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Episode Overview

Deb Liu — former CEO of Ancestry, creator of Facebook Marketplace, and one of the most quietly influential women in tech — spent decades being underestimated in every room she walked into. In this episode of Unbehaved, she shares exactly how she unlearned the "play small, stay safe" survival strategy that shaped her early career, and the deliberate practices she used to become a leader who owns the room.

If you've ever been talked over in a meeting, mistaken for the assistant, or watched someone else get credit for your idea, this episode is for you.

WHAT YOU'LL WALK AWAY WITH

• Why "playing small" is a survival strategy that eventually stops working — and how to consciously unlearn it
• Deb's core operating principle: everything is a skill to be learned — including extroversion, self-advocacy, and speaking up
• The Money 2020 pact that changed how a room full of women in tech showed up in rooms full of men
• Why self-advocacy is actually an act of generosity — a paying-it-forward for the next twenty women who walk into that room
• The Supreme Court research on interruption patterns and how they changed the rules to fix it
• Why Deb chose to be public about her breast cancer diagnosis — and what happened after she posted about it
• The origin story of "The Blank Name Tag Club" and why it inspired her next book
• Deb's Reset, Reflect, Reimagine framework for navigating any professional or personal transition
• The permission slip: rewrite the story before it rewrites you

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PULL QUOTES

"I made myself smaller and smaller and quieter and quieter over the years. I just thought — if I just play along, it's going to be okay."

"You outgrow the systems of coping that you have and then they actually work against you."

"I said, well, I'm an introvert, I can't do that. Right? So you're playing against yourself. Instead, I said — I'm going to treat this like a skill, like learning pickleball or playing piano or learning a foreign language."

"The secret bias no one talks about is that those who speak the fastest, speak the most, and show up are given disproportionate influence."

"If we never make it awkward, if we never raise our hand and say actually — then we're doing a disservice to everyone who comes after. Because no one updates their priors."

"It's not for you. It's not self-advocacy, it's not self-promotion. It is paying it forward to the next generation of people who would otherwise be in the same situation."

"Every woman in America has a 13% lifetime chance of getting diagnosed with breast cancer. That is one in eight. Catching it a year or two early can make the difference between a very complicated outcome and a very good outcome."

"I never let myself sit in the silence. And that's where you find who you really are — in that uncomfortable space."

"Often the stories we tell ourselves are the wrong version. And then that affects our behavior in a negative way. I give you the permission to rewrite the story."

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CHAPTERS

00:00 — Cold open: "I made myself smaller and smaller and quieter and quieter"

00:30 — Welcome + episode setup

02:15 — Growing up in South Carolina: the only Chinese family in town 04:00 — What Deb tells her own children about belonging

04:35 — When "playing small" starts holding you back 06:30 — Extroversion as a skill: the pickleball framework

08:45 — The Secret Bias No One Talks About

09:30 — Money 2020: the "Make It Awkward" pact

11:15 — When the CEO across the table doesn't realize you're the buyer

12:45 — Supreme Court research on female justices being interrupted

15:10 — Why staying silent is a disservice to the next woman in the room

16:00 — Reframing self-advocacy as an act of generosity

18:10 — Coming from betterment, not anger

19:50 — The moment Deb was mistaken for the assistant — as CEO of Ancestry

21:15 — The breast cancer diagnosis and why Deb chose to share it

23:40 — "Drawing the Cancer Card" — 100K LinkedIn reactions and the ripple effect

25:20 — Leaving Ancestry while going through cancer treatment

27:15 — The origin of the Blank Name Tag Club

28:45 — Why the unmooring is the whole point

30:35 — Sitting in the silence: why you don't need to sprint to the next thing

32:00 — Writing a mother-daughter column with her 17-year-old

34:00 — The moving story: kids and grief and why they wouldn't pack

35:45 — What matters most to Deb right now

37:20 — The permission slip: rewrite the story before it rewrites you

39:20 — Where to find Deb 

 

