ExpertVoice Unplugged: Leadership Lessons from Tom Stockham

welcome to the know your ship podcast presented by ehub I’m your
host Frank Dolce a lot of the best lessons a lot of the things that really
cement skills conviction lots of stuff and there’s this huge irony in life
that uh you EXP experience especially if you’re a parent um but I think all
of us again everyone experiences it at some level and that’s this desire to
protect people around us and to protect ourselves from these horribly painful
moments and yet the best really the stuff that matters over the long term
often comes out of that th those painful moments and yeah you know the the
the metaphor the parental metaphor is we would never ever want our kids to
get hurt no one would say I want my kid to get hurt and yet if they never get
hurt they’re a lot less prepared for the world and prepared for the
challenges and yeah everything else than than if they do so whatever that
Finding Nemo line about well you don’t want to never do anything because then
he’d never do anything so anyway oh I think it’s I think it’s a I think it’s
a great analogy and I as I’ve observed the way that you’ve lived your life as
a as a father and as a husband and as a business person I would say You’re
really thoughtful about those things and that’s I think that’s meaningful as
we as we’re talking about uh maybe this pain avoidance which is a common
theme on this podcast the obstacle is the way you know running you touched on
it with several folks running on it into hard things and it’s natural for
people to want to avoid the hard thing so when you run up against that and
you have to make a decision and you know this path is going to be more
difficult potentially much more lucrative and many ways or I could go down
this path and it looks really it it’s looks really nice nice and smooth
Journey uh how do you what is your process how do you decide well I’m going
to go the Hardway yeah I I gosh I wish there were a formula for that and I
don’t I life I think and business and all these things it needs to be a
balance like the goal of trying to be be happy or comfortable all the time is
a horrible horrible goal that horrible it’s wonderful to be happy some of the
time um and my gosh yeah you should strive I think for being uh happy and
content and just enjoying savoring things some of the time but you better
push it some of the time too and um that just comes up over and over and over
again you and I had a little bit of a conversation similar to this maybe on a
bike ride and thinking about you know even just a bike ride you want parts of
a bike ride to be just enjoyment just Savor the moment and and see what’s
around but you also want part of a bike ride to be can I do more can I push
this a little more can I go a little harder so anyway that’s maybe a silly
analogy but I think it’s so true for life and for business and all these
things don’t avoiding having things be hard is not the goal that would be a
horrible goal I I think the bike ride analogy is perfect because my style of
riding is I well I first of all I don’t do technical things because I don’t
want to break my body and I’ve watched you I’ve watched Scott Huntsman and
other people break their body so I’m a little cous you totally threw me under
the bus on that stuff what what are you talking about I don’t know what you
mean back to we’ll come back to who does what that’s whatever go ahead yeah
by the way you are that guy like I have never been more physically damaged
than when you decide to have an adventure in Moab or wherever it is and by
the way it’s well known within the family that when Tom says let’s go do this
then all of us the rest the 20 or 30 plus of us say hold on this is the
inflection point I I like to think I I like to think that I’m I have some
level of self-awareness and clearly I do not I just not in that not in that
not that not in that realm I just yeah well if we’re going back to the bike
analogy I I would rather if there are two paths and one you can go around and
one you can go up and over I’ll pick the up and over because it makes the other
part so much more enjoyable that’s right like I I did this I accomplished
this and I think that’s I think that’s a meaningful thing and but but I also
think that you have something that not everybody has in your ability to
manage difficulty and stress and hard things just better like more with more
thoughtfulness and more calm and maybe even more focused I think a lot of
successful people do that and so my question about that is is that something
that you have always had has that or is that something that you have
developed or did you did you see people who did that and you thought oh I
want to I want to do that too i’ love that you think that and I I actually
don’t know that that’s really true about me but I would hope for that to be
true like I would Aspire for that to be true and um I don’t know I I just
gets back to this thing like push yourself P when there’s a when there is
something and it could be as simple on as on a bike ride but it’s you know in
business or in a relationship or in whatever don’t just coast and the goal
isn’t just to be happy about it that I think the you know push yourself and
guess what when you push things break occasionally you get in trouble you get
you get to a place where it’s not clear what to do but you work it out and I
think like so many things just that pushing is something that you practice
