Season 3 - Episode 4 - Special Guest Kelly Perdew
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Cousin Bill 0:40
Welcome to the give them the biz podcast with your host, the maestro of the marigolds. the realest dude from royal ridge. He has five eight in stature, but he's got a towering personality. Our captain, my cousin, John.
John Tabis 0:57
Hey, five, eight and three quarters, you jerk. I am rounding up people. Come on. What's
Cousin Bill 1:03
up everybody?
John Tabis 1:04
Welcome back. To give them the biz. We have an amazing episode today. It's gonna be super
Cousin Bill 1:13
nice,
John Tabis 1:14
amazing. Kelly produce in the studio hanging out in the lounge. What's up? Kay, man? Kelly? Yeah, I just got a nickname.
Cousin Bill 1:23
Hey, man, what's up, man? I like it. Actually. Yeah,
John Tabis 1:27
he was the winner of season two of the apprentice actually remember watching the show, back in the day worked for Donald Trump for some period of time. So I'm sure he has some. Some colorful stories also went through Army Ranger training as been a startup founder exited multiple businesses become a venture cap. I mean, this guy has lived a life. He's gonna share all that story with us and a lot of lessons learned along the way. So if you ever wondered what it's like to go to one of the military academies to work for Donald Trump, and to become a venture capitalist, this guy's gonna tell you what that's about. But before that, what's up, team what's up cousin bill back on the East Coast hanging out over Walbert
Cousin Bill 2:09
I am still stuck in Boston. I did get to go to the World Series parade the other day, which is pretty amazing. Witnessing history, but but I missed you guys.
John Tabis 2:19
When I hear the word Boston. I just think ma manaphy man. Sorry,
Katie Rotolo 2:27
I think of the Red Sox.
John Tabis 2:29
Cheaper jasmine and Boston.
Katie Rotolo 2:31
My family
Unknown Speaker 2:32
hated the red. But wait, but wait before you talk about what's up. Kenny? What's Hello?
Unknown Speaker 2:37
She's in the hizzy Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 2:39
we're recording
John Tabis 2:39
this week. We had no problems right in last week was tough. But this week, we're killing it on the tech side. It's a good word. Katie.
Cousin Bill 2:47
Katie Rotolo. You're the real MVP.
John Tabis 2:49
How you doing? Kate? sighs Kate's McGrady
Katie Rotolo 2:51
I'm doing all right. I'm um, I'm hanging in there. Yeah, I can't complain.
John Tabis 2:56
Oh, he's going off without a hitch. Awesome. Good to hear good to hear everybody. So because we have Kelly Purdue in the studio, and because I know that we're going to go deep, which I think we've already established I'd like to do that. But I think because of the epicness of his story, we may go a little bit long this week. I'm just predicting so so I think we're gonna do another sort of a little bit tighter of an episode today. But you know first again As always, thank you to everyone listening and all those sharing and reviewing and spreading the word we so appreciate your feedback. Please listen, please like please share please follow us on social media at give them the biz g IV m th e bi z and most importantly, please subscribe and and share this podcast with your friends and family and your colleagues. If you're super dope, you're going to take the link to the show on iTunes or on podcast one you're going to immediately send an all company email with all capitals in the subject saying you all must listen to us immediately. Or your
Cousin Bill 4:01
co workers in all caps Yes,
Unknown Speaker 4:04
you have homework
John Tabis 4:05
yes please do it immediately because that is a killer move folks. And it's it's super it's super gonna help your career I'm kidding Don't Don't be mean about it. Just do it very kindly. Just do it with respect all right, but please share thanks to the books company for for hosting and for for supporting us Bo u q s comm for the best flowers in the world starting at $36. On subscription it's free delivery folks. Get your mom flowers every month for just 36 bucks You're the best son in the world. Get your wife or your friends flowers every month you'll be the best friend slash husband slash wife slash cousin. Wherever you want to be you could be the best at just send the flowers folks. Firestone you're starting to get on on my negative side here. So I set up soon.
Katie Rotolo 4:50
I commented on some of their stuff today from our page. I'm hoping they're
John Tabis 4:55
gonna got some free press guys Firestone
Cousin Bill 4:58
noticed the sales doubled. isn't giving of this one it's it's all fair like
John Tabis 5:02
the sales have doubled since launch this podcast is coincidence, I think not doubled. That's the power of give them the biz. But really great to be back. I have a million things I could rant about, but I know we're going to be tight on time. So I'm gonna hold them for next time around. But next time around, we will get into some rant action so it's not going away. Games and rants are not going away. We're just sort of shortening up for a couple episodes here to make sure we have ample time for for the K man's of the world. So really quickly though, let's get some Katie Rotolo news going
Unknown Speaker 5:33
coming up on today. Tom Cruise has a new movie and we're going to be talking to him. Hey, funny man. Al Franken will be stopping by for a visit. And Wolfgang Puck shares his recipe for apple strudel. Hey,
Unknown Speaker 5:44
so stay tuned because we've got all this and more coming up in the next hour.
Unknown Speaker 5:50
Oh, well, nevermind.
Katie Rotolo 5:51
Alright, so we're talking about virgin orbit in the news, Sir Richard Branson. Branson, Branson. I wanted to say Bronson, but I think it's Branson. Yeah. He just debuted right word virgin orbit. Sometime it's vegan Sure, just debuted its rocket and airplane launch system for the very first time. So they've been designing, building and testing their system launcher one and cosmic girl near Long Beach, and at the Mojave air and spaceport, and it's this isn't exactly new technology. This is technology that they have been using. But the fact is that this is this is a lot cheaper. So sorry, words are hard. I don't know what's going on with me. But basically, there's there's a the military is already using technology like this. But this would be a much more cost efficient way to send people to space rather than the Ilan musk route per se.
John Tabis 6:55
Oh, interesting. Beat on price. There the lift to Elon Musk's Uber?
Unknown Speaker 7:00
Yeah, so they're gonna be
John Tabis 7:01
are they gonna take tips for the drivers too? Is that the point of differentiation? Hey, listen, we have three astronauts onboard, everybody on the way out, please make sure you tip your driver.
Katie Rotolo 7:10
Know this. This rocket is designed to send up everything from bread loaf size things to refrigerator sized refrigerator sized satellites. And they'll deliver the company said they'll deliver everything from internet, even in the most remote regions to advanced weather tracking systems to help in the battle against climate change. So
John Tabis 7:29
they're not they're not setting people up yet. This is all still in the earlier stages of the business of we're gonna send stuff.
Katie Rotolo 7:36
But they Yes, as far as Company announced
John Tabis 7:39
the first person that has signed up for them to send into space. And so this is starting to get closer to reality. I think what I find interesting is I think there are now three billionaires that have private space businesses, Elan, Musk, Sir Richard Branson is
Cousin Bill 7:53
trying to get out of here.