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RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Deb's TEDx talk, Let's Make It Awkward
• Deb's article, Drawing the Cancer Card
• Deb's book, Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work

Companion Substack pieces :

• Deb's essay: The Blank Name Tag Club
• Meghan's essay: Why Your Title's The Least Interesting Thing About You 

 

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CONNECT WITH DEB

• Substack (Perspectives): debliu.substack.com
• LinkedIn: Deborah Liu

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CONNECT WITH MEGHAN + UNBEHAVED

• Subscribe to the Unbehaved Substack: meghanfrenchdunbar.substack.com
• Meghan on LinkedIn: Meghan French Dunbar
• Meghan on Instagram: @meghanfrenchdunbar
• The Book — This Isn't Working: meghanfrenchdunbar.com/book

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FULL TRANSCRIPT (CLEANED)

Lightly edited for readability. Filler words, false starts, and transcription artifacts removed. Deb's and Meghan's voices preserved throughout.

Meghan French Dunbar: All right, Deb. So you and I met in September through TEDx San Diego — we were in the same speaker cohort. You gave an incredible talk that I still think about to this day about owning your awkward. Let's Make It Awkward. We're going to get into that. But the thing I want to start with is the origin story — growing up in the South and the ways you learned how to be safe and protect yourself by staying small. Can you take us there? Help us understand where the story came from.

Deborah Liu: Yeah. I was born in New York City. My parents were immigrants — they'd come to the US for college, met here, and we lived in Queens. And then, inexplicably, when I was six years old, my parents decided to move to South Carolina. I later found out it was because my dad was being discriminated against at work, and his friend and colleague had moved south and worked for the government and said, I can get you a job with the US government.

It turned out they were the only Indian family and we were the only Chinese family in the town we moved to. You can only imagine the shock of growing up in a place like that. It was just being so different. I kept playing small because I thought, if people just don't see me, maybe they'll stop making comments. People would walk up to my parents in the street or the mall and say, go back to where you came from. It was a very different place. At the time it was maybe half a percent Asian — less than one percent. We were like aliens that had landed on a different planet.

I just remember feeling like I need to hide, and no one would comment. So I made myself smaller and smaller and quieter and quieter over the years. I just thought — if I just play along, it's going to be okay.

Meghan: And was that behavior something you just picked up, or was that what you were told to do by your parents?

Deb: My parents said, just ignore them. They're just ignorant. They lived an American dream that was really hard for me to reconcile. They came from Hong Kong, where it was very crowded, and here they had a big house with a big yard. For them, the price of the American dream was just not belonging — and that was okay.

I really struggled with that because I was like, I was born in America. I'm just as American as any of these kids. Why am I seen as a foreigner? The forever outsider, the forever foreigner — it was such a piece of who I was growing up. And it was so hard for me to reconcile. So they just said, ignore them, just don't pay attention. And I tried to do that. But it's not like people are silent because you're quieter. I realized that strategy was just not working — but I didn't know what else to do.

Meghan: I'm curious about your own children — we were just talking about them. It's a very different day and age, but I assume they've experienced some level of exclusion, whether based on marginalized identity or something else. What do you say to them versus what your parents told you?

Deb: What's really interesting is I live in the Bay Area now, and my kids go to a high school that's 40% Asian, 40% white, and 20% everybody else. So they live a very different life. My daughter, we were at a couple of events recently, and she said, I experienced what you experienced growing up for the first time — where I felt like I didn't belong.

She's 17. She graduated from high school yesterday. She said, I never experienced this once in my entire life. Now I understand what you're talking about. And I said, it took you 17 years to experience this. So in a lot of ways it's a blessing that she didn't have to go through it — but it's super interesting because when we explain what it felt like, my husband and I both grew up in the South (he's Chinese too, from North Carolina). Being the forever foreigner was just a part of who we were.

And my kids say, we've never felt this before. It's just so interesting to see how demographics change over time. They can't even imagine when I describe what it was like growing up.

