Deb Liu
Transcript
You're VP of product at Facebook. You're director at eBay and PayPal. You're on the board of Intuit. You've been the CEO of Ancestry now for the past three and a half years. This is a career path that a lot of people dream of. Deb Liu[00:00:11)]Some of the best PMs I have ever worked with are terrible PMs for their career. They just drift from job to job. "Hey, should I take this role or this role? How do I think about this?" But if I said you had to write a spec for your career, what does success look like? How are you going to get there?
You wrote this awesome post about introverts and how hard it is to be successful as an introvert. Deb Liu[00:00:28)]The workplace is really favoring people who can speak up. It looks like self-promotion. I wouldn't want to do that because it's self-promotion. But instead, what if I called it educating about all the great work your team has been doing? Helping people see why your team should get more resources,
you have to actually share what you do. Lenny Rachitsky[00:00:45)]Is there something that you believe that you think most other people don't believe?
Deb Liu[00:00:49)]The most important career decision you make is who you marry. Is this person lifting you up or pushing you back?
You will have a much more successful career if your home life is in balance. It's like a yin and a yang. Lenny Rachitsky[00:01:03)]Today, my guest is Deb Liu. Deb was VP of product at Facebook where she spent over 11 years and while they're created and led Facebook marketplace, which is now used by over 1 billion people monthly, she also led the development of Facebook's first mobile ad product for apps and its mobile ad network. Also built the company's games business and payments platform,
including Facebook Pay.[00:01:23)]Prior to Facebook, she was director at both PayPal and eBay. She's on the board of Intuit and for the past three and a half years, she's been the CEO of Ancestry. I actually generally have a rule of no CEOs on this podcast, but to me, Deb is a great exception because she's a product person at heart. In our conversation, Deb shares a ton of tactical career advice, including why resilience is so key to career success, how to PM your career like you PM your product, how to be successful in business as an introvert,
what she's learned about building multiple billion dollars zero to one businesses within a large company like Facebook and so much more.[00:01:59)]Deb is so full of wisdom and I'm really excited to share her insights with more people. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and helps the podcast tremendously. With that,
I bring you Deb Liu.[00:02:18)]Deb,
thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast. Deb Liu[00:02:21)]It's wonderful to be here,
Lenny. Lenny Rachitsky[00:02:23)]It's wonderful to have you here. You have had such an incredible career. You're VP of product at Facebook. You're director at eBay and PayPal. You're on the board of Intuit. You've been the CEO of Ancestry now for the past three and a half years. This is a career path that a lot of people dream of and honestly just like one of those roles is a dream for a lot of people. And so I wanted to start with just this question and I want to see where the conversation takes us. If you could give one specific piece of advice to someone that's looking to do well in their career or to do better in their career based on what has worked well for you, what would that be?
Deb Liu[00:03:02)]Always be learning, and I tell this to everybody, so I often tell people, someone who's always learning is always going to exceed someone who's the expert today. You're going to find people... The one thing about school is that we go to school and there's such a thing as getting a hundred on the test, a perfect score on the SAT, graduating with a 4.0. Well, there's nothing like that in careers, right? We think it's actually a non-linear experience and there's always something better than you at speaking or presenting or strategy or execution. But if you're always learning, learning from the best, getting feedback,
you're always going to get better every single day.[00:03:35)]And that's what I have always held, which is each job I took, I didn't necessarily qualify for it. I wasn't necessarily the very best at it, and so it became the student of being better at that job. And once I mastered that, I was a student for something else, something else and something else. And so I always balanced learning and impact, which was you can have the most impact, the job you know the best, but then you stop learning. And if you're learning all the time,
you're not necessarily having impact.[00:04:00)]So how do you keep going back and forth and back and forth so that you're not going straight up a lot or you're actually laddering back and forth into different things where you're having an amazing time where you know everything and then you're the newbie again and learning new things,
and you're incorporating what you used to know into what you're learning and the impact that you have today and so on and so forth. Lenny Rachitsky[00:04:21)]This episode is brought to you by Pendo, the only all-in-one product experience platform for any type of application. Tired of bouncing around multiple tools to uncover what's really happening inside your product? With all the tools you need in one simple to use platform,
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million monthly active users for free. Check it out at workos.com to learn more. That's workos.com.[00:07:03)]You talked about you got into a new job maybe you weren't ready for and you had to learn on the job. So either maybe share story one of those experiences or just like how do you actually do this? So someone's listening, they're like, how do I learn? What am I learning?
Deb Liu[00:07:14)]We'll start with my career in tech. So I had worked in consulting before business school. I went to Stanford for business school, came out to California, didn't know that much about tech, but I really loved using eBay. So I interned there my first year in business school and then when it came to finding a job, I really wasn't sure what we wanted to do, but we wanted to move back to the East Coast. And so I wasn't looking and I couldn't find a job. I think it was really hard. It was 2002.
And so I ran into Tim Wenzel and Catherine Wu. So Catherine Wu was from Airbnb as you might know her. And Tim Wenzel put together the PayPal Mafia. He was the recruiter for PayPal.[00:07:51)]Went to this table and I said, "Absolutely love PayPal, use it all the time. I'm a big seller on eBay," and he's like, "Do you want a job?" I'm like, "No, I'm actually going back east. "And he's like, "Just come in and talk to us." And so I said, "Okay. Well, what kind of jobs do you have?" And he's like, "I have jobs in product and I have jobs in marketing." Now, I've taken marketing class obviously in business school, and I said, "I wonder what this other product job is." (00:08:12): So I look over at Catherine and I've seen her around Stanford before, so she was a year ahead of me and I said, "Well, what do you do?" She said, "Product." I'm like, "That sounds good. I'll do that." And that's actually how I fell into product management. Well, I actually, and I'm embarrassed to say faked my way through those interviews, because during the interviews they're like, "Well, what would you build?" And since I was an avid user of both products, I could really richly say, "Here's the product feedback I have. Here are the new products you should build. Here's my feedback on things that we should be doing differently." (00:08:39): And they said, "Congratulations." And they gave me the job. And embarrassingly I went to the first day of work and I said to Amy Clement, who was the VP of product at the time, and I said, "Okay, I literally have no idea what this product job is." (00:08:54): She showed me the ropes and she was so incredible. She actually showed me, she said, "All those ideas you had, all that energy you've had around building these things, we go do that. Let's go do it." And I said, "Well, how do you do that?" And she said, "Well, you write down what you want to build and you work with the engineers to do it." And I just remember thinking, "This is crazy. I have no idea what I'm doing." (00:09:14): It was such an incredible adventure though. Those first few years, I just learned so much about the craft of building, how to really think through product use cases, how to think through what customers wanted, not just the customer of one, myself, but really what true customers and customer cohorts wanted. And so it was really a time when I felt like I was really blossoming, but I didn't come in with mastery. I came with a curiosity and I think that's what made me a great product manager was that I didn't have a set way of doing things. There wasn't some playbook I was trying to play. There wasn't some framework,
but instead I was willing to learn. Lenny Rachitsky[00:09:46)]So one takeaway might be from this, the phrase, fake it till you make it. Any thoughts on just how to... I imagine many people right now are like, "Oh, I'm trying to get a job as a pm. How do I do this? That sounds great. I'm going to pass this interview, figure out the job after I joined."