John Tabis 7:55
Yeah, they're just you know, but I find it interesting that like, that they're plowing so much cash into being the first company to send you know, tourists in this space. Because obviously, like, super cool thing, amazing thing to achieve. But the fact that we have three billionaires going after that, and it's all, you know, individual billionaires is, I think, just a really unique thing. Like, how often do you have three billionaires who all decide like, I'm gonna go tackle this, it's like, Hey, we have three billionaires who decided to tackle time travel. And that's the thing they're going to spend their time on. And yet, we actually have three doing this. And we're actually getting pretty close to a world in which people will go to space for fun. Now, only billionaires are going to be there, their clients, I mean, they're not sending up people that are, you know, going to take you know, a trip for 3000 bucks here, but we are getting close to a world where someone's just gonna go and like, you know, hang out on the moon for a month as a vacation. And it will be completely unaffordable for anybody other than the top point 1% of the top 1%. But it's pretty cool to think that we're sort of getting that much closer to a world like the Jetsons. Right?
Unknown Speaker 8:57
Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's
Cousin Bill 8:58
super cool. I just hope that it makes regular flying cheaper,
Katie Rotolo 9:02
right? Probably not. And it won't be any more fun, but I know how much you hate flying.
Cousin Bill 9:07
So I would pay money to not go to space. So like, I hope this Yeah, it's no fun.
Katie Rotolo 9:13
I think this one It seems primarily like they're going to be working with NASA, the Department of Defense and new it says everything but also including new startups, NASA.
Cousin Bill 9:24
But
Katie Rotolo 9:25
yeah, NASA NASA. I say NASA like NASCAR. NASA But the big thing about this is
Cousin Bill 9:33
not for NASA.
Katie Rotolo 9:34
What am I kicked out? What did I what
Cousin Bill 9:37
I did for the bombers? I'm out for space. Oh,
Katie Rotolo 9:40
sorry, you were on delay and I couldn't understand you're saying but the great thing about this is actually how quickly they can prepare it to they said that they attached this to the launcher one to a pylon under the other vehicle, the Cosmic Girls wing in less than 24 hours. Whereas prepping a rocket for liftoff of a launch pad and attaching a payload and everything can take several days, two weeks. So that's also how it's like saving money.
John Tabis 10:05
I saw a launch. I don't know. I think I pretty sure it was from Elon Musk's company. But I saw a launch from my back porch like,
Cousin Bill 10:13
those are super cool.
Unknown Speaker 10:15
Four days ago.
Unknown Speaker 10:15
Oh, okay. I
John Tabis 10:16
thought it was crazy. It was at first it looked like it was two aliens facing off. And then you know, twit the Twitter's told me the snappy web. He's told me that it was
Unknown Speaker 10:28
snappy, wacky, I'm not
Unknown Speaker 10:31
what else
Cousin Bill 10:32
we got. So well, this
Katie Rotolo 10:34
is actually the article that you had mentioned, you want to talk about which was big tech is facing rising scrutiny and controversy. So many people, you know, are rethinking their online relationships with everything going on between data breaches, and sharing your information. And you would actually think that more people would be leaving the platform because of those concerns. But it seems like a lot, a lot of people. This is kind of interesting, that it's not actually about privacy, so much that it seems like people are leaving, some people are not leaving, you know, people are still glued to their Facebook, and they're gonna keep doing it anyway. But then there's a
John Tabis 11:15
stop doing it, the population will shrink,
Katie Rotolo 11:17
right? Probably. But according to Market Watch, there's searches for the phrase delete Facebook, were 97% correlated with searches for phrases such as being happy and quotes about being happy. So this is from research done by data track, and they it's a, which is a market insights firm. And so it's just it's kind of interesting to see how I think, you know, how social media kind of can affect our mental health. And you know, so much that we were consumed by it. And so I just an interesting kind of data correlation.
John Tabis 11:54
Yeah, I mean, look, when I was at Disney, one of my jobs was, let's see how technology impacts the way humans behave with our brands. And so, you know, we did a lot of really early research on the iPad, you know, my relationship with Apple, because Steve Jobs on the board. And so we got iPads way before they were like out in the world. And we gave them, you know, to like, two year olds, like, they figured out he's an iPad in like, three minutes. And then since then, you know, there's been a ton of studies on what, you know, exposure to online games, online content, movies, TV does to the brain. And it's, it looks very much like taking a hit of some drug, right? The serotonin levels go through the roof. Right. And I love it. I absolutely, like so addicted to these things myself. And I think what's interesting is I've seen and I've heard both both sides of this argument, which one is, Hey, this is really bad for you. Because your your your brain and your body and you as a human are not used to it. And what you're craving is real human connection, because that's what makes the world goes round. That's what really makes people happy. But I've also heard the argument to have, we don't know yet what this type of technology will do to us, we don't know what's possible with it, we're in the very, very early innings of it. And we just sort of say it's bad because it's different. And actually couldn't be a world in which we just haven't adjusted yet to a world that is this digital to a world that is this connected to a world that has this much access to content on a constant basis. And it couldn't be that actually, we could all end up being much happier once that adjustment happens. But we don't know how fast that adjustment will happen. We don't know if it will happen. And so we're stuck in a world where we all grew up in, you know, I grew up and we're without anything like this. I mean, Nintendo came around when I was like eight, and we had little colico vision before that glow
Unknown Speaker 13:39
in the games to make them. Yes,
John Tabis 13:41
exactly. And so we we don't really know we're in such early innings, we actually really know what these things are going to do to our brains to our relationships to our society yet. And so you know, I'm I don't you know, my kids will not have a phone until x ages don't know yet but I'm holding back on it, we let them have you know, a show a day, which is like a half an hour or whatever, they don't they could use iPads for like an hour or two on the weekends. But so we're being careful with it. But I don't know that that's actually right. So I think it's it's one of these things where as a species we just it's just early innings and and we're just gonna have to see sort of how things evolve.
Katie Rotolo 14:17
I think it's a gift and a curse I think we obviously we need technology technology does so many amazing things but there is something to be said about how damaging it can be to you know, especially as a young woman you know with growing up and seeing these these PR you know quote unquote perfect bodies and whatever that means to people and and just just kind of you know, kind of put yourself in this box where you have this you know, Kardashian shape and but really a lot of it is Photoshop or filters or whatever. And you know, so there's a lot of this comparison going on. And there is definitely physical, you know, we I don't know if you guys have seen there's like there's that it's a meme of the opposite kind of evolution, where we go from standing up Tall to hunching over like a you know, on all fours because we really do you know, if you look you know, there are studies going on about affecting it affects the curvature of, you know, your, your posture and your, you know, my right arm when I spend too long on my phone and that's like, Wow, that's pretty crazy. Like, that tells you something, you know? Well, yeah, I
Cousin Bill 15:21
was. I was gonna say I was I was talking to someone today because it was my nephew's third birthday today, and I sent him a video, some onset, you know, I didn't have time to FaceTime or whatever. So I sent him a video saying Happy birthday,
John Tabis 15:36
was it you and Mark Wahlberg having a flex off, that would have been a birthday party present.