Meghan: So this stay-small, play-it-safe, protect-yourself, put-your-head-down strategy — I understand how scary it would be as a child in that situation. And as you're growing in your career, at some point it turns from a way to stay safe to something that I'm assuming held you back, despite your incredible success. How did that conditioning inform your career, and how did it hold you back?

Deb: Well, things work until they don't work. You outgrow the systems of coping that you have and then they actually work against you. The quote is what gets you here won't get you to the next place. And I absolutely experienced that.

Playing small is great when you're in school and there's objective criteria — you take the test, you get the A, you go to college. I studied engineering, so you didn't have to participate. Then I got into consulting and I was like — I never got the highest rating, and objectively I'm pretty good at what I do. So I went to one of the partners, and he said, you're kind of bad at the client part of client service. It's really about talking and engaging with the client. It's not the analysis.

I realized I was playing it small. Then I got to business school, and class participation is 30 to 50% of your grade. I thought, yeah, this is going to be difficult. I had to really figure out — how do you change everything about yourself that's worked for you and protected you for so long?

Even when I got to tech, there were very few women in the spaces I was working in. So again, you feel like safety is in keeping your head down — when actually, having influence means speaking up. It was that dynamic tension I spent a long time with.

Meghan: Was there anything you can pinpoint that helped you let go of these things that had served you? You said it took a long time to condition yourself in a new way. How did you do that?

Deb: Part of it was I have this thing where I believe everything is a skill to be learned. In America there's research that says 30% of teachers think they're bad at math. My parents told me — no, in Asian schools, there's no such thing as bad at math. They just aren't trying hard enough. And I did research it, and they were right. If you didn't understand math, it's because you didn't try hard enough and you need more help. Not that you were naturally bad at it.

I have this rule about everything: you can learn everything if you try hard enough. You're not going to be the best at it. I have to say — foreign languages is not my thing. Music: seven years of piano lessons, and I can kind of play the piano. But it is a skill to be honed.

I realized that treating speaking up, having influence, being more extroverted — that was a skill I had to learn. I had to figure it out because I wrote this article called The Secret Bias No One Talks About. And the secret bias is that those who speak the fastest, speak the most, and show up are given disproportionate influence. How many times, as an executive, does the person who speaks first and loudest take up all the oxygen in the room? Who's that going to be? It wasn't going to be me.

So often we have this desire to have influence, and yet we say — well, I'm an introvert, I can't do that. Right? So you're playing against yourself. Instead, what I said was — I'm going to figure out, if I treated this like a skill, like learning pickleball or playing piano or learning a foreign language, what is the skill I need and how do I get there? I broke it down like a problem to be solved. I'm an engineer by training. These are solvable problems.

Nowadays I get a lot of people saying, well, I wish I could do what you do, but I'm an introvert. I'm like, actually — right?

Meghan: I love this. One of the things I wrote about in the book is how I used to be so conflict avoidant that it erred on the side of dishonesty. I'd withhold truth from people because I didn't want to hurt their feelings. And I always told myself, I'm just not good at conflict. And I finally did the exact same thing — I said, I'm going to teach myself healthy conflict. I'm going to practice with people I trust. I'm going to do it small. It doesn't have to be tomorrow that I'm incredible at this. It's 2% better every day. Stacking these things on top of each other.

So hearing this — that this can be done from the lens of introversion to someone who can own a room — is something a lot of people need to hear. You talked in your TEDx about Money 2020. Can you help us understand that story? It's going to set up a lot of what comes next.

Deb: So I was the head of payments at Facebook for many years. I'd started at PayPal, so I'd been in payments for a while. I would go to Money 2020, which is the preeminent payments conference. I'd go with my head of partnerships. I was the head of product and engineering — basically the GM of the space. Usually the first day we'd walk the floor and talk to partners.

I noticed something. Whoever would meet us would greet us, and then slowly edge me out of the conversation. It went from a three-way conversation to a two-way conversation. I'd be standing awkwardly on the side, kind of nodding my head. Very awkward. I just wouldn't say anything. But I usually keynoted on the second day. And suddenly, once I keynoted, everyone would come up to me. Suddenly they wanted to talk to me because they felt I had influence. But before that, they'd just assumed I was the assistant.

