Episode 260 - CEO of Ancestry Talks Family Histories, Practical Leadership, and the Early Day of Silicon Valley with Deb Liu
How much do you know about where you come from?
There’s lots of talk about legacies and family stories we leave behind, but what about those that we’ve inherited? Today on the show, we mix together a conversation about family histories, practical leadership skills, and the early days of Silicon Valley with Deb Liu.
Deb is the CEO of Ancestry.com, and she’s spent the last two decades as an executive in major tech companies like Facebook, Paypal, and eBay. She’s also the founder of Women in Product, a non-profit dedicated to bringing more women leaders into technology.
In this conversation, she shares how our contexts and our histories can shape us as leaders.
Deb’s newsletter: https://debliu.substack.com/
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All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Rusty Rueff: Hey there. And welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. So how much do you know about where you come from? I mean, there's a lot of talk about legacies and family stories that we leave behind. But what about those that we've inherited? Today on the show, we mix together a conversation about family histories, practical leadership skills and the early days of Silicon Valley with Deb Liu. Deb is the CEO of Ancestry.com, a company that we all know. And she spent the last two decades as an executive in major tech companies like Facebook, PayPal and eBay. She's also the founder of Women in Product, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing more women leaders into technology. In this conversation, she shares how our contexts and our histories can shape us as leaders. Let's dive in.
Rusty Rueff: So, William, do you know where you're from?
William Norvell: I believe so. But it feels like it changes sometimes. Yeah, I mean, I know where I was born. I know where I grew up. I know where I've lived for the last 13 years. And those are all different places.
Rusty Rueff: Have you ever had this thing happen to you where out of the blue someone comes out of the woodwork and says, I think I'm related to you?
William Norvell: Oh, yeah. Happens all the time. Happened with one of our podcast guests. I don't think I've told the story.
Rusty Rueff: No, tell the story.
William Norvell: One of our podcast guys, Chris Chancey from Amplio recruiting way back. I think it's like episode 30 or something, but he randomly reached out through one of these networks and said, Hey, I think we're second cousins. And so jokingly, I see him at praxis all the time. He's like, What's up cousin how are you doing, man? And we haven't traced it back. We don't know where it came from, but we are officially related.
Rusty Rueff: So this has happened to me too, as well. Out of the blue comes someone who is a long lost cousin, you know, says, Hey, I found out that I think we're related. And you say, Well, how how did you find that? And they will say, you know, they either did their DNA testing or they found us on ancestry.com, which, you know, prior to ancestry.com. What do we have? Like these family trees that like the nerdiest of nerdiest person in your family was watching over and taking care of?
William Norvell: My granddad had one of those.
Rusty Rueff: Did he, did he? That's coo,.
William Norvell: Oh, yeah. We got we got like, pages. He loved it.
Rusty Rueff: That's awesome. Well, we are so fortunate today to have someone who knows more about genealogy and ancestry and ancestry.com than any of us are going to know. And that's our guest today, Deb Liu, Deb, thank you so much for joining the podcast.
Deb Liu: Absolutely. It's wonderful to be here.
Rusty Rueff: So we could spend a bunch of time geeking out on ancestry.com, which we are going to do a little bit of it because it's kind of hard to have the CEO of Ancestry.com on the podcast and not talk about that. But we are very interested in your own history, your own ancestry, and actually bring us all the way up to where you are today with us. So we're going to give the floor to you and take us all the way back and bring us all the way forward.
Deb Liu: Yeah, well, my family is from a small village, two small villages in southern China. We're Cantonese. So in the province of Guangzhou, where I had actually visited when I was four, a place with no running water or toilets at the time. And it was a very interesting experience, something which I will always remember is my first memory actually, as being four in a place where, you know, so different from the America that I grew up in. My grandparents had lived in those villages for many, many generations. And that as Chinese culture is there's a book with the ancestry of your entire family written down for that village. And so we have the family tree. Beyond that, my parents and my grandparents actually were Vietnam for many years. They were Chinese immigrants to Vietnam. And then my parents came to America to study, to go to college, and that's how we ended up here. They met here and I grew up in New York, and then we spent the rest of our time in the state of South Carolina. I spent most of my life in a small town, the state of South Carolina. And so it's a unremarkable in many ways, family history. But there's just so much richness in the story of, you know, I always imagined that my great grandparents could never have imagined the life that we live now.