and something that you get better and better at and you recognize how to deal
with the problems a little more effectively than someone else and you
recognize it so quickly because you when you get into a circumstance where
something is broken or something did go wrong or something isn’t the way you
had expected it to go either you have skills to cope at that moment with it
um or you don’t and when you don’t it’s terrifying and when you do it’s just
frightening but uh anyway well I I would I’d like to offer this thought
regarding your what I think is a unique and distinct ability to to solve
problems and manage pressure in a calm and thoughtful way if I look back on your
childhood and I had the great privilege of knowing both of your parents and
uh I would say that your your dad who is uh unbelievable father of digital
audio and as you’re talking about finding a problem and then solving wanting
to solve the problem like I that really seems to be aligned with what your
father did and maybe he did I don’t know enough about it but maybe he did
throughout his career like that was his thing throughout his whole life I
think okay and so maybe that you you got to live in that kind of world maybe
that is something that helped you develop that skill and but I also had the
great pleasure of knowing your mom who was I mean if you think your dad was a
force and he was like I don’t know how to describe Martha yeah as a force of
nature yeah that’s a starting point a force of nature yeah and and so I’m
just curious about the combination of those two and how they affected your
life in so many ways that are clear to me and in so many ways more that I’m
sure I don’t even appreciate but they both were remarkable people and I am so
grateful to be their son and and to have benefited from all of that but I
think of the way that my dad on the one hand truly loved what he got to think
about and loved to share it my gosh he taught for a living um but he also
just loved to share knowledge and people who knew him and still now 20 plus
years later after he passed come up to me and and talk about him talk about
examples of that his standing on a beach at uh Lake Powell in the middle of
the night with a telescope with you know 20 young people just pointing out
what was happening in the heavens and the stars and things like that or
people saying pulling me aside and saying that he as a professor as a teacher
was the best teacher they ever had in their entire lives those kinds of
things he just he loved what he got to think thought what he had the
opportunity to think about and work on so that was an element of of passion
not that he ever said ever you need to be passionate about something but
clearly that affected me and then my mom I just think oh my gosh what a a
social interesting engaged in other people human she was but also I cannot
tell you how many times I I was sitting in the passenger seat of her car or I
was driving her somewhere and she would say don’t we live in a beautiful
place you know she would just look up at Mount Olympus or something and just
say oh my gosh that’s so beautiful and she would do that every day for years
and years and years decades that she lived here so um uh a gratitude and an
enthusiasm and all that um I I it’s not that I try to emulate it but I am I I
do think about okay well that was imparted to me by them and I do want to be
grateful and Enthusiast like fundamentally yeah those are good things to be
are there any quality like I look at my parents and I think man there are so
many amazing things I want to take all of those amazing qualities and then I
look at some of the other qualities think but I don’t want any of those
qualities but people say to me all the time like you act just like your dad
but they don’t mean it in like the complimentary way that I’m acting like my
dad do you is there of course of course of course and I again that’s
fundamental Human Condition we’re all yes we’re all total losers in many ways
too and sadly we’re not even aware of some of the ways we’re just it’s until
everybody else points them out exactly if you have a good friend someone who
will say to you look yeah yeah yeah and I think you have I know one one of
those guys sat right in that couch and I’m sure he would point out any or
maybe he maybe maybe he would just willingly and try to find the PA hey I
just wanted you to know that’s exactly right by the way if you could just
describe uh why your dad Tom is called the father of digital audio I know
just very surface level that the the conversion between analog audio and
digital was this enormous timec consuming transformation you just couldn’t
take analog and convert it easily to digital so he happened to be a the way
that you know your daughter Alex and all of us but he happened to be at kind
of the college level um uh in existence the way Alex is experiencing AI MH um
uh he was around when there was no such thing really as computer science the
department at MIT which is where he went to school was called electrical
engineering there was no such thing as a computer science Department
computers quote unquote were a new and emerging thing and uh he was
fascinated just in life by I mean when he was eight years old his the gift
his family gave him was a a movie projector and he didn’t just use it he took
it apart and built it back and uh he he just loved those kinds of things but
he loved good music as he was going to school at MIT and and he was so