I realized I never wanted to make it awkward. I remember telling the story to a bunch of folks at a Women in Product dinner and I said, I just don't want to make it awkward. And everyone was like, yeah. And then someone said — no. We're going to make a pact right here. We're going to make it awkward. Because if they're going to underestimate us, if they always assume we're the assistant or the more junior person, they will never change their priors. They will never break the stereotype if none of us ever say — actually, she's in charge.

One of the people I was very close to — this happened to me all the time. We were trying to acquire a company, and the CEO was sitting at the end of the table. He literally spent 20 out of 30 minutes speaking to my colleague. Finally, 20 minutes in, my colleague points to me and says, you know, she decides whether or not we buy your company, right? The CEO was so embarrassed. He'd looked us up beforehand. It wasn't a secret.

But it's just a natural inclination. I don't think that person was malicious or even wrong. In his mind, he's like — in a room like this, there's two people, I'm going to speak to the one I naturally have more rapport with, somebody who seems like the more natural leader. If he were playing the odds, he would be right.

But if we never make it awkward, if we never raise our hand and say actually — then are we doing a disservice to everyone who comes after? Because the assumption is that we're not the leader, and then nobody updates their priors.

Meghan: There's an element of self-advocacy for yourself in that. And there's also this — I don't know if it's a responsibility or a hope — that the other people in the room will advocate for you. But when you're often the quiet one, the person who's not owning the room, people can assume you don't need to be advocated for. Was that person someone who'd advocated for you before? And is there a way to help people in the office understand how to make it awkward for the people who are often marginalized?

Deb: He's always been an incredible ally. He's somebody I worked with and known for many years — he was on my team, and we had a great rapport. What was super interesting was that he even noticed. This happens a lot and people don't even notice.

At one point I was sitting in a room and there was a person who was presenting who didn't come up to the table — so they were sitting in the back because there were no more seats. Myself and this other woman offered our seats up because we noticed. There were only two women in the room. And somebody points out — wait, why are the two women the two who offered their seats up to this person who's presenting? Nobody else noticed.

I think a lot of women in particular are trained to be helpers. To look for opportunities to be helpful. Whereas others are just living their life, and I get it. I don't think anybody in that room did something wrong. But it's really that awareness that's missing often.

There was a study about Supreme Court justices where the women justices were interrupted more and spoke less. Right? These are people at the top of the legal game in America — nine of them — and yet they spoke way less. And to change that dynamic, they actually changed the rules where they now ask questions in order of seniority. And now they looked at the time each spent, and they all speak much more equally.

You think — the data wasn't missing. It's just no one looked at it. Somebody published a paper and said, this is what happened. And suddenly the hidden is revealed. You can change the system to make it more fair for everybody. It wasn't that the lesser justices had less to say. It was just that the dynamics of the room were structured that way. And it also brought forward some other justices — men — who didn't speak as much either.

So you think about those nine people who work together every day and are filmed. Now you see that data. What is happening in the quiet rooms where nobody is filming?

Meghan: An element of owning your awkward is that you're actually helping highlight and helping the people in the room be more aware of the dynamics at play. Whereas when you remain silent, they don't learn. If no one is ever showing them what's happening, they don't have the opportunity to understand what that looks like in a room.

I know you've been practicing owning your awkward after the Women in Product dinner. What does it actually look like? What are we saying? Especially as women — my experience has been that I'm supposed to prioritize everyone else's comfort over my own. And making other people uncomfortable is something I used to be incredibly uncomfortable with. As you're practicing that skill, what are some of the stories where you were owning your awkward for the first time? And how did it feel?

Deb: Well, being willing to make other people uncomfortable is something I was unwilling to do. Even people who would say really hostile and racist things to me — I didn't want to make anybody else uncomfortable.

