Randi Zuckerberg, Credit: Delbarr Moradi
I recently spoke to Randi Zuckerberg, who isthe founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media, the Editor-In-Chief of Dot Complicated and author of the new book,Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives (HarperOne, 2013). Randi has had a career most people dream about, from serving as the Marketing Director for Facebook for six years to starting her own company. During her time at Facebook,she struck groundbreaking deals with ABC (for the first online-offline presidential debates) and CNN (to coverBarack Obama’s inauguration).Randi was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2011 for her innovative coverage of the 2010 mid-term elections that integrated online and TV coverage in unique formats.
Since starting Zuckerberg Media, Randi has produced shows and digital experiences for BeachMint, the Clinton Global Initiative, Cirque du Soleil, Bravo, and Conde Nast. In the following interview, she talks about her career before, during and after working at Facebook. She also gives her best career advice from her countless experiences.
Why did you decide to write this book today, and what inspired it? What's the main message that you're trying to get across to readers?
I always dreamt of writing a book; I just never really had anything interesting to say to anyone. After I left Facebook, I spent a year on a bit of a speaking tour, and what was really interesting to me was that I was always asked to come speak about Facebook, and business, and social media. Everyone would ask their Q&A's about their business and Facebook, and then everyone would come line up after to ask me personal one-on-one questions about tech in their lives. What their kids were doing that was freaking them out, or how to get ahead in their job search. It was also right around that time that a lot of people were talking about unplugging, and digital detox, and seeing the pendulum swing back from being 24/7 connected to wanting some more balance in our lives. This felt like it was the perfect time from when I was seeing in my own experiences on the front lines of Facebook, and where society was going with technology to write this book I was dreaming of for years.
Before your brother got involved in Facebook, what were your original career goals and aspirations, and how did they change once you joined him on Facebook?
You're probably going to laugh when I tell you honestly what my career goals were. I wanted to be a cantor and that was my original goal. Yes, I've always loved to sing; it's my biggest passion in life, but I never wanted to just be a performer; I always wanted to do music that had an impact in a community. I always really liked the idea of a leadership role in a community or an organization. I went toward being a cantor; I studied Hebrew and music in college, and then Facebook happened and lead my life in a very different direction from that, but that was the original career path.
When you joined Facebook, how did you adjust to that new reality and kind of think of things different? And do you think you'll ever go back to fulfilling the original goal?
My mom is a psychiatrist and she kept telling me I should take a psychology class at Harvard, and I kept saying, "No way." Anything your mom does, you don't want to do. Finally, I took a psych class and fell in love with it. So I actually ended up switching my major over to psychology, and am just getting really fascinating by how society thinks about things, how we're influenced, and so I did a two year stint at Ogilvy and Mather Advertising before I went onto Facebook. That was an important detour that gave me a foot hold in online interactive marketing that was helpful to Facebook when I went over there.
How did you decide to launch your own business and what was the transition like? What types of companies do you work with there?
We work with tons of different companies. It a process figuring out what the best thing was. After I left Facebook, it seemed like the obvious thing to do was to start my own social media marketing agency. It seemed like what everyone wanted me to do; what my expertise is, but after a few months of thinking down that road, I realized that was not at all what I wanted to do. My real love was in video production and media, and finding ways to connect with people about technology, but in an approachable consumer way. It was really just this January that we launched the Dot Complicated website and community, and from there, things have just skyrocketed. I've been doing a lot of segments on television on modern wired lives, and been working on this book since February. Sometimes you let the market tell you what it wants you to do.
What was your experience like with Facebook during the political debates back in 2008 and 2009?
Doing that was definitely the most transformative moment of my career. It was a really critical point for Facebook right then. We had opened Facebook to everyone, but the world really still thought of us as a college site. Every time we were referenced in the media, it was kind of that thing the college kids are using, or, you know, the sorority kids. I really thought that this election was really a pivotal moment to change how Facebook was perceived, and actually showed that Facebook was being used for real high quality debate and dialogue. So even though we had a small team inside Facebook that was passionate about politics, and all of us had other day jobs, we were doing this on the side, it wound up being just very impactful to the company, and very transformative in my own career.
What do you think the drawbacks and opportunities are with how connected everyone is with technology today?
It's definitely a very complicated question, which I think is why I'm glad we're having the discussion. I have the tag line in my book that 'we're closer to friends, but further from friendship'. I've been thinking about this a lot because now we can keep in touch with thousands of people; anyone we've ever met from preschool, to someone you meet a party. But are our brains prepared for all of that productivity? Are we over connected, and is it hindering our ability to go really deep in our personal relationships if we're always connected to so many people? So for me, I think it's really about balance. It's about understanding that tech provides some incredible opportunities for our careers, for wonderful spontaneous connections, but it's really, really important to have some self discipline, and know when to shut it down and put it away and build deep relationships with people in person.
I read a crazy stat. NBC Universal just put out their teenager trend report, and it said that 5% of teenagers feel that if they don't document a moment, it's wasted. Which is a really huge commentary on society today, and how people feel like if they don't document something for social media, it's as if the moment didn't happen. A lot of people think about how they're going to document the moment before they even experience that moment.
What are your top three career advice tips?
1. Remember that you're never as good as people say you are, and you're never as bad as people say you are. So if you receive some glowing praise or some really harsh feedback, take it in, but also take it with a grain of salt, and don't really buy into your own hype that much.
2. If you don't feel like you want to vomit out of fear and anxiety, you're not challenging yourself enough in your career.
3. Always make sure that you're learning something. If you're in a position where you're comfortable and you're not learning, that's when it's important to start thinking about your next move because life is too short to not be learning every single day.
Dan Schawbel is a workplace expert, keynote speaker and the New York Times bestselling author of Promote Yourself.