Rusty Rueff: And then somewhere along the way, you decided you would step out of South Carolina and you would go other places. Take us through where you went to school. And then I know you showed up in Silicon Valley around 2000. You know, I got there a couple of years before you, but not too much earlier in 1998. But was it felt like the beginning of something and all of a sudden you're there. So tell us how you got there and what you were doing.
Deb Liu: Yeah, You know, growing up in South Carolina, it was less than 1% Asian. In fact, I would go places where I was the only person who looked like me in many, many places. And, you know, my goal was to get a scholarship to college and leave and never turn back. And so I actually loved the town I grew up in in many ways. But it was also a really difficult place to grow up being so different. And so eventually I went to Duke, I got an engineering degree from Duke and then went [.....], spent a couple of years in Atlanta, and then I ended up at Stanford for business school, and this is how I ended up in Silicon Valley. You know, Stanford was the hub and the heart of where you saw everything happening. And so I still live in the town of Stanford today in Palo Alto. And we stayed and we stayed for the last 20 years and have had an incredible career in Silicon Valley.
Rusty Rueff: You know, almost. Stanford has its own genealogy, right? You could trace it back through and, you know, to which professor and who was in what class and you know, who started what startup and that and did that.
William Norvell: That's how I got here, too. Same story 13 years ago. It's still in Menlo Park, too.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah.
Deb Liu: So it's a hard place to leave, I have to say.
William Norvell: That's what my wife, who grew up here, told me on our first date, and she assured me that moving back to Alabama was not an option if we want a dessert.
Rusty Rueff: Well, remember when the bubble burst? Right. And it was. They used to say B to C was back to consumer goods and B to B was back to banking. And, you know, everybody took off and went back. But anybody you know that you talked to that were there at that time, you know, would love to get back. You know, it's just a place you like to get back to. So you ended up in a couple of technology start ups that at the time were not as big as they are today, but you were there in some early days. Tell us about that.
Deb Liu: You know, it was funny. A lot of people say, well, you know, resume reads that you've been a big company. And I said, well, when I joined PayPal, there were 300 people in Mountain View. And so, yes, it's a big company now, obviously, and a global brand. But at the time, I was, I think, the first dozen PM product managers at the company. And, you know, just seeing the rise of the company where it was eventually, I took a couple of years at eBay where I led by our experience. And then I joined a startup called Facebook, which had, I think, 900 employees. It was there just before 2000. And today, I mean, when I left, it was probably 60,000 people. And I had joined a small group, which is the executive team that led the company. And so, you know, it was just such a amazing journey in those 11 years at Facebook, I built a lot of really cool things as well, including for those of you who have ever used it. Facebook Marketplace, I guess that's what most people know me for billion people buying and selling and community commerce, which is something I'm really proud of.
Rusty Rueff: Do you worry that someday you're going to tell somebody that you worked at Facebook and they're going to say, well, what's that? And you're going to say, Well, it used to be called that. It's called [.....] it just maybe go away and probably never.
Deb Liu: But we'll be at odds over a billion people on it. So I think they'll still recognize the app. But the company itself is not all that. Yes.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah. Are you following the launch of Threads yesterday?
Deb Liu: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, all my friends are there and so I joined and I started participating. It's really exciting to see the next chapter or where that could go.
Rusty Rueff: That's amazing. I mean, I think when I went to bed last night, it was 5 million new users and woke up this morning was ten. So that's possibly another phenomena coming out of Silicon Valley. So I'm going to switch gears because I want to talk a little bit about ancestry.com. And so I find family history to be pretty fascinating. And it's probably just because, you know, when you think back the traits and the skills and the talents you have, you know, if you if you're humble about it, you realize, you know, you just didn't show up and get those on your own. They were passed down over time. And so I always think that's very interesting, especially when I find out people who in my family, a lot of people were very creative. They had musical talent. And I find myself, you know, fascinated by both of those things. But when you think about ancestry, you know, how do you look at your users and say, you know, knowing their background helps inform them or shape them as people today? Is that part of the equation that you're out there selling?