Meghan: I understand why we're conditioned like that.

Deb: Yes. We're conditioned to be helpers. To play along, to be nice. And often when you play nice, you're actually not speaking up and changing things.

It's basically like getting into good trouble. There are times when the awkwardness will force people to re-evaluate all the assumptions they have. The goal is not to make them uncomfortable — the goal is to make them see a side of something they had never seen before.

I coach a lot of women, and one of the things I say is: you need to write your self-evaluation first. You need to amplify the work that you're doing. And the first response I often get is — I'm really bad at self-promotion. And the thing is, if you treat it as self-promotion, you're not going to do it because you see it as a negative.

What if I said — actually, sharing what you're doing is education. It's going to get your team more resources. It's going to get you more support. It's going to amplify the work you do within the company so you can access more resources to reach more customers. Suddenly you've changed the message.

The same is true of this. What if it's not for you? What if correcting the record that you're the CEO when someone underestimates you — or telling the story of that person who made you uncomfortable but apologized later — is actually for the next 20 women that man works with? It's not for you. It's not self-advocacy. It's not self-promotion. It is paying it forward to the next generation of people who would otherwise be in the same situation.

Meghan: I had this experience at a highly male-dominated conference while I was writing the book. I'm researching patriarchy and getting quite angry as I'm writing. I went to this conference — 85% men, 400-ish people — and I walked in like it was my singular mission to eradicate patriarchy with cutting remarks. I was coming at it from a place of anger and wanting to shame the men. And I walked out of that conference feeling pretty crappy about myself. That didn't feel good.

What I understood later was that when you come from anger and shame and wanting to be right — at least for me — it's not in alignment with my values. It's not my highest and best self. What I'm hearing you talk about here is coming from a place of educating people, of benevolence, of wanting things to be better instead of being frustrated and angry. When it comes from a place of betterment, it's more effective and feels a lot better.

You went all the way up to CEO of Ancestry. You had to really step into the limelight. How was that experience for you? What surprised you about sitting in the CEO chair?

Deb: The biggest thing is that a lot of being in the CEO chair is really channeling the organization and culture. That was super important to me — I really cared about it. Alignment of values is critical to me, and Ancestry is one of those really high value, high culture companies. I loved that about it.

I think the biggest challenge was — I shared this in the TEDx talk — we were having a conversation with a partner at a consulting firm we were hiring to do a project. When I introduced myself, they seemed visibly startled that I would be the CEO. My CFO was so deeply offended on my behalf. I realized you can reach a certain place — and I'm sure this person did the research before coming to the meeting, because we're paying him an unbelievable amount of money — and it still happens at all levels.

Whether it's the woman coming into a conference who feels like she doesn't belong, or the woman in the C-suite — let's normalize having women in the C-suite. If we normalize it more, it's a lot easier. For so long we just didn't say anything. That's why the whole make it awkward thing is really about forcing people to confront their biases, correct them, and then go forth so the next 20, 50, 100 people they work with aren't going to face the same thing.

Meghan: The public reason for leaving Ancestry was a breast cancer diagnosis. This is something you wrote about — which I feel like the status quo tells leaders we shouldn't share everything, we should be infallible. Many people don't talk openly about things like having breast cancer. What was the decision for you when you were leaving to just be open and transparent about what was going on?

Deb: Well, there were a number of reasons — but I think that put me over the edge. It was a challenging time. My mom had just passed away. She was in hospice at my house, and I'd traveled 24 weeks that year. It was just a lot. Then I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and I'd just lost my in-laws too. We were building a house so we could live together. There was a lot happening in my life. I just realized I couldn't do one more thing. I couldn't get past that.

I basically shared this very openly because of the person who encouraged me to get a mammogram. My friend Mara Finley — for her 50th birthday, I asked her what she wanted because I was going to miss her party, and she said, I want you to get a mammogram. I'd never gotten a mammogram before. I was 47, 48. She said, just get a mammogram. She had had breast cancer at 48.