Deb Liu[00:10:02)]Coming in with humbleness was really important, but during the interview process, actually, I didn't realize this, but they asked me questions as if I was a product manager, as if I knew what I was doing. I think when you have passion around a product or passion around a company or around a business model or around something, it shows. And so it's not necessarily faking the enthusiasm or faking the idea that you want to work there, but you don't have to know how to write this spec or PRD or briefings or anything like that. You don't know how to do customer research or do data analytics or read reports, but instead show your passion around the product itself, around the use case,
around the customer.[00:10:41)]Show who you are and why you care. I think sometimes people just say, "I want a product job." But you have to be able to fall in love with the problem. You have to fall in love, not with the product, but I said the problem, right? The use case. What problem are you trying to solve? And if you can do that,
you can be a great product manager even without a lot of experience. Lenny Rachitsky[00:11:00)]That's an awesome piece of advice. So just lean into the passion. First of all, part of it is you have to be excited about the thing you're trying to work on or thinking about the company you're thinking about joining. Sounds like that's a prerequisite here. We have a podcast episode with Uri Levine who has a whole book called Fall in Love with the Problem,
I'll have to read it. Lenny Rachitsky[00:11:20)]Yeah, he always wears a shirt, fall in love with the problem,
not the solution. Deb Liu[00:11:23)]Yes,
is absolutely the most important skill for a product leader. Lenny Rachitsky[00:11:27)]Something else I've heard you talk about in terms of something that contributed to your success is being okay with failure and just bouncing back quickly versus avoiding failure. Is that something that you can come back to a lot?
Deb Liu[00:11:40)]Well, here's what I noticed about everybody. I've coached a ton of people in my life. I have managed big teens and the people who are most successful are not the people who had no failures, who were lived charm lives, head up into the right careers and got promoted every cycle. The people who were most successful were the ones who actually through adversity,
learned to turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones. They were the ones who got hard feedback and then came back stronger because now they learned what to do differently.[00:12:09)]They were the ones who products failed, but they said, "You know what? I'm going to turn this failure into success. I'm going to take those lessons and make this company stronger." When you live a charmed product life, you always work on everything that's easy. You don't actually... Trees are strong because they bend in the wind, because they're tested, because it's cold, because it's windy,
because there's conditions.[00:12:31)]And that's how a tree goes grow strong and tall over many generations. And I think sometimes we think, "Oh yeah, I wish I lived a charm life."
And that is not what we want. You want to have enough adversity that you learn to overcome so that you can build stronger over time and build resilience in your career.[00:12:50)]I've seen that so much, which is the best product leaders I ever worked with are the ones that have the toughest stories, that had the hardest feedback,
but also the ones who were able to bounce back quickly and make it happen. Lenny Rachitsky[00:13:02)]We have a segment on this podcast called Failure Corner where people share a failure they went through kind of along the same lines and something we learned from that experience. Is there an example of that from your career where a failure made you stronger?
Deb Liu[00:13:13)]Yeah. I remember there was a job that I really wanted at Facebook and I'd been there for a long time. I had been leading different teams. I was a VP of product and then GM. There was one job that I never got to do, so I got to do all the jobs I wanted and Mark gave it to someone else. I told him at the time when he gave it to the first person who was amazing at it, I said, "If this job were open, I'd like to be considered for it." (00:13:37): The job opened up later, gave it to someone else. And I said to Mark, again, "I really wanted that job." And he said, "Not only will I not give you that job, you'll never have that job at this company."
Lenny Rachitsky[00:13:49)]What?
Deb Liu[00:13:51)]He didn't say it harshly. But he was giving me feedback about something which he did not see me in that role, in a role that I really wanted. And I had to decide each time like, "What do I do with this information?" This is my dream job. Actually, I decided I was going to turn the job I had and the job I wanted, and that's a choice. I could have said, you know what? I can't have that job. I could go do something else,
And so I think sometimes it's not... I think that that experience was a very humbling experience because to be told no and then to say that this will never happen was really hard. But at the same time it was a reminder that you're not right for every job even if you think you are. And that you can take the raw materials of what you have and turn it into what you want. Lenny Rachitsky[00:14:40)]Are you able to share what those jobs were that you wanted to get that you never got?
Deb Liu[00:14:44)]I never actually shared it publicly, but it's something which I had always had a role where I did new things for the company and there was a role where it was running something which more of an existing business, but I had always been kind of the innovator, the new stuff person. I had taken over so many new things. And so maybe that wasn't the right thing at the right time for me,
but it was something that was really incredible and a turning point for me. Lenny Rachitsky[00:15:08)]Great segue to an area I wanted to spend some time on which is building zero to one stuff within a larger company. So from what I can tell you built 2 billion businesses within a large company, Facebook marketplace, and then the ads platform within Facebook and maybe more. I don't know, the payments stuff, the games. I don't know. Maybe there's billions of dollars there I don't even know about. And this is very rare and very hard, and it's something we talk a little bit on this podcast,
just the skills to build something new.[00:15:38)]I know with marketplace it was not something people believed in for a long time. It took a lot of work to convince people to actually give it a shot. So I guess the question here is just what have you found are key tactics to start something new and allow it to continue to exist and get to a place where people start to believe it? What has worked for you?
Deb Liu[00:15:57)]So first, I didn't build the ads platform. I actually built the first direct response ad product company ever had. But we'll talk about how that led to why direct response is a vast majority of the ads revenue for the company. But one thing that it was really interesting is that I really saw my opportunity in Facebook to be somebody that zigged when other people zagged. There were amazing people who did a lot of the really core products working on feed, photos,
videos.[00:16:25)]I came in actually on the payments team and we worked on payments and eventually built games, which was the first billion dollar business. It was very successful. We worked with the likes of all the game companies that were on the Canvas games platform. And it was just an incredible opportunity to start from scratch and built something really cool. We built Facebook credits,
which eventually became the Facebook payment system.[00:16:47)]And then from there on I built the first direct response ads product. And again, leveraging the skills that we had, we had a lot of relationships with game companies because of my time and payments. And so we just said, "Hey look, what ad product do you want?" And they said, "Actually, your biggest challenge is the shift to mobile. Build us a mobile acquisition engine." And we said, "That's doable." (00:17:09): At the time the company was very brand oriented. Most of the ads... Actually almost all the ads on the platform were brand and we were not even on the ads team. So we actually worked on this team called the platform team. We said, "Okay, we'll build an ads product for the Facebook feed, the new mobile Facebook feed." And suddenly it became a billion dollar business within about 18 months,
which was such an incredible journey.[00:17:30)]We worked on the mobile advertising platform, so basically the mobile ads network. That was a great experience. And so each time I worked on something, it was just... The thing that you have to remember is the failure rate for something like this is very high. You start something and the amount of iteration... People think, "Oh yeah, it's easy." You start something and it's linear because you have all the resources of this company behind you. But actually everything in the company is like, "Let's do the most important thing." (00:17:58): These are seeds and we'll just let them... And so if you do that, you have to know that you don't get a lot of resources, you get a lot of attention. And I appreciated that because I think I work best when people aren't... There is not a lot of scrutiny. I think sometimes large companies, they say, "Well this innovation team," and then they check in on them way too much. They're like, "Week to week progress, where are you going? What's your strategy?"
But so much as you know of building something new is the iteration process. It's the failing a lot.[00:18:27)]We actually tested five or six versions of the ads product before we got it to take off and it took months, and then we were on the verge of death multiple times. In fact, I actually went back to run the payments team while I was working on that product because the team we had gathered still want to continue working on it, but I needed a second job back on the payments team because they asked me, "We don't think this thing is going to work. You should go run your old team again." And I thought, "Well, I will do both." (00:18:52): And so I did both for a while until it really took off. The thing that I think a lot of large companies don't realize is that you can love something to death. And so with every new product, I'd rather do it out of the limelight, do it with the minimal resources and have the freedom to fail because success and failure really is... In startups,
failing fast is really important or succeeding fast.[00:19:18)]It's the long slog that makes it really hard. In a company, you end up getting cut if you're the long slog product. And so being able to just say, "You know what? We're pruning this. We're doing the next thing, the next thing."