Cousin Bill 15:43
But my sister sent me a text back saying that he was seeing my video. And he was trying to talk back to it, because he just assumed that I could hear him because he was seeing a video of me. I imagined like, Oh, my God would be amazing. To video, talk to someone. And like now, my nephew who's three just assumes that anyone on video that he can see, can hear him, it's back to the future, too. It's crazy.
John Tabis 16:11
Would you think that hydrator of the food thing, but it's Wally, right? I mean, and in the movie, while I would great classic film, you know, everyone's rolling around on those little machines that carry them around the ship. And there, they all are, like, you know, obese, and they're all just staring at the screens all the time. And then at some point, it all breaks down, they all stand up, they start walking, they're like, oh, wow, this is what walking is like. And if you take sort of the current behavior to the extreme, that's sort of where you could end up. Right. But that's, that's judging it through our current lens, it could also be that we end up in that world and everyone in that world is literally 100% completely happy in whatever that world is, right? It could be that it teaches you to be in the best shape you've ever been in, it actually coaches you through how to have the best relationships you could ever have. Because the AI sort of, you know, life coach that you have, is making you a better communicator with your spouse, there's a million things that could happen with that connection, that doesn't necessarily mean you just have to end up you know, drinking a Slurpee thing, and just staring at you know, reruns of 70s TV shows when
Katie Rotolo 17:14
I think that's why it's important to kind of know, like, you, you obviously monitor what the content your kids are seeing. So similarly, you know, for our own selves, cleaning up our feeds, and you know, following people that like make us feel good and you know, not want to really beat ourselves down and, and just kind of shifting gears on that. And then a big thing for me is I don't know about you guys, but I really try not to bring my phone to bed. Because that is that that really does affect your sleep and you know so many other things. The blue light, there's you know, that's
Unknown Speaker 17:45
that's all I have Kenny. The blue light is all built as
John Tabis 17:49
well, awesome. Yeah. Lots of lots of we can dive into there. And I'm sure we will. So let's get let's get Kelly Perdue in here. everybody. Welcome. We only have
Cousin Bill 17:58
Yes, we have. Yes, we. Yes. We have a guest. Please welcome to the show the main event of moonshots capital, the Purdue that didn't beat Ohio State. He apprentice for the current commander in chief and you didn't. Mr. Kelly, Purdue.
Kelly Perdew 18:19
Hey,
john, how are you? Welcome to the studio. Excited to be here. Love the new space is an
John Tabis 18:29
honor to have you here, man. Really appreciate it. So for those of you that don't know Kelly's name, I don't know how it can it be possible. But Kelly was the winner of the second season of The Apprentice, which is the one that everyone remembers no one remembers the first season Kelly.
Kelly Perdew 18:45
I think everybody just remembers Omarosa
John Tabis 18:47
amorosa That's
Unknown Speaker 18:48
true. How many seasons have there been? No
John Tabis 18:49
17,000
Kelly Perdew 18:52
I'm pretty sure that's what it is. I was pre Celebrity Apprentice,
John Tabis 18:56
pre Celebrity Apprentice like what it was like before jumped the shark. Yeah, right. And, and an entrepreneur and and now a venture capitalist with moonshot capital. Thank you so much for joining us, man.
Kelly Perdew 19:07
Happy to be here.
John Tabis 19:08
So uh, so this is, you know, pretty chill. We're just gonna hang out. We're gonna learn about who you are and how we got to this place where you are Kelly Purdue. And, and so you know, I like to start it back early. So you know, talk to us about where where did you Where were you born? Like, what was childhood like?
Kelly Perdew 19:27
I was born in the south. I was born in Lexington, Kentucky. To vote very young parents. 19 year old dad 18 year old mom. Wow. She was still in high school and he was a freshman in college. Wow. playing basketball at Murray State University. So that had to stop. So focused on school and getting a job getting out of school with it with a new baby
Unknown Speaker 19:53
and raise new and yeah,
Kelly Perdew 19:55
dragging me up.
John Tabis 19:56
Wow. That's crazy. So t teen parents.
Kelly Perdew 20:01
Yeah, exactly. So very young parents
John Tabis 20:03
in in the south, in the south in the 70s.
Kelly Perdew 20:08
Late 60s, but thank you very much. Okay. Like I said, we're gonna be here for a while. It's not I forgot the very beginning.
John Tabis 20:14
No way, man. Amazing. So, um, so you grew up what's what's like childhood and like, what do you do? What do you spend your time doing?
Kelly Perdew 20:25
So parents divorced early, and my dad lived in Wyoming and my mom moved to Sarasota Florida. So I did a bunch of my, you know, six to 14 years old living with my mom in Sarasota on the beaches of Siesta Key, you know, blonde hair down to my shoulders, you know, playing Wow, solo Frisbee. So like, and boogie boarding. Yeah,
Cousin Bill 20:49
you're still like, cut, like,
Unknown Speaker 20:51
you know, clean cut
Kelly Perdew 20:52
that West Point and military thing came later.
Cousin Bill 20:54
Yeah, yeah.
John Tabis 20:55
So what was it like, you know, if it's too personal, just a mirror, but like, what was it like, you know, for you, with your parents splitting up?
Kelly Perdew 21:04
Well, I don't really know it any other way. So it was what it was, it was a factor for me moving around a lot. So, you know, going into high school, I'm like, okay, I've been with my mom pretty much this whole time, see my dad in the summer, some I'm gonna go off to college. After high school, you know, things were looking well, at least academically, so that was likely going to happen. But, um, you know, I'm sitting there thinking, well, I don't really go see my dad now. I'm not going to get a chance to get to know him. Because after you kind of get to college, it changes dynamic significantly. So I made the decision to move from the west coast of Florida shine to Cheyenne, Wyoming for my sophomore junior and senior years of high school.
John Tabis 21:45
Oh, wow, for mucked up in the middle of high school of your own volition.
Kelly Perdew 21:49
Yeah, of my own volition out of kind of academically, highly academically oriented program into, you know, 1500 person public school system in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Unknown Speaker 22:00
Wow.
Kelly Perdew 22:02
To get to know your dad to get to know my dad.
John Tabis 22:04
And did he live on this ranch that I'm picturing in my head with blue skies forever? Well,
Kelly Perdew 22:09
there are a total of about 400,000 people in the great state of Wyoming. So he didn't happen to be one of the ones that lived on a ranch. There's a city in Cheyenne, the capitals about like an hour north of Denver, which is where it became a Broncos fan watching a way playing quarterback. But which I've seen pictures of you that way on Facebook, have had the good fortune to meet him as well and talk to him and it was great. We can talk more about the Broncos. But you know, moved from a kind of academically oriented program into kind of a bigger kind of typical high school program. And I was very focused on athletics. So I played multiple sports and what sports but I didn't play golf. So so. So I played I played basketball was kind of my true love. I played football to toughen up for basketball and everything else. I ran track and then I played tennis also. So
Unknown Speaker 23:07
we're gonna track events,
Kelly Perdew 23:09
short distances as possible. But then I somehow got into the hurdles. It might have been the bow legged and pigeon toed component for the sprinting and being able to get over him, but I was not a track star. I was kind of more like track fatar
Unknown Speaker 23:23
got.