Deb Liu: Well, I think part of it is if you really understood the journey of our parents or grandparents or great grandparents, [.......], think about how that sheds light on the challenges that we have today. You know, I really look back at the history of my parents and the choices they made and my in-laws. And, you know, at one point in their lives, they actually decided that they were going to leave a country they knew and go to a country where they knew no one. They're going to apply to college and just show up. My parents had no idea what the United States looked like. They showed up with a suitcase and a few hundred dollars and they built a new life and they realized that they couldn't go home unless they made enough money to actually fly back. And they stayed for years, not even knowing if they could ever go back. And so, you know, the kind of resilience that takes the kind of grit it takes to to leave everything, you know, to go to a place where you're a foreigner and to live an American dream that, you know, seems so distant, you know, in so many ways. My parents are so grateful for everything this country has meant to them. And, you know, recently my kids interviewed my mother in law, my mother, as part of this essay that the kids were writing and, you know, their journey and understanding that really helps contextualize what challenges they face today. Because imagine, you know, they complain about, you know, it's too hot or they don't have access to the car. And instead you think about what it's like to actually leave behind everyone you've ever known, to go to a place where you don't know when you can go back. And at least there were planes and there are phone calls. Imagine you leave Ireland, you know, you leave Africa, you leave, and you never know if you're going to be able to come back home. That's what it was like for so many people. And as you just cover those journeys, that's what people come to Ancestry to do is really understand this journey.
Rusty Rueff: So give us some of the stats because, you know, William and I were talking at the beginning, every family had that one person who, you know, dug deep on their genealogy. But now it seems like, you know, lots of people want to dig deep. How many people use ancestry.com and how much time do people spend once they jump in there?
Deb Liu: Well, we have over 3 million subscribers today. And we you know, we have a number of active users who is just come just want to continue that journey of self discovery. And we talk about that, right? Our mission is to empower those journey of self-discovery and build resilience for families. And that's what is really exciting about what we do every day. And people do spend a lot of time, but it's one of those things where, you know, it's people say that go down the ancestry rabbit hole, you start the journey, you you discover something and you continue this. You know, you're finding stories. There was the other day I was actually working on my brother in law's family tree, and I found somebody who was his great aunt. And the story of her life was really fascinating. Her father had drowned her. Her stepfather was actually the one related to my brother in law. And she eventually became a nun and she spent her life in service. And I just read so much about her, and I know that many people remember her. But I looked at all these family tree. The people like, collected stories about her and it was just so fascinating. Somebody I'll never meet, she recently passed away and so I was able to see the tributes to her as well. And so, you know, I'm not even related to her, but in so many ways, like her story was one that really touched me. And I think that those stories can easily disappear if they're not people preserving and remembering them.
Rusty Rueff: I think that's right. I'm gonna let William jump in here in a second, but I wanted to ask you something. And actually, this was something that Henry Kaestner had on his mind, and unfortunately, he can't be with us today. He was referencing that very short verse in 1 Timothy one four, where Paul says, Don't waste time on endless genealogies. Right. But obviously, I mean, genealogies are such a big part of the Bible, right? You know, the Old Testament, obviously. And then even as the New Testament opens up, Right. We have the genealogy of Jesus and his background. Have you looked at that? And just any time on that verse and does that verse cause any sense of tension or your thought process as the CEO of Ancestry.com?
Deb Liu: Well, I think about it, and I read the books in the Bible cover to cover when I was a teen. And I just remember the endless chapters of geology, of names that you couldn't recognize, and you know how important that was that day. And, you know, I think all the thing is, you don't just look backwards, right? Looking backwards, don't just dwell on the past, but also take that forward in who you are. And so I really think that, you know, looking at your past helps you contextualize where you are today, but it also helps you understand where you should go and where you should take your family.
William Norvell: I love that. I love that. And actually, I want to lean into that a little bit because I feel like when I think about ancestry.com, it's it helps you. You know, we talk a lot about identity here on the podcast, like what is your identity and especially as an entrepreneur? Because if you don't know that. The winds of the business, the winds of the investors under your employees of what's happening can just take you everywhere. And I remember when I did my first ancestry test, the biggest shock for me. So my my mom's family's from Sicily or papa was. And so I pull for Italy in the World Cup and all these things and they were cobblers in Sicily. I know the whole story a little bit. But I did my ancestry DNA tests. It turns out I'm like 3% Sicilian, which really, like in some awkward way, shook me. You know, it's like and probably what the math would have worked out. But it's like you asked my wife. It threw me for a loop for a few days. I was like, I am so closely identified with the Italian culture and I'm still part of it, but not nearly as part of it as I thought I was, you know? So I'm curious. I'm guessing you might have like a unique view on identity and how we carry that right, and how a Christian entrepreneur may carry that. And I'd love to invite you to share a little bit about how do you see and carry your identity and maybe how would you encourage others to think through that?
