And I met her at my interview, actually at Facebook, I was interviewing and she was one of the people in the interview. And she asked me a bunch of questions. And I thought I'd never see her again. And every single time I met her, she would say, hey, how are you doing? And I was in her organization, but it was pretty far down. And she would actually reach out and close the loop with me. I think she saw something in me. But the other part was, I also closed the loop with her. I would say, hey, thank you for giving me this opportunity. Here's what I did with it. And here's how I would like to take this opportunity forward from here. So every time she cracked open a window, I opened it all the way and climbed outside and told her where I went. And I think that that's really important too because it's a two-way relationship. We sometimes treat our sponsors as somebody who's just like giving us opportunities. But what they're looking for is, is this person growing? Are they learning? Are they finding success? Because that's the reward for them. And sometimes we forget to thank them and to acknowledge the gift that they've given us. And I've had so many amazing sponsors. And a lot of what I do is go back and thank them and say this is what I did with the opportunity given me so that they want to do more with me as well.

Adam: Such important advice and something that I think all of us should really sit on because the reality is, we meet so many people all the time and we get busy in our lives and our work. It's hard at times to take a step back and remember to thank the people who helped us get to where we are. And that small act of putting yourself out there and saying thank you can be vital in taking that relationship to the next level.

Deb: Definitely. And I think the other part is when you're looking for a sponsor, is to make the most of every opportunity they give you. They're putting their reputation on the line to actually open these opportunities for you. And so pay it forward, show them that you are actually taking advantage of this opportunity to thank them. But then say, here's how I was able to take that opportunity and give it to 10 more people. They want to see the fruit blossom from your tree as well. They want to plant the seed and see that you're actually feeding an army. And that's part of the work that they're doing as a sponsor is to say, here, I'm giving forward to the next generation of leaders. And you're showing that you're giving that and paying that forward is important to them too.

Adam: Such great advice. One of the many things you were able to accomplish during your time at Facebook was founding Facebook marketplace. You led a team that built a product that is being used by a billion people every month. What are your best tips for leaders on how to drive innovation? And how to lead the development of commercially successful products?

Deb: You know, the funny story is we suggested that marketplace was the overnight success that took us years to build. Because when I first joined Facebook in 2009, I actually advocated for building a marketplace where people could buy and sell. It was social commerce in its early days. And I told Sheryl in the interview, and she smiled and nodded. And then we moved on to other topics. And it took me five years, I worked on a lot of other products and teams, I led payments and games. And I worked on an ad network as well as a mobile app and a number of different things. And every year I would try to pitch a building marketplace. And every year I would get turned down. I didn't have any resources. And about five or six years later, I finally got the green light to move forward. The first lesson is persistence. If you have an idea, even when someone says no, maybe the answer is not no, it's not now. It wasn't the right time for us to work on that. The second thing is, sometimes you're gonna see things that other people don't see. Well, what's really different about me was I was the only person who was a mom at the company for a long time. And so, I was buying and selling tons of stuff on Facebook. And every time I will tell people, we should build marketplace because people are buying and selling all the time on our platform. I remember the CEO said to me, “Why would anyone wanna buy anything on Facebook?”. And I said, “What do you mean?”. I had bought tons of things. I'd sold tons of things, kids bicycles, shoes, clothing. And I realized that I could see something other people couldn't see. And I needed to continue to advocate for it. And as the demographic moved, we were able to get support from a friend of mine, Shivani, who was a researcher, who researched how many people were actually doing this. And we realized the waiting behavior was amazing. And then the third thing is to really gather a team of people who really believe. It was a small team. A number of people, Mary Vijay, a number of people just said, you know what? We believe in this so much. We want to go from our current job, to go work on this full-time. And they gave up the thing that they were doing to build the next thing. And they had great jobs working on important products, but they said, you know, this is the future. And being a part of that team was incredible. Just see the drive it took to build something that was really hard, because it was very different from a lot of interactions around Facebook at the time. And today, there's over a billion people using it, which I'm really excited about. Because it's actually creating economic opportunity for so many people in the world. And for people to be able to make a living on it. That was our goal is to actually create economic opportunity and to see that come to full circle and from the interview to seeing it hit a billion people. It's just incredible.