Unknown Speaker 23:25
Wait, did you think I said did you play golf?
Unknown Speaker 23:26
I thought you asked if I played Oh, I
Katie Rotolo 23:27
said did you play football? Because your phone?
Kelly Perdew 23:30
Yeah, I did. I played I played football. I was a I was a pretty good wide receiver. But I played what, what basically ended up happening was sophomore year I was, you know, made the JV team. And then they I was good enough, whoever said that they would put the varsity would use me in the meat squad. They called it so they would put the whoever we were playing that week's opposing best wide receiver jersey number on me and send me across the middle a lot. Yeah, so definitely toughened up from that.
John Tabis 24:03
I want to take a quick step backwards. Because it kind of strikes me that it's sort of amazing that as a 1516 year old, you chose to move across the country to live with a man that you barely knew all of your own volition. Can you take us back to that time and what made you able? Not even like, want to but able to make that transition? I would. I would, I was so risk averse. I was so afraid of life when I was at age like what made
Kelly Perdew 24:36
Yeah, I've always kind of been something of a, you know, planner. Before there I that I maybe before Excel, or at least before I knew of Excel, like in in you know as that, you know, going into Wyoming I'd already had like my you know on paper spreadsheet of college options and what I might be able to do or what I might not be able to do and how You know, pros and cons and how I apply them and had thought a lot about, you know, not having seen my dad very frequently for a few years wanting to actually cement that bond. And he's, you know, a pretty good athlete and had two kids of his own with his, you know, second wife in, you know, in Wyoming. So, it was almost more of a, I really want to do what I really want to get to know him. And then how disruptive Am I gonna be inserting myself as the oldest first son, right with a with his wife and two young kids? Yeah, and
Katie Rotolo 25:32
just kind of showing up. Like, they never expected everybody
Cousin Bill 25:35
to do this. What's up Wyoming? You
Unknown Speaker 25:38
know, raise the roof. Yeah,
Kelly Perdew 25:39
that was, that was a long time ago. But it was definitely a you know, I don't want to say master plan. But it's something that I'd been thinking about for a while and wanted to
John Tabis 25:47
figure out it was amazing. You were super brave as a teenager.
Katie Rotolo 25:50
Are you guys are you? Did you remain close after that? If
Kelly Perdew 25:54
you Oh, yes. Or no, no, yeah, we're still we're still we're still very close. And even his ex wife now. But those two half brothers of mine, and she are we're you know, we're very close. And my dad and I are also very close,
John Tabis 26:10
dude, like, so it's so interesting to me, because I'm generally kind of afraid of everything sort of in the world. risks to me is scary.
Katie Rotolo 26:21
Even as a kid. See, for me now I'm much more afraid of things because I'm aware of the world. Whereas as a kid, it was more like, there's just like, ignorance is bliss. You know, you're I wasn't?
John Tabis 26:35
No, it's a good point. I wasn't afraid of like going out in the woods. Like I ran around the woods and like, Did all like the crazy stuff jumped off the cliffs that it but like leaving home, to me was like the big greater world was was a scary thing.
Kelly Perdew 26:51
Yeah, I think that having lived in a few different places and having the divorce occur. And people ask me where I've lived, and I can, you know, tick off different parts that Kentucky, Florida, Wyoming, you know, went to college in New York that I go through this somewhat traveled and Pete and people knowing my military background, oh, you're a military brat. I was like, I was a divorce brat. We're like, you know,
Katie Rotolo 27:13
so it's kind of not a big deal for you to move again, because you've moved so many times, probably.
Kelly Perdew 27:17
I mean, I think about that a lot. I see that. And then I also think about that for our kids. I have eight and a half year old twins now. And we've been kind of in one spot the whole time. Like you stay in one spot the whole time. That's home. And there's not as much comfort or getting used to change happening a lot.
John Tabis 27:33
Yeah. So you think so you're by nature of how you grew up? This actually wasn't as big of leap for you.
Kelly Perdew 27:40
Yeah, it was one I was going. I mean, I knew my father loved me. Right, but was still wanted to get to know him. So there was a safety in that. Yeah, it also. I mean, I want to say that the weather was not a small factor, like going from kind of the best weather in the world. I mean, if you can handle some humidity and some rain storms from
Unknown Speaker 27:58
Florida, okay. Yeah, represent, you know,
Kelly Perdew 28:00
Cheyenne, Wyoming has like 60 mile an hour wind snow on the ground in June. You know, your eyes drifted in, its, you know, some chat. Everything's chapped all the time. But for
Katie Rotolo 28:11
you that was worth it to get to know your dad. And and I think that's really wonderful.
John Tabis 28:15
So so you're, you know, you're, you're, you're capturing steer on the Wild West and Wyoming and in high school, and then how do you decide what's next? So
Kelly Perdew 28:31
my father was a land developer, self made, and had strong feelings about how you could get an education that it was up to you as an individual, not the institution where you were. And that you needed to understand and learn what the value of $1 was. So I had jobs every summer and during the school year when I was there. What was the worst job? So the worst job happened to be working on a ranch one summer.
John Tabis 28:59
Nice now work by race. I knew it. I knew it was
Kelly Perdew 29:03
the worst job. So I'm relatively city slicker kid in from Florida. And I and I show up for my first day at my my father's buddies ranch at his friend where he said he can give Kelly a job for the summer. And I wore tennis shoes. Gray sweatpants, you know, that really thin cottony kind Oh, yeah. And a T shirt because it's super hot. And I think I think I might have had a baseball hat. And the first day was baling hay. And I don't know if anybody anybody listening is probably laughing right now, but
Unknown Speaker 29:41
I don't think they know anything about
Kelly Perdew 29:44
the bales of hay,
Katie Rotolo 29:45
we might have a few Midwest.
Kelly Perdew 29:47
bales of hay can weigh 50 to 100 pounds depending on how wet the hay is. I mean, they're pretty heavy and you've got to grab the twine with both hands. Kind of rest them on forearms and thighs to pick them up. And throw them on to, you know, wherever you're loading them. So all of the hands that were there had you know pretty thick jeans on some of them were in chaps, leather work gloves, long sleeve plaid, you know, shirts that were tied, you know, down at all places because it sticks you pretty hard. It's pretty. So by lunchtime, so
John Tabis 30:21
your chapped skin was mine.
Kelly Perdew 30:23
My thighs were you know, bleep bloody read through that through it my forms. I wasn't gonna stop doing it. Day one was to buy lunch they, you know, found me some reasonable clothing to bale hay and then some and somebody lent me some gloves so
Unknown Speaker 30:36
toughing it out though.