Deb Liu: Well, I think that one thing about identity is it's how we define ourselves. Right. And and we should have our identity first in Christ and first and foremost. And I think sometimes we forget that. But the second is your identity is not just what shows up in the pie chart of your DNA. It's so much the stories of, you know, the journeys that your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents had, the choices that they made, the things that they did in their lives. And so, so much of that is not just birth, marriage, death, the date, the name, because I think sometimes people think genealogy is just, you know, it's a name, it's a date. It just looks like a family tree with some facts on it. But it's actually what brought people there, what made people arrive at the places they arrived, you know, what drove them. And so as we talk about the human race, like over the centuries, so many things have driven people war, famine, you know, necessity, new need. And each day you're seeing that evolve. And so when we talk about identity, it's all of this. It's the reasons you are how you ended up where you are today. So much more than just date and the name.
William Norvell: Yeah, for sure. And and on that thread, you made a comment a minute ago, you said, you know, it's about how our past informs our future. I want to give you a chance to go a little deeper there, too. You know, especially when I think about entrepreneurs. They're not all like this, but there's usually a catalyst, right? It's usually a family member that, you know, either wanted to or had to be an entrepreneur. For me, it was moving out here, you know, it's in the water a little bit and you meet enough people. But without moving out here, I, I doubt I would have ended up starting a company and just I'd be very happy running a real estate firm, you know, like, I don't know why I would have done it other than like. But now I look back, it's like, oh, like that interaction and this, like, all impacted who I became. How do you think through your past and then who that can propel you to be once you understand it in a deeper level?
Deb Liu: You know, we get to be the victim or beneficiary of our own history, right? In the histories of everything that led us today. You know, looking in one way, you could say, well, I don't have that in my DNA. Right? I hear people say that all the time. That's not a trait that I have, for example. But at the same time, you know, human resilience means that, you know, for many generations, those people were entrepreneurs. They had to survive on their own or in the community. And so I think for entrepreneurs today, it's like, how do you take that, that sense of resilience, the sense of journey that brought you here, and how do you carry that forward or how do you use that kind of scrappiness and desire to succeed that brought, you know, everyone who came to America came from someplace and the reasons they came in, you know, if you could understand that journey, that could help you as you look at resilience and getting through some tough time.
William Norvell: Yeah, it's amazing. Just of my own life. And you know what I mean? God does this, right? He shows us a verse or a scripture or a story, and but for me, I'll never forget when I found out my, like, great great grandfather, like, started that cobbler shop. And I was like, Oh, wait, I do have it in me somewhere, you know? And it was like a big catalyst, even though it meant nothing, but it kind of meant a lot, you know? And it's hard to sort through that sometimes. But it's amazing what thinking about the people that have come before us can catalyze in you that you didn't know was there, that you didn't know was part of you because you just never seen it before. So on that, I want to switch a little bit of different topic. You know, you've been running this company for a couple of years now. Right? And of course, we talked about the companies you were at before and you even co-founded a company called [....] as well. When she may tell us about a little bit. But I'm curious. And these various stops at now world renowned organizations, what are 2 to 3 leadership lessons that you feel like have really served you well as you moved into the CEO role and maybe some you would pass along to our audience?