And then having the time to iterate and grow is really critical. Lenny Rachitsky[00:19:33)]So as a leader trying to do this and create space for this, is there something you've learned about how to allow for, "Don't over scrutinize us, don't look at us too carefully. We don't want to be in the limelight. Don't put too many resources on this yet." Is it just like, "Hey, Mark. Here's what I think." I imagine it's not as easy as that. There's a lot of influence and that kind of work. Is there any tactics that you could share to create this sort of environment?
Deb Liu[00:19:59)]I think the most important part of the environment is really patience. And again, this is a portfolio strategy and I tell every PM who... I used to do a new hire PM class and I say, "Look, a lot of you are going to go into the core product and your job is to grow X by 3 to 5% every six months. Growing engagement or growing sessions or maybe growing video views or whatever your metric is, you're trying to grow something 5% and then you exceed expectations." (00:20:27): And I said, "And then a bunch of you are like, 'I want to do something new. I want to build something from scratch.'" And I said, "By the way, a very, very successful company for a new set of products has a 50% hit rate. So half of you are going to come back in a year and have a different job because that did not work out. Do you have the resilience to do that?" And I think somebody, you enter a large company... By the way,
you can have an amazing career building core products because that is an incredible journey within... Because you learn so much about the mechanics of what that takes.[00:20:59)]And yet at the same time, I found a lot of energy from doing something that someone hasn't done before. And so I really enjoyed the, "Hey, this thing could fail. Let's pivot. Let's try to figure out. Let's prune this. Let's try that." And not everything I did there succeeded,
but a lot of the things that are the lasting products are once that gotten really big. And so for me it was a greater reward and it made a journey so much more interesting.[00:21:24)]But for others, I think work on the core product, learn the skills. It is absolutely respectable as well. But if you choose to be the person who works on innovation new products, expect in a year, you might literally have nothing to show for it,
but the lessons that you learned. And I think those lessons are really precious and we often underestimate that too. Lenny Rachitsky[00:21:42)]Along those lines, do you think it's a good career move to do a zero to one thing within a bigger company? Or is it often a bad idea? Do you have any advice there for folks?
Deb Liu[00:21:52)]It depends. It depends on your personality in the company. So the one thing I realized about my role was that I did a lot of... I had five different careers at the company over 11 years. And so most people don't realize that when you work on new things, you're constantly adding to your portfolio, subtracting from it, growing things, pruning them. And so you could just work on so many cool things except everything has similar... It's like it rhymes,
but it's not exactly the same.[00:22:19)]So you learn the lessons of how to get things done, how to get resource, how to get support when the product is not working, how to not get prunes in the next culling. And those are really, really important skills. But I think for people who are just starting out of the career, it is a very high risk thing to do. So if you're very early in the career, I encourage people just learn the core skills first. You can learn the core skills when there's a lot of stability. This product is growing X percent, like 5%, and you're going to grow at 10.
That's amazing.[00:22:47)]That is because you are there, you're going to change your trajectory of the product, or this thing has a hundred thousand users, you're going to get it to 200,000. Those are the kinds of things that are going to be successful for you and you can put on your resume. But I think it reaches a point in your career where you have to decide, when am I going to take the big swing? Because the big swings are the things that you write your career stories about. They're not just, I moved this metric X,
but I changed your trajectory in this way.[00:23:17)]And so the big swings though have a lot of failures along the way. And so you have to understand you're making trade-offs in that. I encourage everybody to take some time, two, three years in their career when they're ready for the big swing, where if it doesn't work... If it works, you run the team, you run this amazing product. It doesn't work,
you can always go back and go back to the core products. Lenny Rachitsky[00:23:39)]It's interesting how your strategy here is very similar to a product portfolio strategy where as a team should have a few big bets and then a lot of incremental stuff. And it reminds me about this awesome post called You Are in Control of Your Career. And the argument in your post is you should PM your career the way you PM your product. So there's a lot of synergy here. So maybe just diving into this post and advice around this, how should someone be PMing their career, the way they PM a product? What's your take there?
Deb Liu[00:24:05)]By the way, for your PM audience, I want to say this, which is a lot of the greatest PMs are the worst PMs of their careers. They love products. They love the crafts. They love the customer research, the data. They have plans, they have timelines. And then when it comes to career, they have none of those things. They just drift from job to job. "Hey, should I take this role or this role? How do I think about this?" But if I said you had to write a spec for your career, what's in there? What are your milestones? What are the skills? What are the features that you want to have of your career? How are you going to get there? What does success look like? (00:24:41): You actually have metrics for your product, and yet you don't have metrics for your career. I coach a lot of people and when I coach them, I ask them, "Well, where do you want to see yourself in five years? Where do you want to go?" And half the people have no idea. I think that's really tragic because when you PM your career, it's about intentionality. But I'll tell you the story of my career and how I was the accidental PM and then eventually... I told you how I accidentally fell into PM,
but also fell into so many of the things that happened in my PM career.[00:25:10)]And if I had to go back, I would think much more deeply about what I want to accomplish. So I ended up at PayPal working for a guy named Dave Lee who reported to Amy Clement, and then he left. And so she offered me his role. I had only managed people for, I don't know, 15
seconds. I was two years out of business school and I was definitely not qualified to do his job. He was the director of product. I wasn't even a director and I was running the team for eBay.[00:25:34)]So basically the PayPal part of eBay, which was basically half the company's revenues and profits. Totally unqualified. I ended up in this job and I do a good job. I ended up doing it for several years. I built up the team and we have a great relationship with eBay. Our team was very close and we were able to actually build something really lasting that worked really well. And then I had a baby. And so this happens in a lot of women's careers. I was turning 30, I had my son,
and I had to leave for six months.[00:26:08)]So I handed my product to my successor, Mike Woo and he ended up taking over. He did such a good job while I was gone, I didn't want to displace him when I got back. And so I thought, "Well, I'll go and look for another role." I couldn't really find a product role I liked, I mean, because there weren't that many product director roles. And so I ended up in corporate strategy. So I worked for the amazing Rajiv who was CEO at the time. He since passed and I wrote his speeches, worked on strategies, I worked on digital goods and charity, and ended up building that into a vertical for the company. So charity,
social commerce and digital goods.[00:26:40)]And I thought, "Okay, this is an interesting job." So I create the job, have a couple product managers, wasn't really sure where this was going, and then one day I was like, "You know what? I'm not feeling this. I have a child at home."
I had gotten into what Cheryl Sandberg calls that kind of between kids situation where I was bored of my job.[00:26:59)]I was working one of the VPs I worked with and I resigned. I said, "I'm leaving tech, just I'm going to stay home and maybe start something small." He convinced me to hold off and he said, I'll find you a job. He calls me a week later and he said, "Found you a job with Stephanie Tilenius leading the buyer experience at eBay product." And I said, "Oh, that sounds interesting." So I said, "Sure, as you notice, I do not have a plan. I'm just drifting. I'm so fortunate that I had amazing mentors who gave me opportunities,
but end up working for Greg Fant and Stephanie Tilenius at eBay for two years.[00:27:34)]I led the buyer experience. We did some really good work there. And then went on maternity leave again. And I get a call from a friend, my old engineering manager from PayPal, "Hey, I'm at Facebook. Do you want to come? You can't come into product. You need a CS degree for that, but we have a product marketing job open." I was like, "Sounds good." Drop into Facebook. And so again,
no idea what I'm doing back in product marketing. So I spent a few years doing that. Eventually was invited into product and so on and so forth.[00:28:02)]And each job that came along was organic, but also kind of accidental. I see that happen in a lot of careers, which is my story when you look back, looks great. It looks like it all worked out, but I had almost zero intentionality in any of these. And I think that had I had more agency and I thought about what I wanted, I could actually measure is this the thing that would get me further or not? (00:28:24): I ended up extremely lucky, but not everybody does. And so I think having a plan allows you to compare every decision. It's not like when you're offered an admission to college, we're looking at three different offers maybe with financial aid or not, and you can make a decision, "Oh, they're offering me this department, but I can't get into this department." This is how far it is from home. But jobs and roles or nothing like that. Someone calls you one day, "Hey, I'm at Facebook. Do you want to come? I'm actually on maternity leave." And he's like, "Just come talk to me." I'm like, "Why not." (00:29:00): And you end up dropping into different parts of your life and I think sometimes by saying, "Here's where I want to go and here's how I want to get there," you can have such a better career. And so I do encourage everybody to do this and to think about what does success look like in five years and how far am I from that and am I heading in the right direction?