Adam: Amazing. And something you shared, which I thought was extremely interesting. The importance of having conviction in your idea, having deep belief in your idea. But also, being not only willing, but eager to go out and try to back it up. Back it up with data, back it up with whatever else you can to ensure that it's not just you out there, and nothing else. Whether you're an entrepreneur with a brand new idea, or if you're within a massive organization like Facebook, you could have a great idea and you can have great conviction in your idea. But going out and having backup, having support behind you with data and then ultimately with a team that has that same conviction in your idea. That's what helps take the idea to that next level.

Deb: Without the team, without the people around you, without the data, leaders who build new things, leaders who are plowing new ground, have to both have the conviction. They have to have the passion but they also have to have the team and the data to make it happen. And so, part of your job is the chief evangelist bringing people along showing them the proof points, taking them step to step. And so, the thing that makes it easier though, is a group of people doing it together. No one succeeds alone. And I think sometimes people say, well, you built all these things. I had a massive team that helped me, you know, started out with just three or four people. But eventually, we built a pretty large team. And it was people who said, you know what?  We know this is risky. And we want to do this because we believe in the mission just as much.

Adam: You had a massive team at Facebook. You now have a massive team at Ancestry. You're the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. What do you look for in the people who you hire? And what are your best tips on the topic of hiring?

Deb: There's three things I always look for, obviously, outside of hard skills. And hard skills, you can't have a replacement for that. But beyond that, I look for one, self-awareness. I think it is really important that you hire teams that are self-aware, individuals who are able to say, I did that wrong, I could do it better. I think that's incredibly important. Because self-awareness means that they're constantly questioning, hey, how can I do better as part of this team? And how can I mentor the people around me to also do better? Second is a learning mindset. We talked a little bit about this earlier. But a learning mindset, the ability to take feedback, the ability to constantly grow. You can hire a group of experts but if you have a team that's constantly trying to learn and do things faster, and better, they're going to exceed your team of experts over time. And so, I'm really looking for that mindset that says, I may not know everything today. But I am willing to invest to learn it for tomorrow. I'm willing to adapt. I'm willing to change my mind. That is really important as well. And then finally, a true passion for the product, the customers in the mission. There's nothing that replaces that. It's not about the hours put in, but it's really about the passion you're putting into every single day. Are you trying a little harder? Are you pushing a little bit more? Are you seeing the fruits of your labor and celebrating that? That's something which is irreplaceable. The people who thrive and companies like Ancestry are people who love the mission, who love what we're trying to do, and have a passion for what the mission really is.

Adam: I love it. And as you're walking through, the most important things you look for in the people you want to surround yourself with. I'm thinking about the key characteristics of great leaders, self-awareness, having a learning mindset, and having passion for people. And I want to know if you could share with listeners, what do you believe are the key characteristics of a great leader?

Deb: I think you'll identify three of them as we talked about, but the other one is true compassionate empathy. So the last thing is having a great leader who understands what it's like to be in the trenches, to understand what the customer needs are, to understand what it's like to struggle when you're struggling with work and home during COVID. That empathy and that compassion is something which really great leaders have. And that's something which I hope that I can continue to have and I can continue to cultivate in my own life.

Adam: I could not agree with you more. Empathy is essential to great leadership. How can leaders build great organizational cultures?

Deb: Well, I think one of the things they say you asked about why some companies run into problems. Why things like Enron happen. And I always ask, how on Earth can something happen where there's misconduct or issues in companies and no one noticed? And the answer is always tone at the top. What are you actually creating as your guiding principles? And what are people emulating? If you have a leadership team that's dysfunctional, people are undermining each other. If you have an organization that has a lot of dysfunction, it's allowed to fester. That's the kind of company you're going to have. But if you have a transparent culture, if you have a self-aware culture, if you have a culture of learning, and you have a culture of feedback that says, you know what, I'm sorry, we made a mistake there, we're going to change direction thanks to your feedback, that is what a great organization becomes as well. And so, a lot of it is what you're modeling every single day, every single conversation. What are you modeling for the organization? And also what do you tolerate within the organization? And what do you praise? You get more of what you celebrate, and you also on the bad side, get more of what you tolerate as well.