Deb Liu: Well, the one that you know, especially as a leader, you know, as an entrepreneur, you're a leader. You're a leader of the other team, you are leader in your industry. And so you need to figure out, you know, how do you lead. And one of the things that I value and leadership lessons I learned from some of the greatest leaders I've followed is great leaders will make decision, they ensure great decisions are made. And there's a huge difference between telling people what to do and actually bringing them along and having them come to the right conclusion. And so often we have this idea that leaders, the person who stands in front of those, okay, turn right here and we're going left and we're doing that. But instead, what if this was organic? What if we could actually get to the right decision together? And so I think that's one important lesson that I've had, which is it's not about dictating. It's about guiding. The second, I would say is always be learning. You know, one of the things that's so important about, especially the entrepreneurial journey, is when you build something you've never had the answer. Nothing looks like the first version of itself. And that's, you know, you make a lot of mistakes. And those mistakes and those scars actually are what makes you stronger. You know, it's like trees, you know, young saplings and trees that weather difficult storms early on are the ones you grow and sustain the longest. And so, you know, the question, if you have a learning mindset, are you actually iterating and learning every single day or are you saying, well, this is how we do things and this is always how we put anything? And I think an entrepreneur needs that kind of entrepreneurial mindset and learning mindset every day. And then finally, you are the company you keep. Who are the people who surround you? Who are the people who influence you? Who are the people who are driving you? Somebody once said, As a founder of a startup, they said the most important job you actually have is recruiting, because who you choose to be on your team will shape the future of your company more than almost anything else. You can have a great machine and a great vision, but a few people who are difficult to work with or mean to people. Or is it the behaviors that when you drive away, people are just countercultural to that and vice versa? And you know, if you are very consensus driven culture, but it's really hard to make decisions, you know, it's really hard to change that. And so you're imprinting, you know, who you are, as we say, DNA early on into your company by who you're choosing. And so I think those are the three lessons really on leadership, on learning, and then on who you choose to be on your team.
William Norvell: That's a great one. That's amazing. I'm taking notes for my co-founder. I want to go one layer deeper as well into this. You wrote a book called Take Back Your Power, and in that book you set out ten Rules for Women at Work and a very important conversation that we've done a series on here as well with Paul and Liz Bohannan. You know, I imagine you faced a lot of challenges throughout your career, maybe even especially in the early days, but I'll let you speak to that now. You founded Women and Product, a nonprofit that brings more women into tech. I just want to give you an open canvas a little bit. You know, where are we in that conversation, encouragement you would have for people to lean into that conversation or think about it differently? And how have things changed over the years of the 20 years you've been here?
Deb Liu: You know, it's interesting. When I was at business school, you know, everyone that in those deep thinking was completely equal, right? We were the highest percent of women in the Stanford Business School class. It was 40% my year, I think it was normally around 25 to 30. And we just were sure that, you know, we were entering a world where things had changed already. And then we did our 20th reunion and we look back and we just saw all the lessons we did learn and we were in school. It wasn't the hard skills. A lot of the soft skills. There was the fact that for every hundred men promoted to management, 86 women aren't, you know, nobody goes to the other 14 women, as they well is because you're a woman. It's just how the system has been set up. And again, it's not conscious. A lot of is unconscious bias. You know, people will tell you what it's like when you have kids. I read an article about what people will tell you about motherhood, and it went really viral because, you know, it's the difficulty you have when you're juggling three young children. My dad was in hospice, I was working and my husband was working, and it was really hard. And during those years, not only, you know, during those six years and I was having children, you know, not only did I not get promoted, I took a demotion to go to Facebook. And those are choices. Right. And, you know, I felt very frustrated and almost dropped out of tech twice during those period because I just felt so frustrated with my career. And so I think we should just be more open about that. And we are making tremendous progress. But, you know, I think that every single day, though, people are feeling that friction. And so how do we make it a little easier and understand the impact that has? And as entrepreneurs, we do you know, all of you are writing the book as you're going along. And every time you say, hey, am I missing something? Is there an unconscious bias here? You know, how do we address that? I think every single day you can actually bend towards, you know, how do we make a more inclusive and fair workplace?
Rusty Rueff: So I'm suspecting that not all of our listeners probably have had the same challenges that you've had. Right. But they've all all of us at some point or another, have run up and do something that feels insurmountable, right? It's something that's so difficult that we can't get ourselves through it and we obviously can't get ourselves through it alone. But yet so many times we try, right? We just try to push it on our own. Have you had people that you've surrounded yourself with that have. Been there for you to help you push through. And then also, this would probably be a great time for you to talk a little bit about, you know, how your faith has helped you push through.