What's interesting is I also had a similar path to you where I had zero plan or intention or goal and also just follow things and things worked out. I wonder how often that happens and I wonder if this idea of having intention and planning a roadmap is something you do if things aren't working out because maybe there's some good to not overthinking it and just following pull. I don't know. Deb Liu[00:29:45)]Well, I think the problem is this with you and me, Lenny, is that hindsight bias is a problem. We made it because we weren't intentional in a lot of ways, but for how many people, is that true? For how many people who aren't... You don't have a plan and you get there. I always tell people, if you are sure what your destination is, that's definitely where you're going to end up. But if you actually aim in the right direction, you can shape your learnings, you can shape your roles you take,
you can shape your skills towards the place that you want to go. Lenny Rachitsky[00:30:16)]When you talk about getting this offer from Facebook,
And it feels like that's when the things you've done ahead of time of here's what I want would be most helpful. Deb Liu[00:30:29)]Also, I think the thing about job opportunities in particular is they tend to come serially. It's only you presented these offers. It's like one role is so different from another and they often don't happen at the same time. They might say, "Well, you have to decide in two weeks." And then you say, "Well, there's this other company I'm talking to and you get a lot of pressure to say yes to this versus this." (00:30:49): And to really having a measuring stick is this getting me closer or further away from where I go?
Can allow you to actually take serial decision making to a place where you're measuring against a long-term goal. Lenny Rachitsky[00:31:01)]I did a meditation retreat once and when you're meditating, there's this kind of guidance of don't try too hard, don't push yourself to go into a direction, "Oh, I'm not doing a good job. I need to get to this enlightened state." And instead their advice is just push your cart in a direction and think about that's the direction you want head, but you don't need to grasp on to here's where I need to land,
here's where I need to go. And I wonder if just having a thought of here's where I want my career to go. I want to be on boards in the future. I want to start a company in the future. I want to become a designer in the future. At least start there maybe just like a direction that you're heading. Deb Liu[00:31:40)]Yeah. There's a woman who I worked with in product and now she's the founder, very successful founder, and she said to me, "I want to join the board of this Fortune 100 company." She told me the company, and I said, "Okay, that's a lot." So she said, "How can I get there?" And I said, "First, it's probably going to take you 10 years because look at who's on the board. I happen to know a couple people on the board." And I said, "Why don't I introduce you to one of them?
And they can tell you how to get there.[00:32:04)]But the point is she knew where she wanted to go and she said, "I'm willing to take it first step today." And I said, "First, you've never been on a board. You were very successful, but this is not... There's so many steps before you get there. It's like before you go to Harvard, you have to graduate from elementary school to middle school. You have to take the SAT, you have to apply. I said, "Let's start from the first step and let's break this problem down." (00:32:29): But I love that she knew where she wanted to go and she's like, "Even if I don't make it there, I'll be happier having made this journey." And I love that for her. And I think she's still earlier in her career, she has so much time ahead of her, but it's really incredible to see her kind of on this path and to know that that's her dream,
and that I can help her a little bit along the way. Lenny Rachitsky[00:32:48)]It also relates very much to your idea of thinking of your career like a PM thinks about their product where one of the tactics is to imagine the ideal scenario and work backwards from that versus incrementally what's the next thing? What's the next thing? So in this case, she was thinking, "Here's where I want to head. Okay, what's the next thing to get to that direction?"
I love that.[00:33:07)]This episode is brought to you by Webflow. We're all friends here, so let's be real for a second. We all know that your website shouldn't be a static asset. It should be a dynamic part of your strategy that drives conversions. That's business 101, but here's a number for you. 54% of leaders say web updates take too long. That's over half of you listening right now. That's where Webflow comes in. Their visual first platform allows you to build, launch, and optimize webpages fast. That means you can set ambitious business goals and your site can rise to the challenge. Learn how teams like Dropbox, IDEO,
and Orangetheory trust Webflow to achieve their most ambitious goals today at webflow.com.[00:33:53)]Okay, going a slightly different direction, I'd say the post that you've written that has most resonated with me was about introverts and how hard it is to be successful as an introvert, and that basically have to learn to be an extrovert as an introvert because in business extroverts are most valued. Can you just talk about of your insight, what you've seen around this and how and your advice to introverts like me about how to be successful in business, what you need to change?
Deb Liu[00:34:22)]Well, first, I love the book, Quiet by Susan Cain. She talks about the power of introverts. Unfortunately, the world doesn't see the way the world the way she does. I wrote this post. It was the secret bias no one talks about, which is the workplace is really favoring people who can speak up. And I tell the story of somebody on my team who's just an amazing product manager, and yet every time she came up for promotion or calibration, people were like, "Oh, what does she do?"
And it was because she was not good at broadcasting or explaining what she does.[00:34:54)]I would take her to executive meetings and she was really bad at answering questions or talking. And so we would prep and prep and prep. I just knew her skills and I could see her every day moving the product forward. But for some reason people... Because your peers also have influence over people's ratings and their promotions, and I was constantly just trying to figure out how to get them to see her brilliance. I asked her once, I said, "I noticed that you never answer questions when we do these presentations." She's like, "Yeah, because I'm a processor. And by the time I process, I feel like the conversation has moved on." (00:35:28): And so I really feel like the world, it's not built for somebody like her who's a brilliant product leader, but people couldn't see it. And I realized that so much of what products and just general leadership is, is not just doing the work, but actually... It's not just having the product, it's having great product marketing to go with it. Let's call it that. Okay, so I've been in product and I've been product marketing. You make a light bulb,
but you're selling light.[00:35:53)]I really think about how that she was making amazing number of light bulbs. She was lighting up all the houses, but she was not marketing the light. And I think that was the thing that was really missing. Is that fair? Absolutely not. There are a lot of people who are born introverted. Is it fair that a product manager who isn't introverted, isn't extroverted is struggling with that? No,
but that's the world we live in. And so it's one of those things where you get to choose what you do.[00:36:21)]First, I think for the individual is realizing that you are your own best marketer. You have to actually share what you do. If a great product is out in the world, but no one is told about it, did it exist?