Katie Rotolo 30:37
Like I showed up. I'm here I'm doing it. I
Kelly Perdew 30:40
had to tough it out that first that first half.
John Tabis 30:43
I love the stories about the worst job growing up. right because like that's where character shows up. Right like Eric. He room was in last week. He talked a lot about like, how he just you know, sold lemonade, and just sort of made it work. Yeah. And and you know, for me it was it was I tarred driveways and sidewalks. Yep. Like literally 90 degrees. Pennsylvania hills. It was smelled horrible was horrible. But I love like, that's a test of like where someone came from like so baling hay, you probably had blistered hands.
Kelly Perdew 31:18
Yeah, skin body skin was poked through everywhere shirts torn every you know, you just you got to have the right tool for the job. So you got to do your homework ahead of time have the right tool for the job. But then, I mean, as the summer evolved, I learned a lot more about what happens on a ranch up to and including branding. So roping, roping a baby calf, taking it down, not me, I didn't do the roping, my part came in now. So taking the front foot and holding it back, getting one cup of your cowboy boots in the back of one leg and grabbing on to the other ones, so it can't kick. And then about four things happen simultaneously. So on the males, they slit, pull out testicles, snip for neutering, and feel the contraction on everything happening. They get massive dose and shot of antibiotics and stuff so they don't get sick and catch anything. And then the ones that have horns coming in, they get, you know, like a melon ball CUSP, hot, you know, Red Hot steel to stop the growth so they don't go over each other. And then there's a brand that identifies the owner on the side of it all that happens in about 45 seconds.
John Tabis 32:24
And you are the branding. Now, if you're holding No,
Kelly Perdew 32:27
I was always the lowest person on the totem pole, which is also in the backside of the animal. Wherever the witch's wedding is happening. That's not the bad part. If you get kicked, it's pretty bad. But they have what's called scours, which is the nervous explosive. exiting have anything that's in their body? Oh, right
up all over on again. Oh, wow. They so that was that was that was your catcher, that's the low. That's the low man on the totem pole for for branding day. So.
John Tabis 32:56
So this so this is your teenage years, working on the ranch 1516 getting kicked, bloodied bump from the hay bales getting shit all over by cows.
Kelly Perdew 33:09
The toughest people I've ever met in my life are cowboys.
John Tabis 33:13
No doubt, no doubt. And and so you talked a little bit about sort of, you know, how do you end up at the next step for college? Where do you go to college and why?
Kelly Perdew 33:23
So I mentioned that there are only about 400,000 people in the State of Wyoming. And I had been in a school that had a lot of advanced educational programs when I was in Florida. So I had, I was basically in classes with mostly seniors and had advanced placement and a whole bunch of stuff. And was really focused on primarily on sports, and was fortunate enough to be like Allstate, and basketball, again, noted 400,000 people total in the state. So it's much easier to do, but began looking at all the different places that I would want to go to college. And as I said, my my father was very much you make your own future. And I'm willing to support you in whatever it would cost to go to the University of Wyoming. And the University of Wyoming would pay me like three or four or $500 a week to go to school there based on my grades and everything else was going on. And I didn't want to continue on to go to University of Wyoming so began looking at all the other options where I would be able to support myself financially and also would provide the most opportunities. And the service academies were interesting to me. West Point, the primary focus,
John Tabis 34:33
so as it why why West Point, the primary focus like what was it that drew you there didn't cost anything?
Kelly Perdew 34:43
The academic achievement and records of the people that have been there world, you know, known worldwide. They were like the prestigious, massive, massive proceeds, but also just from a learning learning standpoint. They're like third or fourth, including, you know, including with Harvard's and Stanford's on Rhodes Scholar. martial scholars and everything else. So there's a rigorous academic program.
Unknown Speaker 35:03
I don't think a lot of people know.
Kelly Perdew 35:05
Yeah, it's not.
John Tabis 35:06
I don't think that's like a normally known thing that
Kelly Perdew 35:09
not known. Right, like not known category. Yeah, it's like,
John Tabis 35:12
it's known clearly for the military, you know, connection. But the academic side is pretty amazing.
Kelly Perdew 35:23
Yeah, it's, it's, in fact, if you kind of know it about it beforehand, it's a little daunting. So I didn't miss a single class. No one does. If you get to class and take role, and someone's missing think about this in your college years. They come, we come find you. Right, so so you have to be in the hospital, you have to be accounted for. Right. So you have to be in hospital on, you know, on emergency leave, because your mom's sick? Or some, you have your you have to be fundable and accounted for? Yep. Every single class of a four year, you know, undergraduate degree program. Amazing. You graduate with something like 160 credits, not 128. With an engineering degree, classes are on Saturdays. And along with not missing a class, you don't not turn in a homework assignment. There's no such thing as not turning in assignments. Amazing. So think about how much more you would have learned. If you'd gone to every single class and done single work as I know, I actually
John Tabis 36:31
did that. But Oh, yes, I'm sure you did. But I was obsessive compulsive about those things. But let's back
Katie Rotolo 36:35
up. You really go to every class and you have a great student, john? Pretty much.
John Tabis 36:40
Yeah, no, but but but let's let's go back for a second here. So it's intriguing to you. But why? With the opportunity that the military brings, there's, there's a price you have to pay, like, what made you attracted to that? So there are a whole lot of other factors too, right. And that's the
Kelly Perdew 36:58
I don't know, I don't necessarily call it romance. But patriotic. There's a way to give back where it's not 100%? Me, me, me. And it's a
John Tabis 37:07
it's a What do you think, triggered that knew at that age? Like, what? What about your upbringing? What about the way you thought about the world? What What led you to a place where you felt like as a teenager, that you should think about giving back in that way?
Kelly Perdew 37:23
I think it's, it goes back to the kind of thinking ahead from a planning standpoint. It's like, it also kind of I don't know, I don't know where it initially spawned from. But the idea that there's something bigger than yourself, and that like, I don't say, Oh, I just want my kids to be happy. No, I want my kids to be happy with a purpose. Right, with some purpose. That's the that's the important component of it, and a significant element of, of being happy. And again, I still haven't ever been to West Point, I still hadn't seen it. I didn't know anything about it, right? I did. Colorado Springs has the Air Force Academy, which wasn't too far away. I hadn't been there either. You know, you see some stuff, you read the brochures, it looks patriotic, in your head is feeling awesome. It's this really neat thing out there. So I'm like, well, in the in the spirit of not shutting any doors, which kind of plays its way out a lot in my decision making. I, you know, I talked to the guidance counselor, and there hadn't been anybody from the school that had gone to West Point, there had been somebody, some people that had gone to the Air Force Academy, which was very close in proximity. It's interesting that you need a nomination from the President, the Vice Vice President, or a congressman or senator. Right. So you have to get nominated like that. And they have a whole process. So you got to fill a whole bunch of stuff, but you have to be physically fit enough. meaning there's a physical test as well as a physical like, medically he can't be have eyesight problems and or, you know, one leg longer or shorter, like things that would prohibit you from being in the military.