Adam: So true. Another important aspect to building a winning organizational culture and another important aspect to your focus on leadership more broadly is diversity and inclusion. And it's a hot topic. It's a topic that everyone's talking about. But at the same time, not everyone truly understands how to implement it in the real world. How can leaders build truly diverse and truly inclusive organizations?

Deb: Thanks. First is asking yourself the question, why are we not more diverse? Why are we not more inclusive? I think sometimes we start with the answer saying, okay, we just want to hit X goal. But the question goes back to what processes have we set up that have enabled us to get to where we are today? But it's not going to take us to where we need to go, especially on diversity inclusion. One of the things that I study a lot is why organizations are not more inclusive. And part of it was the experience I had, actually working in product management at Facebook, I had come from a background in product management that was 50/50 women and men. And then I got to Facebook and I couldn't even get a job in product management. I actually ended up in product marketing, as did most of the women leaders who eventually lead large product and engineering teams. And we realized we had been filtering out people because we had a computer science degree and technical degree requirements. And so, what happened along the way is a lot of people started out in product management. And then they came from varying backgrounds. And then Google in 2004, decided that they would add a computer science requirement because they needed more technical people in their product management roles. They were the most admired company at the time. And so a lot of companies followed their lead, and suddenly, they had an extra requirement. And 20% of computer science degrees in America are earned by women, it's just a decision that's made when people are at 18, or 19. And it shut them out to have an amazing career. And so one of the things I worked on within the company, and then I created a nonprofit called Women and Product was to turn the tide back. And part of that was getting companies to drop the computer science requirement. Part of that was amplifying the voices of the women who were in the field and to remove technical interviews. And to say, you know what, we want to bring people of many different backgrounds into the industry. We advocated for training programs for people with different backgrounds, reaching out to different communities. And that really taught me that you can bring more diverse voices to the table if you open the door, but you have to be really conscious of the choices that you're making. Again, I don't think anyone's set out to say, okay, we don't want women in product management. I think what they said was we needed more technical product management, and they didn't look at the fact that the pipeline was actually full of very successful women who didn't have the same requirements. And so one of the things that I encourage companies to do today is really look at what are those structural things that you've put in, that keep you from being more diverse. Maybe it's limiting your recruiting to a certain location where you have access to less diverse talent, or maybe you mostly get your hiring from referrals. A lot of people who will have very diverse teams will save 60-70% of our hiring from referrals. Well, if your teams are not very diverse, their network tends to be not that diverse. And so really opening the aperture and really looking at this from a product perspective. If your product was used by only one segment, and you wanted to expand it to other people, you wouldn't say okay, let's do more of that. You would say, what do we need to do differently? And so I encourage companies and teams to say, okay, what do we need to do differently so we can bring different people into this pipeline? So we can interview and meet with different people. So that we can actually hire people who are different from us and will give us different perspectives. So that we can actually build better products in the long term.

Adam: And on a more micro-level, you are out with a new book called Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work. And it's a roadmap for women on how to compete on playing fields that are all too often uneven. In your career, you have been in companies and in an industry that has been overwhelmingly male. And to that end, what advice do you have for women on how to excel in male-dominated industries? And what advice do you have for men on how to be great allies to women in these industries?

Deb: I wrote this book because I was seeing that women were falling behind in a lot of industries. They were struggling and I would hear stories from women saying, I feel stuck. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. And I realized that there are a lot of things like systematic biases, unconscious bias, and again, none of these things are really intentional. It's like the computer science requirement, it wasn't set up so that they would exclude women, it was set up for very different reasons to have a disproportionate impact. The first chapter is actually to depress you to say, hey, look, you're all the stats. And it's difficult in many industries where the deck is stacked against women. And then the next nine chapters are about how you can respond to that. 10% of life is what happens to you and 90% is what you choose to do about it. And that's a quote from Chuck Swindoll. And I take that to heart. 10% is what the system is, and 90% is how we respond to it. And so, the next nine chapters say, okay, you may have less power, but there are opportunities for you to take back your power when you can. And so, each of the chapters just goes through things that you can do. And one of the chapters is actually the four types of allies that can help you. It's incredible. The kinds of sponsors I've had. My sponsors haven't only been limited, a lot of my mentors and sponsors have been men who've opened the door for me when I was struggling, when I was thinking about dropping out of the workforce, was thinking about leaving PayPal. And actually maybe starting something or working from home, or maybe just staying at home with my kids. The VPI I worked for was a man, he said, “I will find you another job, just give me a week”. And he found me a job heading up the buyer experience at eBay. Dana really changed my life. Thinking about when I felt stuck after the birth of my third child, when my father was very, very sick, and he was in hospice. It was on my seventh manager at the company and Doug said, “Trust me, I will help you get past this”. And he helped me get promoted for the first time. Some of the best allies are people who say, I see you struggling, I hear the challenges you have, and here's how I want to be a great ally to you.