infuriated that the way it sounded when you were sitting there mhm was
nothing like the way it sounded when you heard it recorded and so he as a
college and then a graduate school project he was just working on that thing
how could you make sound how could you make a recording sound more like the
live performance MH he came up with a thing called dbx which was a analogous
to it was a alternative to Dolby at the time and Dolby noise reduction was a
very small thing at the time but because he came up with that uh at MIT MIT
owned that thing then he had this idea which was wow if the the problem with
the audio recording is always similar it always sounds like there’s this in
the background when you’re listening to the recording and that that’s
obviously not there when you’re listening to the live event um and it’s not
because there’s a fan if you if you just heard that and you’re listening go
back to the start of this podcast and you’ll hear a distinct whing sound in
the background that was yeah he anyway he just he thought his his idea was if
you could digitize the sound that hiss would be a pattern and you could use
math you could use a computer to just subtract that pattern out of the sound
and get to a more pure sound so he went off on this uh exercise to say well
how would you digitize sound um that was something that people understood
pretty well in a sense meaning a soundwave it’s just a wave you can create a
digital um uh representation of a wave uh but could you do that fast enough
to record and at the time it took many many many many hours for a computer to
digitize a waveform a sound wave form well you can’t make a digital recording
until you can make a second’s worth of audio in a second you have to be able
to do it in real time anyway that’s he he worked on that and came up with the
first digital recording and editing equipment that existed in the world uh
built a company around that called Soundstream here in Utah actually and um
it was interesting that uh guy named Omar Bose who built Bose speaker
Corporation he and my dad were working on some things at MIT at the time and
he spoke at my dad’s uh retirement party uh years ago and he said you know
Tom used to tell me that someday everything would be digital and I armor Bose
Amar Bose could not understand what he meant and he said I’m I’m not sure
still that I understood what he meant but it is true I mean we’re sitting
here in the studio and everything everything is digital except the sound
coming out of our mouths going into these mics but everything after that
digital here pretty dark are you sure yeah I don’t know I don’t see any I
don’t see any analog equipment anywhere so anyway it’s it’s it is
mind-bending that just being there at a moment in time for him he was by the
way sorry to I don’t imply anything other than he was truly a genius I mean
he was brilliant at a different level than um most humans by a long shot he
was brilliant but he was also in the right place at the right time for that
thing to be a thing and we’ve all all of us myself you we’re all in the right
place at the right time for something if we are curious and if we’re pushing
on something and if we’re willing to and capable of looking ahead not that
anyone can know the future that’s not you can’t know or predict the future
very well uh in any specific way but you can look forward to what is implied
by what’s happening and I I look and think about AI right now and other
things too but AI because I pay attention to technology and things like that
and I just think oh my gosh like you if you think about what is going to be
possible before very long um it’s it’s stunning and there are a lot of things
that you could work on that would wind up will wind up changing the world I
was going to ask you something completely differently and then you said
something that made me want to follow up on this how do you mean or how can
you expand on the thought that we are all here right now at the right time
but we have to find it yeah yeah I sure I I think that is always true we’re
anyone who has ever existed is in a terrible Place frightening place and in a
miraculous place it’s just the nature of life and Humanity um uh when I was a
lot younger though I’m still very young you’re young I’m still very young
very young um no but I when I was in high school the really terrifying things
were uh population explosion there were going to be way way too many people
on earth soon MH um to feed them to any MH um uh pollution was a really
horrible thing and maybe the scariest thing uh for America at the time was
the threat of the Cold War and nuclear and it was literally like a life is
going to end like one small wrong move and all life is going to end well that
feels like conversations we’re having today the problems are different the
it’s so true the rate of population growth came way down now by the way to
the point that it’s kind of scary that maybe it’s the wrong way maybe it’s
the wrong way yeah um but um uh pollution we talk a lot about climate change
now as opposed to physical like what’s on the streets and in the gutters and
all of that stuff but it’s a terrifying thing and guess what Life as we know
it may end like doesn’t take very much for and I guess it’s a little bit more
vague it’s not so pinpoint specific like uh the Cold War and and a nuclear
battle was but Ai and uh a lot of people have views about like political