And so one of the things that's very important is really to get that product marketing.[00:36:39)]The second part is we should change our workplaces so everyone can be successful. And I think that that's a really important skill. As more introverts get into leadership, they need to actually change the world to make more space for people like them as well. So one of the things that I found was in my leadership teams over the last several years, we had this thing where we all vote,
but we vote offline in a document and we put a number in and then we put our comments in.[00:37:05)]And that way everyone has an equal voice in this document. And then when we talk about it, usually, of course the extroverts speak first, but everyone has a vote and we can actually see what people's point of views are. And I love that. I love that when there's something we used to do at Facebook is we used to go around in a circle and everybody would give their opinion in a meeting. I do that still today. I ask every single person as a business leader at this company, would you do this? (00:37:30): And even I joke with our chief legal officer, Greg, I say, "You are a business leader and the lawyer. You can't just say, well, legal advises X." I'm like, "But what would you do?" And so nobody can take a backseat to decision making. Everybody has a voice. So there's so many of these kind of bias interrupters, things that we can do to actually make the world easier for those who weren't speaking up and taking 80%
of the air in the room. And I do think that we have to craft a workplace where everyone can be their best. Lenny Rachitsky[00:37:59)]In the post, you also talk about as much as we want to change the way people run their companies and think. I love your advice of you also still have to learn how to speak up and act more extroverted even though it's not natural to you. Is that right?
Deb Liu[00:38:14)]I think we do a disservice when we say we're not good at speaking up because it's a skill like any other. And if I told you the difference between your product being successful and not being successful is you giving this presentation, they're going to kill your product if you don't sell this to the executives. You would figure out a way to stand in front of those executives and defend the freaking heck out of your product. But why aren't you doing that every day? (00:38:35): And I think sometimes we forget that not everything is as essential as they're going to cut your product if you can't convince them to keep it. But every day you're actually building credibility for your team, getting more resources, getting more people to talk about your product inside your company, getting more press for the product outside. All of those things combined into momentum for your product. And don't you want the best thing for your product and your customers? (00:38:58): So if you think about it that way, it's not, well, I'm uncomfortable. I hear this a lot where people say, "Well, you wouldn't understand. I'm an introvert." And I'm like, "So was I." But instead I just said, "Okay, this is a necessary skill and it's a learnable skill. You don't have to be comfortable with it. You don't have to love it, but you just have to do it."
Lenny Rachitsky[00:39:19)]What about from another perspective of why people don't do this, which is it feels like self-promotion and it feels like icky like, "I'm just sitting around promoting myself. I don't want to be doing that." Anything there that helps people get over that piece?
Deb Liu[00:39:31)]Well, I just remember I was talking to this ERG group and I was asking about... There was an upcoming calibration and self reviews were due in a couple of days. And I said, "Well, what are you doing for your self-review?" And somebody raised their hand and said, "Well, I'm really bad at self-promotion. What advice would you have for me?" And I said, "If you think your self-review is self-promotion, you're just not going to do a great job at it." (00:39:56): What if I called it educating your manager about all the great work your team has been doing? What if I called it helping people see why your team should get more resources? Suddenly you're cracking open, you're changing the question right from, "Oh, I was self-promoting to actually I'm helping my team get more resources and support." And suddenly she was like, "Oh yeah, I never thought about it that way." (00:40:22): But I think often if you frame it one way, it looks like self-promotion. I wouldn't want to do that because of self-promotion. But at the same time, if it's education, what if I said, "I was talking to a PM who's really incredible. I've mentored him and sponsored him for a long time." And I said, "I don't understand why you don't have more of a voice. You've learned so much about the craft. You've done this at multiple companies."
And he said exactly what you said which is I'm not really self-promoting.[00:40:46)]And I said, "If you see it as self-promoting, you will never do it." And so let's talk about why you don't actually do this. And he said, "I've seen a lot of people who are really great on LinkedIn write these articles, but they have nothing to back it up." And I don't want to be like them. And I said, "Okay. Well, you read my blog, you follow me on LinkedIn, do you think I have nothing to black back it up?" And he's like, "No, of course not." (00:41:07): And I said, "Well, then why do you put yourself in his category instead of mine?" And I think it was just a moment where we just came to an understanding where he in his mind was like, "I don't want to be that person. It's an empty vessel that has no substance behind it." And I said, "Do you think the things I write have no substance?" But it was an interesting conversation because he had taken this mantle that it was self-promotion and that behind what if people think I'm nothing behind it?" (00:41:32): I'm like, "I know you have something behind this. I have been your manager. I have worked with you for many years, but you see how just reframing it has really changed his way of thinking about it." Still working on him. But I actually think he has so much to give and I think he has learned so much about the craft,
and I wish that more product managers feel comfortable that they have something to give to the world. Lenny Rachitsky[00:41:53)]I think what you're saying right now will resonate with a lot of people when they see people posting. I feel the still of just like, "I don't want to be this guy that's just posting nonsense on LinkedIn just to get likes,"
even though it's kind of what I do now full time. Hopefully it's not nonsense. Deb Liu[00:42:08)]But it is all substance. So, Lenny,
we know the substance behind it. Lenny Rachitsky[00:42:11)]I tried, but I think there's posting on LinkedIn, posting on Twitter. There's like an innate just doing this because I want to get attention when often... And the way I started this is just like things I've learned that I think are useful, I'm just going to put them out there. So just to double click a little bit, I think this is a really powerful point. What actually have you found helps people get over that? Is it someone like you and his corner being like, "You have really great stuff to share, you should actually do it. Don't be as worried as you are, as you think you might be." Is there anything else that works there?
Deb Liu[00:42:41)]Actually what worked for me was I was working with Bos and I talk about our relationship in my book, but we made a contract when I started reporting to him. And Bos, for those of you don't know, is currently the CTO of Meta. At the time he was the head of ads and then our team moved into his team. And so I was reorged into his organization. And as I said we did not have the best relationship before that. And so we made a contract to work together and I had written like, "Here's how I want you to take care of my team. Here's how I want you to support our products." And I wrote them this long,
my part of the commitment.[00:43:13)]Then he wrote back, "Here's what I'm asking of you. I want you to write and publish something every month." I was like, "What are you talking about? Why would you say that?" He said, "You have so much to teach people. Just do it." I said, "I don't really have that much to say." And he's like, "Just trust me on this. You'll figure it out." His advice was write what you repeat. If you say something more than once, just write it down. And then the next time someone asks you,
you can just hand them.[00:43:40)]He has a great blog if you have read it. I just normally thinking that is a weird thing for your new manager to say after you had a lot of conflict together before that. But he took my contract, which was... By the way, he's like, "Oh, do you want to codify this in some way?" I'm like, "No, I just..." But every month from then on,
I would literally just write something and it was my promise to him. And I did it faithfully and I published it internally. So I didn't publish it externally for a long time.[00:44:04)]And then sometimes they would ask me if I want to publish it externally for the company and I would say yes. And so I did it for years. I reported to him for years. And then we switched managers. He moved over to Reality Labs and then I had a new manager and I continued and I continued this. Then I started doing a publicly, and then obviously I wrote a book. Because of him and his encouragement,
So it's interesting that that's another example of your manager giving you the space slash forcing you to share publicly being a really good lever to get someone over this fear. Deb Liu[00:44:48)]I think sometimes just doing it gets you over the hump. For example, my friend, Ami Vora. She writes an incredible blog. You have not read her Substack, you should. But she's an incredible writer. She'd write all these things internally and I said, "You should publish this externally." Now she does that and it's really great. And I think part of it was just seeing her just put it out there because she is one of the wisest career coaches that I have and managers that I have ever worked with. And so I'm like, "You have so much to say and to share." (00:45:16): So to see it out there, I feel like for years we all got the benefit of it because we knew her. But the world was not getting the benefit. So in some ways just having accountability. So we created a little accountability group to help each other write, and it was just a reminder, "Hey, did you do it?" And so I think it's sometimes what's necessary to get over that hump is either having someone forcing you, like your manager who you made a commitment to, or just having a friend to say, "Hey, by the way, where's this month's post?" (00:45:41): Those things matter because now you got over the hump of, "I have to do it."