I got a mammogram and it was clean. Then the next year I missed her party again. She said, just get another mammogram. So I got another mammogram — kind of late. And immediately: you're getting a biopsy today. They moved me to a room, and I knew exactly what was happening at that moment.

I called Mara. I thanked her for helping me through this process. She said, the only thing I ask of you — tell everybody they need to get screening. You need to be really open about it because you have a platform. Lots of people hear from you. If you share this, it will encourage other people to get screening.

What was really fascinating was after I posted it — I wrote an article called Drawing the Cancer Card and posted on LinkedIn. A hundred thousand people liked it. And dozens and dozens of women reached out to me and said, I had been putting this off. I thought I was not at risk. People who had not scheduled their biopsy after a suspicious mammogram reached out. I was thinking, what are you doing?

I realized — I think everyone has every right to be private. But if we never share the story, how do people know? Every woman in America has a 13% lifetime chance of getting diagnosed with breast cancer. That's one in eight. And by the way, catching it a year or two early can make the difference between a very complicated outcome and a very good outcome. I happened to catch it super early, but it was very aggressive. They said my chances of recurrence were very high, so I needed to be much more aggressive in the radiation and everything.

The point is — if I had not listened to Mara, I would not be in the same situation. That's something I wish we were more open about. Because paying it forward to those 50, 60, 70 women who reached out to me — 13% of them will be diagnosed at some point. And if you can just get them in a year or two earlier, it makes all the difference.

Meghan: I love Mara. I'm literally scheduling my mammogram after we get off. I had my last one a year and a half ago — I need to do it again.

How was it to be contending with all these things and also making the decision to leave as CEO? That's so much to handle.

Deb: I left exactly at four years. I felt like I'd had an incredible experience there — wonderful company, great people, and I'm still in touch with a lot of them. So I felt like the end of that journey and the start of the next one happened, and it coincided with some personal things.

It also gave me the mental freedom to actually take the cancer journey — where you're not just trying to fit everything in between. It was pretty challenging. I'm on the other side of it now — a year and a few months out. I'm very fortunate to have a very supportive husband and the ability to get to the other side.

I don't know how people do this every day — dealing with health insurance, dealing with cancer, dealing with treatment while they're working. One of the things I hope for is that we have better treatment options for women. Our healthcare system fails a lot of people. I happen to have great health insurance — but if you don't, one of the things I hope for is a world where people don't have to worry about their job when they're getting surgery and radiation.

Meghan: You talking about this openly is essentially you owning your awkward on the largest platform. All the things you talk about — disrupting the status quo, raising awareness — happened on a massive scale. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for continuing to talk about it.

My experience leaving my teeny tiny company that I co-founded as CEO was that my sense of self-worth and identity was very wrapped up in the CEO title. It sounds like you had a lot of other things going on. I'm curious about the identity question — you've left Ancestry, you're starting this new journey. What surprised you about not having the CEO title any longer?

Deb: It's funny — after I left Ancestry, I had a party at my house for Women in Product. A friend of mine who had left Google after two decades was writing her name on her name tag, and she said, what do we put under our name? And then another woman who had also just left her job came in — she was on a health journey — and my friend said, hey, come join the Blank Name Tag Club.

So often our identity isn't just our name. It's the company we're associated with. Our role. Our title. All the accoutrements of modern society tied up in this. It's your LinkedIn profile. This is actually what prompted me to start writing my next book — which is about transitions.

It's almost — I call it the unmooring. You feel untethered. Somebody was describing this — she'd just left her company that she'd founded and sold, and she said, I just feel like I'm in the gray. I don't know what to do with myself. When she described that, I said — that's exactly the moment when you should do the journey of self-discovery of who you really are. Because she'd been tied to that company for so many years — almost a decade — and she was like, who am I without that? Without being the founder of this company?

But she's an incredible person who has interests and value beyond tying to that one company. We have so much of our self-identity tied to those things. What if that goes away?