John Tabis 38:51
Yes. Have you ever five nine, probably. I do
Kelly Perdew 38:53
not know what the height requirements. So that's a lot of stuff to do, right. And then plus the normal application. So I, including other colleges that I applied to I included West Point and that application process, and again with the planning. Then representative, the loan representative for Wyoming Dick Cheney, was speaking at the year ahead of me's graduation class at the cross town and kind of rivals High School, East High School, I went to Central and
Unknown Speaker 39:25
central
Kelly Perdew 39:27
Central Indiana. I can't remember saying central but yeah, Go Broncos. So I was I went over to their graduation and found him and went up to him and shook his hand and said, I want to get your nomination for next year for when I apply for the military academy. My name is Kelly, Purdue, blah, blah. And I'd like full on. And I don't know how many people do
John Tabis 39:48
that out of nowhere, walked up the dick cheney and was like, Hey, what's up? I want to go to West Point. Again.
Kelly Perdew 39:53
This was you know, a long, long time ago, right? So, yes, that I would say I'm gonna seek a nomination. Remember My name and and then we won state championship in basketball. And again, it's not a very big state. But I had, you know, he was at the state tournament, I went up to him when I saw him there and reminded him and there were a lot of touch points like that. So in addition to getting accepted early to West Point, I got my nomination in the same week, you know, we, you know, our office, and they get an allotment each of the senators and representatives, but they have to use it. And so through that process, I was given a nomination by him. And then I'm like, Oh, this is real. I need to go look at it and see it. And then they have a program where you can spend the night with a cadet and see the see the whole army post.
Katie Rotolo 40:40
Oh, so at this point, you still hadn't been there?
Kelly Perdew 40:42
hadn't seen it? Wow. Never knew. You know, it was in you know, upstate New York, and I live in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Yeah. And so I'll still remember, the night we went. We stayed at Hotel fair, it's on the Hudson River. It's freezing cold in the middle of winter. And it was the NCAA final night where Villanova upset Georgetown. And one that night, the night before. When we got there, I stayed at the hotel theater with my dad. And the next day, I went with a cadet and spent the night spent the night over. And then you're just like, Whoa, everybody's in uniform. There's, you know, there's these large statues of General Patton, MacArthur, like Eisenhower, everybody has graduate gone here and graduate here walked along those steps and done everything. And it's a pretty amazing place to see place to see in place to be. And it's, it's overwhelming, right? So I'm a 17 year old punk from Wyoming. And I'm like, wow, I can be a part of this history. And I don't really mind that I don't have to worry about picking out clothes, or doing figuring out a haircut or what I'm going to eat. I can focus on academic components. The plan, military planner part makes you happy. I'm like, oh, my goodness, the daily mundane stuff is taken care of table like, yeah, there's not a lot of choices. It's like not now I can focus on I don't know, competing, and executing on whatever is put in front of me. I mean, that kind of cemented it from the visit,
John Tabis 42:12
off you go. And what was the best and the worst part of going to West Point for for college for you.
Kelly Perdew 42:23
So that's that, you know, I mean, that's four years of what, you know, a civilian looking in would say that's kind of like prison. Right. But there it also kind of what I just described, enables you to kind of not worry about some trivial components. And then by trivially I mean, they they are real life elements. And some people have a hard time with that when they get out of the military. It's like, Oh, I gotta do all this. I got to take her all his regular life stuff out. I had people that did that before. But, you know, the the opportunities that presented themselves to me that I was able to do were pretty fantastic. With a top secret security clearance, I did a summer internship with the House Armed Services Committee, and watched how laws were actually marked up and made, you know, behind closed session doors. Right. So if you're, and I was in, like national security and Public Affairs as a major, so that was really interesting stuff. I went to Germany, before the wall came down, and was on the fulda gap, taking the place of a platoon leader of a First Lieutenant who went back home for his wife's Baby, you know, for their baby to be born and I took his place for eight weeks in the platoon, on the you in the fulda gap looking across it Soviet, you know, tanks and infantry and mechanized infantry looking back over it over all right, and this is still not, I'm not even graduated college yet. Right. You know, I, there were so many out, I did an exchange semester at the Naval Academy. So first semester of junior year, midshipmen and from the Naval Academy and Air Force Academy, cadets and Westerners, they all switch spots, stay in your uniform, but you get supposed to increase the camaraderie and understanding and empathy for, you know, just the sister organizations. So there was like almost no end to if you look at the opportunities that were presented, that I was able to take advantage of by, you know, by going to West Point, I don't know where else I would have gotten that broad and or deep, because the the amount of content that I had to consume and understand and learn and not miss and then you layer on top of that. You have to be military. You know, your bearing partment marching. I mean, that's pretty phenomenal. You see all the cadets marching across a parade field. It just doesn't happen accidentally. There are hours and hours and hours of practicing what you could consider to be pretty rote, boring, mindless, why am I doing this activity. So there's a lot of time to ponder a lot of self reflection and what feels like at the time and credibly frustrating.
Katie Rotolo 45:02
Sounds meditative, almost though, like sometimes when you have to do repetitive things, you can kind of make it a meditative or mindful exercise, you know?
Kelly Perdew 45:10
Yeah, it can be. And you know, you've got bayonets fixed. You're standing at parade rest information for 20 or 30 minutes. It's 90 degrees out in the Hudson River in the summer. And and if you lock your knees, you do you pass out and kick and chicken is an internal reference, you just see your pass out. I did not ever pass out nice. I did not. Now so now that I remember, what's it,
John Tabis 45:34
like being a T, like what? I mean, I was so restless as a teenager, like, I always wanted to do all the things, and you're in this regimented life, right. And part of you loves it, but didn't part of you really just want to, like break out of it, and say, like, I'm just gonna go for the hills and like, have a good time tonight, and like, not get away from all this, these rules and regulations.
Kelly Perdew 45:58
Yeah, so there are not a lot of opportunities to blow off steam. There are like, the seven sister colleges that are, you know, that were I think they're now co Ed but they were predominantly female only that would, they would have buses that would come in for dances on you know, some nights, as you increased in, in years and rank, you got different opportunities to leave the post. Not that there's anything to do, and Highland falls and our north in New York City, but if you had a couple days, you could go into the city, or you can do whatever. So there got to be more and more. But it was like so far and foreign from what all of my buddies were doing at University of Wyoming or Stanford, or whatever else it was, and, and part of the anchoring, to be able to think about that and continue to do it was as you're reading through historical context and learning, you know, military operation capability, and the history of what's transpired. And that your know that you're training to go become an officer in the military. When I went, when I was going through, there wasn't, oh, you know, we're at war, which is what's going on right now. So people that are making the decision to go to academies right now, you know, 90%, plus, likely you're going to be going into some form of combat, or, you know, we're at war in some form. At the time I made the decision to go in, it wasn't like that, when I came out, there was desert Desert Storm did occur as part of what I was doing when I was out, but that wasn't, there was always the, okay, we're, we're preparing the best military in the world to keep the country safe. So whatever you choose to do in this military component, you need to be the best at it, you need, because, you know, you're gonna have America's sons and daughters that you're responsible for protecting, and then America itself, right. And that's what you raise your hand do when you graduate, as you know, on the count, you know, support, support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
John Tabis 48:00
Amazing.