Adam: Great leaders, as we spoke about earlier, have tremendous empathy, are naturally able to put themselves in the shoes of others, regardless of what the other person looks like, what the other person thinks, where the other person comes from. Great leaders are great listeners.

Deb: I think that's absolutely true. It's really listening, having empathy and compassion, like we talked about, and then saying, I might not live the same life you do. But I can see you and I can share your challenges. And I'm willing to come alongside you and help you.

Adam: One of the challenges that you faced early on in your career is a challenge that so many people face, including so many of the most successful people. And that is self-doubt. And I want to know if you could share with listeners how you were able to overcome the self-doubt that you faced in your life and in your career? How were you able to develop a genuine sense of self-confidence? And how can anyone listening eliminate whatever sense of self-doubt they may face?

Deb: One of the things that I had terrible impostor syndrome about was I was so used to being a good student in school. You graduate top of your class, you get a scholarship to college, and then you get into the workforce, and you realize that everyone else is better than you at almost everything. And I really struggled with that. I struggled with feeling like I didn't belong. I struggled with not knowing what I was doing. And I realized that my key to overcoming impostor syndrome was to say, you know what, I'm not going to be the expert. I'm just going to learn faster than anybody else. I'm going to learn something new every day. I'm gonna get better at this. And even if I'm not the best, I'm constantly pushing myself to learn and to grow. And that is how I overcame a lot of that. When they called me about a CEO role, and this was before Ancestry, I was interviewing for the CEO position at a public company. And the recruiter, Jim Citron, reached out to me, and he said, “Let's have dinner”. And I said, “Why me?”. And he said, “Well, why not you? Every CEO has to take their first CEO job, this is your chance”. And I remember how those words really hit me. Because in my head, I said, well, why would I be qualified? I don't look like other CEOs. I don't have the same background. This would be a very big leap for me that didn't work out. But I had the opportunity when they called me about the CEO position at Ancestry, I was ready. And I was excited. I said, I actually believe that this is the company that does something that I really care about, which is my family, family history, actually connecting their family over your family stories. And I really wanted it. I wanted the opportunity to really write the next chapter of this company. But it took me a long time to get to here from a long path of saying, why me? I would never have thrown my hat in the ring had it not been first, Jim. And I would never have actually brought me to where I am today.

Adam: Deb, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Deb: I think sometimes we treat success like it's binary. It's either you're successful, or you're not. But actually, it's a journey. And as you look at the journey, you're actually taking a step towards it or away from it, or you're stagnant every single day. And so, what I choose to do is every single day, I try to do something where I'm learning, whether it's reading something, whether it's listening to a podcast like this, whether it's actually spending time writing, I'm actually trying to contribute to the long arc of my own story by taking one step at a time. So I hate hiking, and my husband took us to the top of so many falls, and I almost died. Because I almost passed out. And he goes, “No, it's only a quarter more mile”. And I'm like, “You said that for the last two miles”. But part of it was that as you take a step forward, every day, you get closer to where you want to go. And I think sometimes we just treat it as if, okay, I didn't get promoted and that's it. Or if I didn't get the job I wanted. But what did you learn from that experience? And how does it prepare you for the next experience? And I think that one thing that we can all do is actually take two times to actually play smart. What have you learned? Take a reflection every month or every quarter. What are you getting better at? What are the things you want to learn next quarter? And then you realize that you're coming way further than you ever imagined.

Adam: Deb, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Deb: Thank you for the invitation.

Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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