And now it's just about how good you're going to make it and how much time you're going to put into it. Lenny Rachitsky[00:45:49)]Awesome advice. And by the way,
folks don't know we've had both Bos and Ami on the podcast in the past. Deb Liu[00:45:55)]Aren't they both amazing?
Lenny Rachitsky[00:45:56)]Amazing. And Ami's episode is one of the most popular episodes. More popular than Bos,
I know. Lenny Rachitsky[00:45:56)]Who would've thought?
She has a lot of coaching wisdom I think that everyone should hear. Lenny Rachitsky[00:46:08)]Yeah,
she's amazing. She has a great Substack. We'll link to it again in the show notes. We'll link to your Substack as well. Deb Liu[00:46:13)]Yeah,
please do. Lenny Rachitsky[00:46:15)]Go Substack. I want to move in a slightly different direction. Talk about growth for a little bit. You have a really nice perspective on how to think about growth. I think a lot of people think of growth as like, "Here's a magic bullet. We're going to do this thing. It's going to go, "Wow, we're going to win." And your approach is, you talk about it, it's a game of inches. Growth is a game of inches. Can you talk about your perspective there?
Deb Liu[00:46:34)]Yeah. Sometimes we think it's like what is the huge step function? But actually most companies are like... We call it points of growth, right? It's like if you can move things 1% a little bit faster every single week, think about the amount of growth you get at the end. And so it's not just, "Okay, what's going to get you the 3X? You can get to 3X 1% at a time, 5% at a time. Single digit growth. And sometimes it is the small things that matter the most. And so we think about product-led growth, it's really about finding the aha moments,
the opportunities. And sometimes opportunities are things that seem really silly.[00:47:10)]I heard the story at Facebook that one of the big things was just adding the, next to ads, they put the word create an ad, was one of the biggest growth drivers. And that was it just putting a link because people just didn't know how to get to the ads flow. It was things like that where you can actually bend the curve of choices that you make. Same thing, each of the growth teams I've ever worked on,
it's like really the small things adding up. It is a list we used to work on payments growth and we had a list of a hundred things we were working on hypotheses.[00:47:42)]And then we would pick and we would grow them by picking the first 10 and we would start working on them, the next 10, the next 10, and we would go through these sprint cycles. And the same thing when we were growing the ads product as well. Marketplace, each of them were just like, "What are the small things that add up to big things?"
And I think sometimes we overthink it.[00:48:00)]Instead, you probably have a hundred ideas. And by the way, it is absolutely okay if the 80% of them don't work. I tell people sometimes we overthink as product manager if we just had the perfect plan, the perfect battle plan, but instead imagine you're a team and you can ship, I don't know, let's say four things. But what if you're a team that can ship 20 things with the same with a 20%
success. You get just as much output and yet you know what doesn't work also.[00:48:30)]What if you can move it from 20% to 30%? Suddenly six things work, not just four things. And so in the same amount of time you have all the lessons of what didn't work, plus you're getting 50% more output. And so you thinking about growth as this engine of, it's a learning machine of what doesn't work, what you reiterate on, what you change,
and you're constantly getting better and better and better. Lenny Rachitsky[00:48:50)]I think what you're saying will resonate with a lot of product people where there's always this like, "We're just doing a bunch of optimization, incremental work. Still sucks, boring. Let's take some big bets." And in my experience, and sounds like in your experience, a lot of the wins actually... And Facebook is famous for this, just relentlessly looking for ways to grow, optimize, optimize,
optimize because that's where a lot of growth comes from.[00:49:14)]At the same time, obviously you need to take some big bets and take some swings and look for step function changes. But I guess for someone that's just like... I don't know. Is there any advice on just creating that culture of like, "It's okay to optimize for a long time, there's a lot of opportunity optimizing"? Is there anything you've learned there or is it just bringing in a Deb and it has to be a top down?
Deb Liu[00:49:32)]I treat growth like, let's say, a product marketing team. It is an augmentation for a product that works. So if you have a core product that works, you have a team that's working on... So for us at Ancestry, it's like search and hints of the core. What is the mechanics? You want people to add people to their family tree. You want them to add stories, okay? There's teams that make sure that the uptime is good, that the hints are working,
the search delivers results.[00:49:57)]And you need those teams, you need those core teams kind of functioning. But growth is actually optimization on top. It is making it so that you get to the search flow faster. The hints are surfacing better, that people are accepting them, that if we put the button here versus here, that people are going to discover things faster. And so it's really taking the core engine and actually wrapping it around the user interface around the experience, around the flows so that people can get to it faster, they can have more satisfaction, they can have more impact. And that's what I see growth as. It's not the core product. It is the cherry on top,
making that product more accessible and more usable and better every single day. Lenny Rachitsky[00:50:37)]Along these lines, I think it surprised people to learn. There's at least a hundred people at our Airbnb just working on pricing, optimizing pricing recommendations. There's endless opportunity to just make all these core components of an experience better and better and better over time. Okay. Last thing I want to talk about, and this is completely unrelated to everything we've been talking about mostly, which is your 30, 60, 90-
day plan.[00:51:00)]So you wrote this post a while ago, just like, here's a great 30, 60, 90-day plan when you join a company. I've heard that many people use this. It's really effective for helping someone onboard and be successful. And I think it's mostly for execs or is this for just anyone joining a company?
It's for anyone. Lenny Rachitsky[00:51:17)]Okay,
anyone. Deb Liu[00:51:18)]I created, it's actually when I joined Ancestry because I hadn't started a real new job in 11 years. And I thought, I'm going to be a student of how to land well. So I read a bunch of things,
I read and I decided I was going to adapt all of those things into a summary and then I was going to try it real time in my blog.[00:51:38)]So in my blog I write, "Here's what I'm going to do," and then I tell you what I did and how it worked and some things. And then I actually do a look back as to all the mistakes I made. And so I did this live. It was not planned quite as well as I would thought, but I put it together and I wrote the 30, 60, 90-day plan and I have a template. I always tell people it's focused on listening and learning first and then doing. So that's the crux of it, which is in those 90-days it's like you got to get used to the environment. You want to have some impact at the start. You want to have a couple quick wins,
but you want to understand the lay of the land and you want to listen because you have something to contribute.[00:52:19)]But if you don't understand the language, you don't understand the culture, you might actually make huge mistakes. And so for the first 30 days, I did a listening tour. I talked to over 60 people in 30 days and then I summarized a state of the union. Here's what I'm hearing, here are the challenges people feel like we're facing. Here's what people's wishlists are. And by the way, one person sent me a wishlist of five things and at that year, I think it took me till year two to finish his five things. And then I sent him a note. I said, "By the way, the first time we met, these five things you wanted to see, we just finished the last one." (00:52:50): And he's like, "I can't believe you remember." I took extensive notes and I summarized it. I think it's important because people want to hear that you hear them. And you don't have to be a manager or CEO to do that. I think people on teams often feel like there's no outlet for the things that they want to say. I encourage, especially product leaders, especially if you're joining an existing team,
to listen really behind what people are saying and then offer to help them do one thing.[00:53:17)]So especially when you're meeting with a new engineering team for the first time, actually ask them, what is one thing I can do to help you this week? I always say one thing, it's limited. This week, so getting 15 new headcount. Probably not going to happen. And it's like, how can I give back? And suddenly you're building a reciprocal relationship. And so a lot of this 30, 60, 90-
day plan is really to help you find your footing and then to start having impact immediately. Lenny Rachitsky[00:53:43)]Say you join a company and you're like, "I'm going to do 30 days listening," and then your boss is like, "No, we need to ship stuff. Get on it, ship this stuff." Is there any advice for trying to push back on that, create space for listening when there's deadlines, things aren't [inaudible 00:53:56]?