If we can't sit with that — if we can't be the person who sits in the silence — then maybe we're doing the wrong things. Part of my book on transformation is about ending one chapter and starting the next one, and not just flipping the page and going to the next thing. I was one of those people — I graduated from school, I started my first job like a week later. I did all the things. Between jobs I would take the weekend off. I just kept going and going and going.

I realized — I never let myself sit in the silence. And that's where you find who you really are. In that uncomfortable space.

One of the things I encourage people — I have this worksheet I'm happy to share with your audience — is to actually take the moment and hit reset.

Meghan: Yes, please.

Deb: And by the way — for people who are laid off, it's even harder. It's not even your choice. When you're laid off, you're cut off from all your friends at work, all the communication. It's like getting your arm chopped off. What do you do with yourself the day after a layoff? You're literally doing a thing, and then — silence.

So I created this process, and I've given it to a lot of people. Hit the reset button and give yourself time to reflect before you rush into the next thing. Then reimagine — what did you like? What did you not like?

Too often — I was talking to a friend yesterday who'd been laid off after many years at a big tech company. She said, I'm starting to interview. I'm like — it's literally been four days. Do you really need another job? If you have the space, give yourself a little bit of grace and let yourself get to the other side.

Meghan: I've talked to a lot of people about this. I just talked to Deepa Purushothaman — she's an incredible author. Both of us — it took nearly two years to wade through this transitory period. My therapist called it the interstice. She said, you have to wade through it to get to the other side. There is no fast forward. But once you get to the other side, that's the place you want to be.

I was like — I hate it. I hate the gray. I hate the untethered. I've never been untethered because I'm a high achiever. I've always had my goals, my external motivation, the things that help me understand why I'm worthy and how to orient myself. Without it, I was completely lost. But it's one of the best times of my entire life in terms of what it's produced today.

Speaking of things produced in your transition — you have this column with your daughter, all about Asian Americans and high achievement and behaving. Which of course, un-behaving is my thing. Where did this come from? And what are some of the key learnings so far?

Deb: She started that column with her grandmother. She'd interviewed her grandmother for an essay contest, and she said, I want to turn this into a column. So she pitched her grandmother — my mother-in-law — who was very excited to do this. They started writing their first column, and she passed away suddenly.

She was like, do I give this up? What do I do? She said, maybe I can get you or dad to write with us. I thought she'd pick her dad. But she said, no, I want you to do this with me, mom. So we call it Tiger Mom and Her Cub.

It's about intergenerational — immigrant families have a very different dynamic. Asian American families have a very different dynamic. We talk about our views on dating. I said, I have the same rule my parents had for me — you cannot date anyone until your sophomore year in college. And she wrote a column about how actually high school relationships teach you something. And I'm like, I don't want you to date until your second year of college.

We often talk about difficult things. It's a form of therapy for us. She'll often say things in the column that I had no idea she was thinking. We walk the dog together every night and talk about the column, then she'll write something and I'll be completely surprised.

A lot of kids and parents read this together and tell us — I wish my kids would be this open. I say, I wish my kids would be this open too. But because she has to submit the column, she's way more open about sharing some of the challenges.

For example — my kids refused to move from our old house to our new house. They're adjacent — literally back to back. And they refused to pack. They refused to even go to the new house when we were building it. We asked them to pick colors for the room — they refused. It was like a filibuster in our house. And we could not figure out what was wrong.

My son played along and ended up going off to college before we moved in — he said, just move my stuff, I'll show up on the other side. But my girls just refused. Finally I wrote a column and said — this month we're going to talk about moving.

I basically had movers move the furniture and three loads of laundry, and left everything else in the old house. Then I said, why don't you come back and get the stuff you want? And finally I asked them — why don't you want to move?

And they said, because this is where we lived with our grandma. Their other grandmother — this is where she passed. And they were afraid they were going to lose all their memories of her. They would never tell me. My husband and I were like, why are they fighting us? They said they were worried because they'd spent their whole childhood in this one house. This is where we made all our memories with our family.