Deb Liu: Yeah, well, you know, I actually have a chapter on the four kinds of allies you need to succeed in your career. In one of the first two are your mentors and sponsors. Your mentors are the people who give you advice or people you trust who can help you choose path the right path. And I had incredible mentors, but the people who really accelerate my career, were my sponsors? Honestly, the people who, you know, in my career said, you know, I believe in you so much. I'm putting skin in the game. And for a lot of entrepreneurs, it could be your first funder, the person who gives you the first small business loan, the person who invest the first cheque. You know, it's the people who gave you credit when maybe you didn't deserve it. And so, you know, I think those sponsors have been so incredibly important in my career. And they're the people who made the step function like I'm on the into it board. And I tell the story of how Sheryl Sandberg introduced me to Brad Smith, who was then the CEO of Into It, and I was just director of the company, one of hundreds. And she said, no, maybe Brad Smith will have a board seat open one day and you can join his board. I thought that was crazy because I was nobody in the energy team or maybe ten people at the time. Three years later, she reintroduces me to Brad and she said, by the way, he has a board seat open. And at this point my career had grown so much. I had my managers, managers job, I had a team of hundreds. And she said, I think was the right time. And I went and interviewed and I joined that board and I tell everybody story. And, you know, I did not deserve her sponsorship or her opening that door. But I can only do my very best to prove that I was worthy of her regard. But then the other two groups, I think, are really important beyond mentors and sponsors is one is your team who are the people you're laboring with, the people you surround yourself with that we talked about earlier. And that's really important because you probably spend more time with your team than maybe you do with your waking hours with your kids. And that's so important. So, you know, is this a group of people where you're helping each other or growing each other, or are you uplifting each other? And then finally, the final group is your circle. And I've had incredible Bible studies who've carried us through really difficult circumstances. We have supported each other through miscarriages, the death of parents. And that is so important. We've been in a stable Bible study for the last two decades, and each of those people have been such an important part of our lives. And we still have reunions with our old Bible study. We still have an active Bible study today. And so, you know, I think that your church group can be that external force that continues to remind you what real life is like outside of work as well.
William Norvell: That's good, I love those categories and I want to go deeper into one of them real quick. So sponsors, I think I understand coworkers. It's funny, my wife asked me the other day who my best friends were, and I said, you know, increasingly, I said, by default, I think Vineet has to be one at this point. I love them. So it probably is anyway. But as my co-founder, say, by default, he's definitely one. I talk to them like 5 hours a day and then the church community would be so valuable. And we proliferate that hopefully through our groups and other things where people don't find it. I want to go into mentorship. I feel like people say that word a lot and it sounds like you've been the recipient of some great mentorship. What does that mean to you? You know, is it finding someone? Do you have to ask someone, Is it monthly meetings? Is a yearly meetings? What does that person do? Like, I feel like in my life, I feel like I have people, but I'm like, is that a mentor necessarily? And do I need to formalize that with a few people I love? Just hear a little bit about that from your life.
Deb Liu: Well, my friend actually has a term for it. She calls it her personal board of directors, and she actually wrote an article for my newsletter about it, if you want to look it up. But you know, your personal board of directors are people you ask for advice when you need objective, somebody who's distant enough that they can give you objective advice. When I was considering leaving Facebook and taking this role, I called a few people, you know, I called Scott Cooke. He's the founder of Into It. And I said what he should do. And he helped me think through the process. In fact, during COVID, we did an outdoor [.....] meeting and we spent hours talking through the pros and cons, you know, what are the opportunities, what are the challenges? His mentorship was so valuable to me because he is distant enough from your vision and yet he just had such great perspective to coach so many people and do a mentor somebody in your life who you can go for objective advice, who you know and you can trust that their advice for your own good. But, you know, at the same time, they don't necessarily have skin in the game. So you're a sponsor, somebody who actually put your dollars or their reputation, Like these are people who have so much objectivity because they support you, but they also do it with a complete knowledge of who you are. And so, you know, sometimes these mentoring relationships, maybe it's somebody you go to once a year because you have an issue. You know, there are a few people I mentor who just call me every few months if they run into something. And and it's just that type of relationship and offers or, you know, long term relationships where it's someone you really trust. And so there was a handful of people. Well, I just ran. The decision by an HMO gave me different facets of advice, and it really helped me make decision.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah. I think that, you know, to understand how to utilize a mentor means that you also have to understand how to be vulnerable about yourself. Right. Because if you're going to surround yourself with these people that you're expecting that they're going to give you unbiased advice only based on one thing, which is because they love you and they want you to understand the truth, you have to be open enough to be very vulnerable with them to tell them what your fears are, You know what your failures are, to tell them your aspirations, and with the fear that they might say, Oh, that's crazy, you'll never get there. Have there been moments in your career journey where you had to open up with those vulnerabilities to get to that next breakthrough?