Deb Liu[00:53:57)]I encourage everybody to get on the same page on this 30, 60, 90-day plan with their manager. So actually don't just keep it to yourself. Share it with as many people as you can. So I think it's very important that everyone sees what you're trying to accomplish and what your output is going to be. Because if you don't know the output, is success there? The second part is with your manager say, "Okay. I would like to carve 20% of my time listening and I'm happy to do this work 80% of the time." Therefore every morning from nine to 10,
I want to talk to somebody in the organization.[00:54:28)]Just make sure you say, "I will do a better job and have more impact if I have this time to make sure that I'm not accidentally making mistake or I don't get a chance, I'm asking something of somebody, but I've never met them." And to really carve out space because it's really important. Once you're in it,
people give you the new person card for maybe a month or two and then suddenly it's all the problems are your problems.[00:54:53)]But what if you don't know what the problems are?
And so I always say diagnose before you treat. So make sure you understand so that you can help and deliver what your manager is actually expecting of you. Lenny Rachitsky[00:55:04)]I'm looking at your template. So just to share the bucket. So first 30 days learning focus, second 30 days is aligning on vision for the future, and the last 30 days of the 90 days is executing, setting up, actually starting to get stuff done. Awesome. Anything else along these lines of this?
Deb Liu[00:55:23)]The one thing about having a plan also is that you don't feel rushed to do something that you're not ready for because I do think sometimes you feel like you need to have impact. I always tell people, "Do something small, give back in some ways that people see you making." But when you actually reflect, one of the biggest things I could do was actually reflect back to the organization, "Here's what I heard from all of you. I'm listening, I hear this and here's what I want to do about it." (00:55:53): And then in aligning it's like, "Do we agree this is a set of problems we want to tackle?" And then an execution is like, "Do we agree that this is how we want to move forward?" And I think that is such an important part of building into a team. When you enter an organization, you're also entering a team and you're part of a dance that's going around. What role do you play? And people are dancing around you and if you actually make a mistake,
you could trip other people up as well. So really finding your place in the dance is really important. Lenny Rachitsky[00:56:21)]And as a PM, the way I always think about is people won't assume they should trust you. You're just this person that's coming in to tell them what to do and so much of your first month, two, three is building that trust with people so that they can actually feel comfortable listening to your guidance and not just like, "Oh my god. This person is getting in my way."
Deb Liu[00:56:40)]And earning that trust, sometimes people really... You'd be really surprised,
a lot of people feel like they're not heard and even just coming in and listening is a trust building exercise. Lenny Rachitsky[00:56:51)]Such a good point. As we wrap up our conversation, just a couple more questions here. So first is I want to take us to Contrarian Corner, which is a segment on this podcast. And my question is there something that you believe that you think most other people don't believe? Something that you think is a contrarian perspective?
Deb Liu[00:57:10)]I don't know if this is a contrarian perspective, but I go to speak in a lot of universities. So I speak at Stanford and I'm going to speak at Duke. And I always tell people, especially young people, the most important career decision you make is who you marry. And it's not something we think that much about, especially I started dating... I met my husband when I was 18, my first weekend in college. Started dating when I was 19. We had no idea what our life was going to be like and yet every single day like this week we had our board meeting,
I was in Utah the whole week. I come home and he's taking care of everything.[00:57:43)]You will have a much more successful career if your home life is in balance. It's like a yin and a yang. If something is out of balance, it engulfs the other side. Both your job and your home life. And especially, we have three kids. Really balancing that is very hard over both of us having demanding careers. It's not something that's contrarian, but it's something which we don't think about at all when we make that decision. We think is this person fun to be with? Is this person somebody we see ourselves with? But my question is what is the impact of this relationship on your career? (00:58:14): Is this person lifting you up or pushing you back? Is this person someone who's going to be your greatest cheerleader or are they going to be the greatest weight on you? How do you think that that's going to manifest itself 20 years, 30 years from now?
Such a great point. What I want now is a guide for vetting these things when you're dating. Deb's guide to dating. Deb Liu[00:58:44)]I need to write that. Although I've only really dated him, the one person,
so maybe I am like the worst person to tell. Lenny Rachitsky[00:58:49)]But it worked,
That's right. That's right. Lenny Rachitsky[00:58:53)]And here's the questions I asked that worked. That's so funny. Okay, so before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you think might be helpful to share, something you might want to leave listeners with? Any other nuggets of wisdom or advice?
Deb Liu[00:59:08)]Well, there's one quote which I share, I thought about when you were speaking earlier, which is about people who are resilient, which is life... This is a quote from Chuck Swindoll, he's a Christian writer I used to read a lot and it was, "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it." And I just looked him up recently and he actually published a book with that quote. He actually had that quote in a previous book from 20
years ago.[00:59:34)]And I just think that's so important. You don't get to choose everything that happens in your life. So much is just, it just happens, but it's the people who choose a way forward to turn stumbling blocks and the stepping stones. As I said, "Somebody who actually says, 'you know what? I didn't get the job that I wanted and I'm just going to figure out another path,' those are the people who have the most successful and satisfying careers."
They're thinking when other people are zagging vice versa. And I think that there are the ones who are the most resilient and happy in the long term. Lenny Rachitsky[01:00:06)]It's such a good circle back to one of your first pieces of advice of just most successful people are people that are resilient and don't avoid failure, but embrace it and find a way to turn that around. I think it's such an important point. It's so hard to do. I guess just, I don't know, just to follow this thread a little bit, is there anything that has helped you build that? Has that always been the way your mind worked? I imagine coaching helps this, helps people with this." Is there anything just like that?
Deb Liu[01:00:29)]Coaching is incredible for that. We joke it's work therapy, but really I think it's... For a long time I saw failure as this catastrophic thing. I was one of those kids who's like, "You never got a B until..." Then I got to college and I was like, "Wow, this is harder than I thought." And so I got two B's in college and I'm like, "I'm never doing that again." But I was that kid who always got the A,
who got the great scores. I just thought that my life would end if I got a B which by the way is super unhealthy.[01:01:00)]And looking back, I realized that work is not like that at all. And every time I got bad feedback I'm like, "This is catastrophic." But if you look at feedback as an opportunity, then it's very different. It's like this is a gift. I would be crushed. Every time I get a review no matter what rating I got, I would read the things that people would say and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm a terrible person." And I had to really rethink that. And I think coaching, leadership coaching has really helped me through that to say, "No, how do you process this and how do you get to the other side?" (01:01:33): And that has been so transformative for me is to have that outlet to actually talk through. No, no, no. What they're saying is not that you're a bad product person, it's that you need to do a better job communicating or connecting. And I really struggled with that. I was very transactional. I was not a connector. I was not warm. I really struggled with relationships. And a lot of the feedback I received for many years is this relationship issue. And it took me a long time to realize that people aren't saying this because I'm a bad person or that they hate me,
but because they want to connect.[01:02:03)]I was actually making it hard. And I think sometimes we take things so personally that it becomes kind of this thing. It is your white whale. It's like the thing you're chasing, but then what if you say, "You know what, I don't need to do that. I don't need to chase that. Instead I need to figure out what's behind the feedback and what are they trying to say?"
I had similar challenges where I had this pretty real imposter syndrome for a while when I started doing well. And a coach was the key for me to help me get over that and see that if I made a mistake. Things wouldn't crumble. And that it's very normal to make mistakes. Nobody will- Deb Liu[01:02:43)]And by the way, I think perfectionism is a curse we place on ourselves. And it's a very dangerous thing, particularly for product leaders because product managers, you know things are going to go wrong. That's literally part of your job. And yet when we have perfectionism, it is a lack of trust in our ability to bounce back and our ability to actually adapt. But the more adaptable you are,
the less you have to be perfect every single time. Lenny Rachitsky[01:03:09)]Just to leave people with a tactical piece of advice, say they are like, "Oh man, I need a coach," do you have any advice for how to find a coach? How to explore that route?