Kelly Perdew 48:00
She's a little different than a frat party.
John Tabis 48:03
slightly different, slightly different. So, okay, so so you do your four years? And you graduate? Yep. And and then where do you deploy what happens?
Kelly Perdew 48:16
So we select our duty stations in the world? Well, first you select select your rank, like armor, infantry, field artillery, you know, you're going to go fly helicopters, whatever it is, and I selected military intelligence, and then in your rank, and then everything is done, based on how you performed. So you're measured academically, militarily and athletically every day. And it's listed on a wall every time you know, the whole time you're at the Academy, and then the endpoint is what, you know, number one, what branch do you want? And then when all the military intelligence ones are gone, or whatever selected, there's no more of those left. So the lower Are you down, you know, you better have a lot, a lot of thoughts about what you want to be doing. And then, okay, all you military intelligence officers, here are the duty stations that are available in the world. Right. And so you're in a room, and it's, you know, your this the night you pick, where you're going to go live for that, you know, you're gonna be your station for the next four years, three or four years depends on what you pick. And I think I was third in the military intelligence set of officers. And the first person picked, I want to say, like, the chenza, Italy, that's pretty neat spot right to go to where you know, you're going to be stationed. And then there were some not so nice spots, like there was Fort Polk, Louisiana, there was Fort Drum, New York, which is like farther north and Syracuse and like, you know, you do mountain training all the time. And the second guy's girlfriend was at Syracuse, and he picked for Fort Drum, New York, and I was 30. And I ended up selecting Fort Ord up in Monterey, California. Okay, it was the seventh entry division. So I know the duty station that I'm now going to it's a seven. It's a large Infantry Division that's rapid deployable, so they go all over the world on to our, you know, to our beeper 18 hours in the air to go deploy and do whatever the mission is. But before you go there, you have to go to your officer basic course, for whatever your branches so I went to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, six months of training on how to be a military intelligence officer, then volunteer to go to Ranger School and completed Ranger School and airborne school before showing up at seventh Infantry Division light. So it's a normal you know, what's what everybody does after they graduate,
John Tabis 50:33
just sort of typical life. You know, Greg, Katie's what you did to
Katie Rotolo 50:37
me, we just like go into college for theater
John Tabis 50:40
and just drink Natty light. Notre Dame
Katie Rotolo 50:44
Natty light classy. Yeah, you
Unknown Speaker 50:46
know, kegs dance. We wouldn't, we wouldn't.
John Tabis 50:50
We couldn't quite go to the champagne of beers, but but the night was what we did. So she got so tell us about the Rangers really quickly, like, how did you get into that? What does that mean? How is it different?
Unknown Speaker 51:03
So
Kelly Perdew 51:06
all of the militaries have different types of Special Forces, you know, units associated with them. And in the army. Ranger battalions are considered, you know, special operating units. I was not in a ranger battalion. I got Ranger qualified. And that means I passed I went through I went to a place called Ranger School. And it's if you if you pass every phase and don't get recycled, which still gives me the shivers to say the word recycled. Then you get a ranger tab, and you're considered Ranger qualified and it's primarily focused on small unit unit leadership tactics. And you operate in squad and platoon size forces. And you can tuck missions in three different types of environments when I was there. Mountains swamp and desert so the Tennessee Valley
Unknown Speaker 51:57
swamp swamp nice
Katie Rotolo 52:00
for you spend some time in Florida swamp
Kelly Perdew 52:02
in near Ellis Air Force Base in northern northern Florida. And you can go in the summer, winter, whatever and it's, it's a, it's quite a test of probably what the weakest muscle in every single human's body is, and that's the one between their ears. It's mind boggling how fast that gives out before your actual body will give out. You just you know, he just think you can't do it and give up. But it is I went from about 165 pounds down to about 135 pounds. You're humping a 50 to 80 pounds of equipment.
Katie Rotolo 52:38
You went down to 135 pounds?
Unknown Speaker 52:40
How tall? Are
Kelly Perdew 52:41
you six foot 135 I was a supermodel. Female supermodel?
Unknown Speaker 52:47
Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 52:48
that's crazy.
John Tabis 52:49
You're pretty big dude. I mean,
Unknown Speaker 52:53
that was really
Kelly Perdew 52:55
you get Maslow's hierarchy of needs inserts itself in your brain immediately. Food is the most important thing to a human being. So when all when all other factors like trying to motivate people to go, you know, on your fifth mission, it's to in the morning, you sleep three hours a night, there's you know, 1000 calories a day and you're you're doing significant amount of working out and everybody's dead tired and deteriorated and has you know, sprained ankles and bug bites everywhere. I mean,
Unknown Speaker 53:26
you're only eating about 1000 calories a day.
Kelly Perdew 53:30
It depends if you're in summer or winter, it goes from 1000 to 4000. But you're burning triple. I mean, nobody that's so little. So all you think about like I remember distinctly in swamp phase, we call them wait a minute vines, you know, the vines that have like rose stems, like, they're called, wait a minute, because you get all tangled up, and they're caught in it, and you got to get out of it. And, you know, you're like, tromping through the swamp where it's dry if the water is only up to your ankle. And otherwise, you know, you sometimes have to swim across stuff, but you're in that nonstop for you know, 20 days. So you hamburger your feet turn the hamburger, you get infections, there's all sorts of nasty stuff, but you are so focused on food. You know, there are people keep each other weight by telling you know what, you know, what are you going to have when you get out of here? What kind of recipes does your grandma have? These are grown men talking only about food or, or having vivid, distinct, I think that I see, you know, a cute blonde selling hot dogs over there in the middle like walking over like falling down in the water thinking there's somebody that actually has hotdogs to buy. It is it is crazy and it sounds somewhat sadistic, but it is absolutely about understanding for in a wartime situation or condition where you start to lose your decision to make capable and able minded decisions and take actions and ingrain in you a few things like I know that you know if I'm staying up for two or three days During during something bad that's going on, I start to lose my ability to make intelligent decisions without two days of sleep, which means I need to have trained my team correctly so that I can delegate, and I need to put myself to bed or I'm going to be doing everybody a disservice. Like, there's a whole bunch of things that are learned as part of this process and how and how you operate. Also, you find out a lot about what you're made of, right? Because there's, you know, a roaring fire 50 feet away, and you're at all opportunity, you walk over there and say, I'm done. They they out cycle, you, you know, you know, they guarantee in 30 minutes, you'll be in a hot shower, a lot of food. And it's, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty difficult. So the reason that I wanted to do Ranger School is as a military intelligence officer, I'm not the Combat Arms infantry officer that's on the ground making decisions. I'm a support element for military intelligence, right. So I'm a combat multiplier, I can take all the elements of a battlefield, look at it from everything that we know and understand and help provide support to that infantry commander. And if I say, Okay, it looks like the enemies over here, you need to move all your units over here. And this is why if he sees that I have a ranger tab, he knows Oh, I know what it means. And what's going to do to degrade that unit by right now having them hump five hours to get around to this other spot. So I have more wisdom around what I'm saying, and I'm not just operating in a vacuum, you get what you should do in a vacuum. I'm like, No, I know. I know. It's gonna hurt. And I know they need to do it. But for all these reasons, you needed to do it.