situations and things like that that might really be catastrophic yeah anyway
we always live at a time when there’s a lot that’s terrifying and there’s a
lot that’s remarkable but you uh I I think that if you focus on what might be
and you go listen to people who think about what might be and you can find
something that’s really intriguing to you about what might be and then just
keep going deeper about that the the opportunity is always there are you
motivated enough to get after it I’m so glad that we talked about that
because my perspective on things like AI is I am I’m like if there’s such
thing as a late late late adopter then that’s I’m beyond that like I keep
pushing against it it’s terrifying to me and I maybe it’s because of the I
don’t know the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies or something AI is going to take
over and what happens to the human and so but but your perspective feels more
like wait you’re the perspect to have a different you can have a different
perspective about it and if you do maybe you can see a different pathway a
more positive pathway or even a lucrative pathway in what is happen it’s not
changing it’s not going to go away yeah how do you how do you Al I don’t know
align with it work with it work within it yeah and well and there’s so many
interesting people who are commenting on it things like that and you can of
course like anything it could be a very dangerous substance and uh it may
that may wind up being the thing that wins like uh nuclear arms were a very
very dangerous thing and the bad outcome from them might have been might
still be but at the time when it was most terrifying might have been global
thermonuclear war and the end of humanity yeah but what actually happened was
um it was an effective deterrent for a lot of things for a very very long
time in a it created a peace that would not otherwise have existed almost
certainly for a very long time um so anyway and I think AI or any other thing
that you could think of is like that and I don’t mean to over the world talk
so much about AI right now because it’s so freaking exciting it’s not the
only exciting thing by any stretch of the imagination but um uh my son uh my
youngest is work he’s in college still he’s a junior in college in chemistry
well AI is going to change chemistry when you can run thousands and thousands
and thousands of experiments a second right instead of the way yeah pouring
things in beers and things like that you still need to do some of that to get
the data set but when you can take all of the data that’s ever been gathered
about what happens in chemical reactions and then just run that uh uh
experimentally with ways that uh uh very very fast very powerful computer can
understand the outcome you can do different things with chemistry than have
ever been possible so much faster it’s amazing it’s amazing did you remember
the movie the movie War Games with of course that’s all of a sudden I had this
thought of War games about running those simulations over and over and over
oh yeah and did Matthew bradick save the world because I don’t know if I
believe that is that what happened yeah I’m I’m not sure what happened there
but I think a lot of people would say that I’m not sure what happened there
yeah yeah yeah anyway okay I want to go back now to this other thing I was
going to ask you about because I uh you made an interesting decision early in
your life and and one of your kids did this did the same thing uh in with
regard to your education and I’m just curious if that was something that you
decided to do or if you found yourself in a situation with a genius father
and this uh amazing mother and family situation that gave you the confidence
to do something like this but you decided early on that you were going to
leave your the comfort of your local high school I believe that was Highland
High yes it was and you were going to travel all the way across the country
and go to a prep school yeah at exer yeah I you know um so my family moved
here uh as not Mormons mhm came to my dad came to help start the computer
science department at the U and I grew up with this incredible mom who just
immersed Us in all things that were going on but you know we were whatever I
I don’t know what fraction of Utah and our neighborhood was LDS back then but
it was a lot was a lot so part of me always growing up was thinking okay well
do I really fit here and um uh is this really the real world or is this you know
some kind of bubble and so on and you then I’m an angsty teenager and uh uh
really just lots of things that are typical I think of angsty teenager and I
got in my mind at some point I want to go someplace else I want to go see
what the real world is like and um my parents regularly hosted people friends
of my parents from the East Coast for ski trips and things like that and one
time I hear one of them talking about their son who had gone to uh prep
school for a academic experience a summer program experience but that doesn’t
anyway that he had loved loved I thought I want to do that and so um without
my parents knowing actually I went and did a little research in the library
and found as far as I could this person had gone to Philips Academy and as
far as I could tell there were two Philips exitor and Philips Andover so I
applied to both um uh got in well what really happened was I got a letter
back from exitor saying uh we’re full you’ve missed the deadline for the real