Deb Liu: You know, what's interesting is we want to protect ourselves and so we don't open ourselves up. And part of it is I grew up in, as I said, in a place where people look like me and I spend a lot of time building walls and building protection gate and keeping people out. And I realized that that actually is counterproductive to everything I was trying to accomplish because things happen because of connection, because relationship, you know, networking sounds like a terrible thing. But actually if people crave connection, they crave getting to know who you are. Who is the real Rusty, what is the thing that is driving you? And if they don't understand that, how can they help you? If they don't understand your priorities, your values, what you've been hurt by your experiences? How can they give you advice that's going to be valuable in your life? And so often we we have this strong external shell, but then people give you advice based on the shell, not based on who you are inside. And so I think the power of vulnerability is that it opens you up to hurt. Absolutely. But also opens you up to connection. It opens you up to opportunity to really, you know, give people the opportunity to help you.
Rusty Rueff: So I'm going to take us down another path here, which is around faith and work. And a lot of people that I talk to outside of Silicon Valley will just say, hey, you know, it must be impossible to keep your faith in an area like Silicon Valley. Yet, you know, the three of us, you know, we share 415 and 6500 as our area code. And I see all kinds of people living out their faith in Silicon Valley, right. Courageously doing it. But it's not always easy. But it's possible, as you said, in a very high profile job, right. As a CEO of a company that people recognize and there are others like Pat Gelsinger sits in one of those roles as well, right at Intel. How have you managed your faith and the role that you're in and how do you bring those together and how do you use it to really share that authentic you?
Deb Liu: You know, I live by the words that came my friend Julie Leena. She said her mom used to say this, and I wrote this down when she told me story from Mom. Trust me, you know that we are witnessing every single day and only sometimes through words. And that's the wisdom I heard from her mom And I had never met this woman, but she lived a life of faith. And I love that because it's not about what you say. It's what you do. It's how people look at you and what you're doing. They want more of what you have. Or do they not? And if we are, you know, if we are hurtful to other people, if we are, you know, not loving and caring and loving our neighbors, then why do people want to know us? And so when I talk about witnessing, it's not about your words it is about your action. Do you care about other people? Do you live the life that is glorifying to God or not? And you get to make that choice every single day.
Rusty Rueff: And in what areas of your work and leadership would you say that your faith is informing your actions more than others?
Deb Liu: We think it should inform every part of your life or it's not something you'd be right If you live as if the Bible talks about [......] do live it as if he is alive. And you are making choices every single day to do more or less because of that. And if it's not fully embodied in everything that you choose to do, do you really believe it? Know, we don't spend our time going, okay, you know, do we believe in gravity? It's just part of our life, right? And we live every second, every step. We feel it. And yet we don't consciously go, okay, you know, do I believe in gravity here or here? You know? And so I think that's the thinking for people of faith. Either it's a part of you or not, and either it's part of the choices you make and the decisions you make or it's not. And I think that should be infused in every part of your life.
Rusty Rueff: Okay. Last question for me, and I'm going to turn it over to William to close. You've got this very cool newsletter called Perspectives where you say you want to be a personal coach to your readers. And I got a chance to look through a few of them, in fact, read today's, which was really fascinating because here we are talking to the CEO of somebody who looks into the past for others with ancestry.com, but yet you talk about the future and who your future self should be. And I want to give you a chance to talk a little bit about that, because I think you closed that newsletter with. If you could tell your future self that what the decisions you're making today, what will you end up doing in the future? You know, how would that inform you? Probably not saying it as well as you're going to say it, but I thought that was a great thing because you're saying you take your past, but you take your present. And the decisions we make today are the decisions we're going to be living with years from now that we might look back and go, Hey, past self, why did you commit to that? You know, you should have passed on that. Give us that perspective of how you take the past into the present and then also look at the future.