That was the first time she'd actually shared what she really thought. I asked my other daughter — the younger one — and she said, yeah, absolutely. She would literally go back with our dog to just sit on the old couch. We were going to get rid of it, so that was the only thing left in the house. She'd go sit on the couch to remember.

Kids are much deeper and more insightful than you think — but often they don't share it with you.

Meghan: That's so beautiful. I mentioned I have a four-year-old daughter, and I'm imagining in 10, 15 years us doing this together. That's such a beautiful project.

So now — you have the Substack, you've got all these other things going on. What feels most important to you right now?

Deb: You reach a different point in your life where — there's the striving point of your life. You're climbing the corporate ladder, you're wondering when's the next promotion. Once you reach a certain place, you're like — when does the climbing stop? When do you actually enjoy the plateau and just look around?

I feel like I've reached that place where I'm much more comfortable with myself than I've ever been before. It's actually a great place to be. But it took me a long time to get here. And like you — you spent two years trying to process your previous journey of 15 years. That's an interesting journey to go on.

I feel like I was able to do that. I took time off for the first time. No appointments, no meetings, no obligations. Instead, I just enjoyed the time. I learned AI during that time. I ended up founding a company. But I felt like I never gave myself space to explore things because I was always chasing the next thing. Next meeting, next project, next.

For everybody who is a high achiever and spent their lives hitting every goal — it's actually great to not have to strive for something for a period of time. So that you know what you really, really value.

Meghan: We're going to get to the final question — the permission slip. I think we already have the permission slip to own our awkward. So a different permission slip: to unbehave, unlearn, or let go of a story you're holding. What would it be?

Deb: I love the last thing you said — retelling your story. I wrote about this recently. I talked to three people who had recently been laid off for very different reasons — all very justifiable, things that happened in the company, corporate restructurings, things that had nothing to do with them. And each of them told a story that made it seem like they thought they deserved to be laid off. I pointed it out. I said, why do you think that?

They said, well, if I had just known X. If I had tried harder with Y. And I said, or this was a corporate restructuring. They eliminated the job. A new CEO came in and brought in their own team. It was out of their control.

When I tell people my dad died of cancer, they say — what kind? I say lung cancer. And they say — did he smoke? Because in our heads, if he smoked, then we're not at risk. We have control over not smoking. But no, he actually did not smoke. Both of his brothers also died of lung cancer, and they didn't smoke either. It's a long-standing thing in Asian American communities — non-smokers actually have a much higher rate than the average population in the US.

The point is — our minds look for justification and patterns. What if it was outside of your control? What I worry about is that you're fighting the last war. If I had just tried harder. You're beating yourself up over something that was outside of your hands. And then you're going into the next conversation with that in the back of your head.

Instead — what if you opened up the opportunity and thought, hey, this happened. I'm going to unpack it. I'm going to put it away. And I'm going to seek the next thing. I give you the permission to rewrite the story. Because often the stories we tell ourselves are the wrong version. And then that affects our behavior in a negative way.

Meghan: Love it. All right — when can we get the book? The next book?

Deb: I will send you my framework. I'm happy to share it with your audience — I love hearing feedback. I've been testing it with dozens of people. It's a way for you to process. It's a couple of pages — a questionnaire. You just need to take the time as you go through transitions.

I'm working on the book now. Hopefully it'll come out in the next year or two. You see so many people in the process of transitions, and it's hard. Right now, when everyone feels so unsettled by AI, when people feel like their jobs are on the line, when everything feels fraught — this is a time when we need more solid ground. So I use this process to help people find their solid ground.

If you want to find me — I have a newsletter on Substack called Perspectives. It's debliu.substack. I'm also on LinkedIn. And I'm happy if anybody wants to reach out.

Meghan: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Happy Friday. And thank you for doing this after being up at 2:00 in the morning waiting for your darling daughter after her graduation party. I appreciate it and I just appreciate you very, very much.

Deb: Thanks for the invitation. See you again.

Meghan: Yay.