applications were full but if you um are willing to go to Denver for an
interview we might have a space for you at uh just after the holiday break
and so I had to tell my parents that I could received this letter and uh they
paid for me to fly to Denver for an interview that happened in the airport
and I got in and then I thought okay great and what I didn’t think carefully
enough about was how many parts of my life that would break also like things
that I had wanted to do my whole life that were my aspirations for high
school a regular High School experience what do I want to do I want to play
football I want to sing I want whatever yeah I can’t do that if you just
leave yeah part way through your junior year so anyway but I did that I went
back to uh New England went to school and um uh you’ve heard me say before it
was absolutely devastating I truly believed that like without even thinking
about it by the way I truly believed that anything in the world I wanted to
do I was capable of like if I put my mind to it I could be of course I could
get the best grades I could get anything I wanted to do I was capable of and
I went to this school and suddenly it became crystal clear to me that that
wasn’t true at all that there wasn’t even a shadow of that and it so badly
devastated my self-esteem to realize oh my gosh this person I thought I was
especially when it comes to academics and intelligence that’s a that’s a lie
that’s just not true I’m I am nowhere near I’m not even in the whatever I’m
not I’m not even the top 50% or anything close to that among these people and
it was just awful it was brutalizing brutalizing and uh I I at xer I would
study every single waking second like if I could open my eyes and study I was
studying and I worked as hard as I could and I was still getting a C and B
minus and uh it just it blew my mind anyway I I finished a a semester at
exiter with that just horrible horrible um uh selfawareness destruction so
different than I had ever thought and I had to make a decision about whether
to go back to exiter which was an awful choice or to go back to Highland
where everything I had ever wanted to do as a senior was no longer an
opportunity you know the uh things I had aspired for there and therefore I
was just left with two horrible painful depressing choices um and uh
eventually I decided I just I could not go back to exitor it just wasn’t I I
didn’t have it in me it was too awful and yet I also felt awful about staying
here and um at some point my mom pulled me aside and said actually you need to
go back to exiter and I just thought she was wrong and yet she was right she
was right you had to go face it and I’m so grateful that she pushed me that
way and anyway I’m so grateful I went back I went back with this attitude
like look I’m going to fail here no matter what so I might as well enjoy
things a little bit enjoy my downfall I’m enjoy my downfall that the Flaming
pile of death um and uh so I just resolved I was going to study less and I
was going to meet some people I had really hadn’t had any social experiences
that were meaningful all these things and guess what when I studied half as
much I actually got better grades and uh I did meet some people whom I love
loved they were great people and I started to learn some things Way Beyond
academics and and the academics and it just it changed me and uh rebuilt my
self-esteem on something other than whatever it had been built on before and
uh just a lot of good lessons about life for me personally but I think more a
lot more generally that you can get through hard things well when you say
that I was just thinking of the word grit and I know that we talk about that
a lot but you know you have to go through experiences like that and thank
goodness for Martha to be there to say no you’re not coming back to Highland
yeah you’re going to go and finish this and uh is that is is that a quality
so from that experience there’s lots of things one it it clearly
transformational for you in terms of an individual and probably in your in
your professional life but when you are dealing with situations like that or
or in the way I’m I’m asking this is if you are working with people who are
going through challenging things can you lean on that experience and help
guide people through hard times yeah I I I hope so I hope so I just I you
know again back to this the way we started that that hard things are good
things m MH and important things and even when they are awful they can be
really good and I’m I it’s not that I’m advocating make things hard for yourself
uh or make things harder than they need to be that’s not the right answer but
don’t avoid hard things I I think is really right and I do think a lot of
people benefit from and would benefit more than societally we let things
happen right now from just like go take on the harder thing yeah dig in and
take it on well so and I and I think that that probably has something to do
with the way that you manage hard things now you’ve had to go through them
you’ve been through them and now you you can you see the pathway through so I
think that’s really interesting in terms of the education side uh that
experience at exiter did that guide you in your next choice of well this is
where I’m going to go to university and I want to do graduate school here did
did that provide some Focus or strategy for how you managed the rest of your