Deb Liu: You know, part of knowing your own history and your family is understanding the past. But what if you could send a message to your future self, to your future generation, what that looks like? And part of writing this is really you know, we had this tendency to kick the can down the road. You know, I start out the post by saying, we treat our partner, this partner of ours, terribly. We like delegating, we procrastinate things, and then this person has to clean up after us because that that person that that person is literally us. And we are hurting ourselves by not really understanding how the choices we're making today affect our future. But what if you could send a message from your present day person to your past self and said, Well, what should you have done differently? What should you not sign up for? What should you have not overcommitted to? What should you have invested in that you have more time for your family or for your work or for the things that you care about. You know, and I think that if we're able to I think humans are really bad at thinking about time and yourself a long time in stream with time, because for us it feels like it's infinite in some ways and it feels like it's never ending. And yet, you know, when you spend time in family history, you understand that there is a finite date and there is only so much time. And so making those choices and being deliberate, being attention is really critical.
William Norvell: Hmm. That's great. I didn't get a chance to read it before the show, but I'm curious that you may have answered this already, and the number one issue may be go sign up for perspectives, for people to learn more. But in case people are just going to listen here, which we hope no one does. What are 2 to 3 things you're thinking through right now that your future self should know and be aware of? You know, are there a couple of things that you're reprioritizing or thinking through?
Deb Liu: Well, you know, one of the things I found myself doing was I would overcommit my future self, right? You know, someone would call me to do a podcast or ask if I could speak at events or if I could write something. And I would say, sure, because I'm committing someone else my future self to doing it. So one of the rules I have, which is I have a couple rules. One is the 24 hour. If I can't get it done within 24 hours, I should probably say no to it because my presence doesn't have to hold myself accountable to it. I definitely shouldn't do it. But then there's some things like travel where, you know, it's further down the road. And so I hold myself as a one in one rule out rule one once. So you've got to do one in, one out. Right. And do we just keep piling it on? But, you know, every time you say yes to something, you're actually implicitly saying no to something else, whether it's, you know, your kid flier concert or, you know, an event that you really want to go to for your friend. Like you're saying, no, you're just don't know what that thing is until it's closer. And so one of the things is really leaving the white space in your life with things that are unexpected or that you want to prioritize because you just can't keep living in it. And so, you know, the whole post is really about how can you be kinder to your future self so you would not treat your partner this way. So why would you treat yourself this way.
William Norvell: I'm going to think about it, I'm going to think about it? You know, I've got three small kids, too. I'm curious what they want for my future self. Most of the time I think it's more of me, but maybe it's a little less. I don't know, you know, but we'll think through. I think it's a great question to pose. Deb is obviously not here selling anything, but I'm sure people would enjoy the perspectives, newsletters and sign up and think through things like this. I wish I had a personal career coach. I think I may have just gotten one via email, which I'm pretty excited about. So as we come to a close, what we always do when we close is try to turn it back and invite God's Word into the conversation. And so we love to ask our guest, if you don't mind, to share something that God showing you that may be new or in a different light can be something you read this morning, can be something you've thought about your whole life, could be a story, could be a verse. But we just love to invite God's Word and be in the show here.
Deb Liu: Yeah, so James 2:26 is something my husband and I were just talking about the other day, which is I guess the most common way to say it is faith without work is that the quote is actually far as a body without a spirit is dead. So faith without work, it's also dead. And I think that's so important because, you know, God invites us to be salt and light to actually have to make a difference. So not just saying we have faith, but salt actually makes things flavorful, light actually illuminates. And so without the action, did that thing exist? And so that is something which we talk about a lot in our [....], which is not just, you know, saying we believe something, but how do you live that out every single day?
Rusty Rueff: It's great. Deb, thank you for being a person who brings your faith to work and brings your faith through you into your work. And we really appreciate you spending your time with us today. And we know you're busy. There's a lot of genealogies out there to be figured out, so we'll let you get back to that. But we just, you know, look for great things from you. We'll look at the Perspectives newsletter. You've got a book out there that we all should take a look at. And so just blessings over you and your family. And thanks so much for being with us.
William Norvell: I know our listeners did yourselves are very excited that whatever you said no to to come to this. We're very grateful. So thank you very much.
Rusty Rueff: Awesome.
Deb Liu: Thanks for the invitation. It's wonderful to talk.
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