Deb Liu[01:03:17)]So I actually wrote an article, because one of the things I struggle with coaching is very expensive often, and not every company provides it. My husband actually works at a coaching company called Sounding Board to make it more accessible. But one of the things I encourage people to do is there are other ways to get coaches. I'm in a lean-in group and we are just like, we support each other. I'm in a coaching circle in YPO, so that's a group of CEOs. And I'm in a number of these coaching circles, which give you an opportunity to learn from each other and to get pure coaching. And I think that's a great place to start,
especially early in your career when you're seeing the same people making the same mistakes.[01:03:54)]I think as you get more senior, having an individual coach helps because the situations are so much more unique. But I do think that having that outlet, having a place to say, "Hey, is it me or is this situation not right? And how should I think through this?"
That's so incredibly important. Lenny Rachitsky[01:04:10)]I'm listening to this book, or reading a book called Listen right now that a previous guest recommended. It's a parenting book and it's about just the power of listening and how much that solves many problems with your challenges or with your child. When your child is having a problem just listening to them. There's a lot of power. This came from a coach that was on the podcast recently. [inaudible 01:04:31]
Deb Liu[01:04:30)]Sounds great. I'll definitely,
I'll read it or listen to it. Lenny Rachitsky[01:04:34)]I know it's weird. I'm like reading, it's called Listen. He's like, "This is the only parenting book you need really. It solves all the problems that we deal with." So anyway, that was an awesome final nugget that I'm glad we got there. With that though, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?
Let's do it. Lenny Rachitsky[01:04:53)]Let's do it. First question, what are two or three books that you've most recommended to other people?
Deb Liu[01:04:59)]So I love the book from Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer. I speak in his class now that I read it way before that, it's called Power: Who Has It and Why. I love the book. He actually has the more practical one, 7 Rules of Power, which came out more recently. And so it's a book that reminds us that power is not accidental,
that people often get it for different reasons and how you should think about the playing field.[01:05:23)]Another book is The Conversation, Dr. Livingston wrote that about race in America, and I just love that it's a very honest assessment of race in America. It's hard to have that conversation and I love that he uses a lot of facts and encourages people to open up and have conversations around it. And then the last one I would say is, well,
Susan Cain's Quiet. I adore the book because I do have introverted kids. I myself am introverted and just to read the power of introverts as a reminder that we do have amazing people who don't communicate the same way.[01:05:59)]I love that it's a tribute to the success of those. Even if our workplace is not adapted to it,
I do think we need to adapt to it so that we can bring the best in everybody. But her book is a reminder that there's so much power even in silence. Lenny Rachitsky[01:06:13)]The first book you mentioned Jeffrey Pfeffer,
I love Professor Pfeffer. Lenny Rachitsky[01:06:19)]That was a fun conversation because I came into it very nervous for what his advice would be and then came up with it being like, "This is great. This is-"
Deb Liu[01:06:28)]He is very wise,
Lenny Rachitsky[01:06:29)]He's very wise and just very, "I don't care what you think, I'm just going to tell you the reality of the world." Oh man. Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show that you've really enjoyed?
Deb Liu[01:06:41)]Okay. I know this is a fandom thing, but I love Fallout. So I played the game Fallout 4 last year, and then the show came out and it was amazing. And I know that sounds so nerdy, but it was incredible. And I know that video game movie annotations tend to be terrible, but it was so great and having played the game it was even better. Is that super nerdy?
Lenny Rachitsky[01:07:06)]No, I watched Fallout. I don't know anything about the game, but the show itself was really fun. Just I had no idea what I was even getting into. So no. Acceptable nerdy level. I don't know if you can get too nerdy on this show. Next question, do you have a favorite product you recently discovered that you just really like?
Deb Liu[01:07:26)]Well, so actually what's really interesting is I never got into Twitter. I just couldn't figure it out. Recently I really got into Threads and I didn't think I would. I was like, "Well, just post some stuff on it," but really I just love... I could never figure out Twitter. You follow the wrong person and the whole thing, it's terrible. If somebody is posting too much or too little, but there's something about the Threads algorithm that's really worked. The first few months wasn't quite there,
but I just feel like it's spot on and now I see the magic of it. Lenny Rachitsky[01:07:59)]That's so interesting. I've seen some stats that it's bigger than X now slash Twitter and I wonder if that's true. I got to look that up,
but I've seen more activity on Threads. So maybe I need to go back there. I spent some time around- Deb Liu[01:08:10)]Cheering from the sidelines that it's successful because I use it a lot now. And I guess I had never had a place for realtime news and it's not exactly meant to be newsy, but maybe it's just who I follow, but I love just seeing like, "Here's five headlines you probably missed." And I was like, "Oh." I know they're trying to downplay politics, but I just love that it feels like you get a glimpse of what's going on in the world in five minutes."
Lenny Rachitsky[01:08:35)]Okay. Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often think about, come back to, share with friends or family find useful in work or in life?
Deb Liu[01:08:42)]Ooh, that's a good question. Well, actually,
I would say that it's very similar to the Chuck Swindoll one about life. So we can use that. Lenny Rachitsky[01:08:52)]Great. That's what I imagined because you shared that one early on. And I imagine that was going to be your answer. Final question, you started Facebook Marketplace, you built it. Now, it has a billion users, more than that. What's the most interesting thing that you have bought or sold on Facebook Marketplace?
Deb Liu[01:09:07)]The best thing I ever sold on there was I sold my minivan on it and in four days. I made my husband do it because I wanted him to test the product. We were selling our minivan and I'm like, "Just try Facebook Marketplace." He's like, "I don't know about this." And he's like, "There's too many people contacting me. I needed it to stop."
So it worked really well for us. I think I have bought so many things on there. It's actually sort of embarrassing.[01:09:30)]Recently, my daughter wanted the same desk as I had for her new room and they no longer sell it at Costco. And I found it for half the price from a woman who was moving and she's like, "Here," and I love it. So I bought probably way too many things on Facebook Marketplace actually. But it's a great thing. I actually use it as a great rental for kid stuff because you buy a kid's bike and then when they outgrow it,
And the rental fee is almost free and I don't have the store all of it. So I love every part of it. I still am an admin user and I send a lot of feedback back to that team still. Lenny Rachitsky[01:10:06)]That's amazing. Deb, this was amazing. I'm so happy we made time for this. Thank you so much for coming on. Two final questions. Where can folks find you if they want to reach out, maybe read about stuff you're doing? Where's your Substack and anything else people can check out?
Deb Liu[01:10:18)]Yeah, so debliu.substack if you want to look. I post probably about once a week. I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Threads,
so please do find me. Lenny Rachitsky[01:10:27)]And then the actual final question, how can listeners be useful to you?
Deb Liu[01:10:33)]Well,
I would just love to hear what you heard from today that resonated with you and what you're going to do with it. Lenny Rachitsky[01:10:37)]And how would they share that LinkedIn or at Threads?
There we go. Deb Liu[01:10:43)]... send it to me. If you've actually subscribed to my Substack,
you can just reply to the first email and then I get it. Lenny Rachitsky[01:10:48)]Awesome. But the easy way, as you said, are replying to YouTube comments. There we go. Get people to YouTube, click that subscribe button. Deb,
thank you so much for being here and thank you. Deb Liu[01:10:59)]Thank you so much,
Lenny. It's great. Lenny Rachitsky[01:11:00)]Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.