education maybe but I also I I just think how much luck I had truly luck I
there is no reason that I should have been able to go to any really good
school after the grades I got at exiter and when I think about the people I
was applying I still applied to the best schools in the country it’s all I
had ever thought I wanted to do as a young teenager I want to go to a great
school education super important um I want to go to a school that’s not in
Utah which is where I was growing up because I want to see the world all
those things I had thought and I really thought going back to exit my senior
year all of those things weren’t going to be an opportunity I’m still going
to try but sure no one with a c gets into a really good school and luck was I
went to uh uh hover New Hampshire Dartmouth College which was one of the
places I was applying not my first choice but I my gosh I didn’t have a full
appreciation for how lucky I would be to even get to go there an appreciation
not a full appreciation anyway and I happened to uh run up from the uh River
where I was rowing in a a crew race run up to the admissions office in order
to deliver a letter or just say hello or something and the person who
answered the door was the director of admissions with whom I had no
appointment and he spent more than an hour talking with me and later when I
uh had had made I was on the wait list to get in to Dartmouth didn’t really
wasn’t in was on the wait list I kept calling the office saying hey have you
heard anything I’m I you know whatever over and over and over again and
eventually someone said stop calling if you hadn’t had a conversation with
the director of admissions you wouldn’t even be on this weight list so it’s
unlikely you’re going to get in and stop bugging us and so luck you know just
good fortune uh and uh anyway I you you were asking a question about influ
you know plan and influence yeah your your your educational strategy I hope I
always have a plan and I you know you you Aspire I aspire to always have some
goal in mind something that is worth working on for the company for the
whatever but um it’s rare that things go right as land really really really
rare the huge exception and adaptability the the ability to kind of improvise
for the way things actually go yeah I think is the bigger skill but
interesting you know as we’re talking about this I keep having this thought
of you in high school at Highland and then you you know you jump on your
laptop and you just Google exiter and find out about and then I’m thinking
wait there was no laptop that didn’t exist I’m like why did he run up to the
emissions office you could probably just email them no no you have to run up
it’s a it was a different it was a different time did you have a rotary phone
back then oh yeah my gosh the good old days do you know our kids like I don’t
think your kids might I don’t think they ever they might not even know what a
rotary phone is no I’m sure they don’t and that but that’s okay how sad yeah
well to to have to die was it the zero the zero you had to dial and it would
took so long to get back um yeah yeah yeah yeah but you know we don’t know
how to make Instagram settings work and how to put a sticker on a reel and
speaking of social media we have a dumb brother-in-law like there’s a couple
of really smart brothers-in-law and then we have one who is lacking but that
guy has somehow posted the most ridiculous yet entertaining holiday video of
all time and now he’s an influencer yeah yeah set for life I’m sure he’s got
you know offers coming in by the hour wow Luck Good Fortune right place right
time yeah thank goodness for that yeah no kidding none of that you just feel
bad for him for the thirst trap he’s got to post next in order to keep going
that’s the thing what’s next good luck what’s next if you need some thoughts
I have ideas anyway okay so you you moved along from from exitor and then you
went to Dartmouth were you rowing before Dartmouth or did you wrote at
Dartmouth I wrote at exitor okay and then at Dartmouth and at Dartmouth
there’s a there’s a picture of you hanging on the wall I think in your house
of you rowing and it’s very impressive much more impressive Al than you are
today which is physically you’re not in um but no that those were fun
remarkable times really amazing and and then you moved on to did you go
directly to Stanford no I worked for a company called the Boston Consulting
Group BCG in Boston for a couple years in between and then went to get uh NBA
uhhuh at Stanford okay so in totality as as you look across your education
experience I I mean obviously there’s an influence in your life would you
have done anything differently as you look across that experience and how
meaningful was that to you being in all of those places during those times
holy cow I can’t think of anything I would have done differently meaning I
don’t have any regrets about any of that and so unbelievably fortunate so
unbelievably fortunate especially with Stanford because um again I I can’t
believe I got the I had the privilege of any of those places um and at
Stamford all of my heroes were there I mean I Steve Jobs was between jobs at
uh Apple where he had been fired and his next thing he was building next
computer at the time and dating a classmate of mine I got to spend a quite a
bit of time with him and guys like Scott McNeely who is building on Micro
Systems and uh Chuck Schwab who was building Schwab uh just all these people
who were u