John Tabis 56:31
I like that. I like that you had the foresight, to know that they would care about that for you. So you go to Ranger School, you get the tab. Yeah. Your your check the box. Yep. And then you do your tour duty.
Kelly Perdew 56:44
Yeah. So I go to Fort Ord. And I acted as an assistant as to, I asked acted as a platoon leader and acted as an echo, which are all gobbledygook descriptions for civilians are both probably most of the people listening. But I had different positions of responsibility in the unit that had rapid deployment force, when we kind of drew the line in the sand in Kuwait, with saddam, where the 82nd airborne dropped in the seventh ID light where I was, was basically responsible for the rest of the world for deploying rapidly while the 82nd airborne went in first. I did not deploy how to hold but you know, a lot of my classmates and friends over the years now I've been deployed, and two of my younger brothers have deployed also. And I was basically on alert and keeping the units at the highest state of readiness that we possibly could, because it was, you know, it became very, very real at that time. And it's obviously been super real for a long time now. But for me at that point in time, it was like, Okay. And there was a beeper, which some of you people in the audience might have never heard of, or know what that is. But we were on I had
Katie Rotolo 57:51
a beeper, you gotta be looking at me like that. Yeah. 20 page.
Kelly Perdew 57:54
So So I spent, I spent three and a half, maybe
three and a half years there doing that, before getting out of the military and deciding to do law in business school at UCLA.
John Tabis 58:07
And why why did you decide to leave? What, what was the trigger for you?
Unknown Speaker 58:11
So
Kelly Perdew 58:14
the three roles that I had, and those three and a half years, were kind of like the limit of what I was going to get before I would get a company command, which was the next step and responsibility and opportunity to grow and develop and take the next kind of take the next gig. And, unfortunately, the military is not known for the doing the best career management. And there's been a lot written about this, you know, lately, where a lot of the, you know, kind of best and brightest leave the military, because they've just done three tours, their family, they have kids, you know, the spouse has moved to everywhere with them. And then, oh, congratulations, you're going to Korea now. Not, Hey, I just need one tour in country. And I'm going to stick with it. There's this there's no input mechanism for allowing for those types of things to occur. And I had, I didn't want to wait three more years, kind of doing ancillary roles, before I got another command role and thought, okay, I can do you know, let me get out into the civilian sector and do more for the world than I'm doing here. So you go to UCLA, Anderson, law and business Yeah, I did the joint joint program. Nice. What's
John Tabis 59:27
up Anderson represent? Woohoo. And so you got a business slash law school. Awesome school, what's up UCLA?
Unknown Speaker 59:38
And then what do you do after school?
Kelly Perdew 59:40
So during the year, I entered that law and business school program thinking, Okay, this is gonna give me a lot of options. I have a lot of doors open, interviewed a whole bunch of people and talked about the, you know, the pros and cons of doing the joint program and also thought during the four year program, that would give me time to think about what I wanted to do because I still had no idea What the civilian world was about and or business was about. So met a lot of people that, you know, everybody who came in his first years at the law school. And the next year, everybody who started from the business school and everybody from the law school, not everybody, 90% of the people from the law school had just come from undergrad. We're also slightly left of center. So I was a little, you know, having come from the military and having been nominated to West Point by Dick Cheney, and have yet to have not yet been Donald Trump's apprentice, but was, you know, slightly right of center. And certainly, that that background was interesting to the logical people. Whereas I felt, I don't know more at home with the business school first year set, and also much more fascinated by the work experience that they all had, and where I could learn and understand more about what was happening in the business world. So spent, that, you know, I truly feel lucky enough on my grades at the law school first year to get its first year summer job at a big firm, Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher. And they made me an offer. And I said, I will work with a law firm. If you give me a summer job, if I go into law. If I don't go into law, then I can do whatever, you know, whatever I want. Because I still didn't know what I wanted to do. So I did probably 20 to 25 hours a week during the joint program working at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher at the law school learning about that, what that role would be like or what that you know what that career would be like, and about a year and a half into it realized, there were really no happy people with the law firm. Any of the law firms that I you know, ran into maybe one or two, maybe some intellectual property attorneys that were marrying up a passion for some, you know, science, some some, some some earlier tech interest with that, and maybe some of the stiffs and gifts and the will wills and estate people. But other than that, it was pretty much a grind. And at the same time, I also started to explore and get to know more about what the kind of the business world had to offer and made the decision during that process to pursue the business side. So never took a bar, completed both degrees and programs never took a bar and then started raising money for the first startup that we funded and started running while I was in my fourth year of the program.
John Tabis 1:02:13
Amazing. And it seems like you really like to try all the things. And what I mean by that is like, you're a planner, but like you can plan your way through and just do law school or just to business school, you decided you wouldn't do both. And you know, you could you could have just gone in the military. But instead you went to military and then you did Ranger training, like you like to try things to get deep into that. What
Cousin Bill 1:02:40
Why,
John Tabis 1:02:41
why is that? And do you think that has helped you? Do you think that has hindered you in your career? Like, talk a little bit about why you go so deep?
Kelly Perdew 1:02:50
So I think that maybe it's go deep fast. But really, if you look at the big picture, it's more broad, I would say I'm I'm more more in the category of a jack of all trades and Master of None than I am deep on anything. I think what was initially driving a lot of that was probably a fear of closing off options. You know, I thought, okay, military intelligence gives me a view of everything. Having a ranger tab. One, it's a personal challenge. And I'm pretty, pretty competitive. So I'm like, okay, I can I can go do this. But also, it opens more doors for me, as a military intelligence officer, the Ranger tab in terms of being trusted, and being able to help make decisions and everything that's going on. I didn't know any, you know, I didn't really know much about anything that had to do with business. So I figure law and business degrees gives me a wide aperture to be able to pursue anything. So those were more of keeping as many doors open as possible than anything else. My first kind of I'm shutting the door, I thought was when I decided not to take a bar. Because I never wanted to have a safety net of Oh, I could just go get a job as an attorney for 150 grams. I just, I saw I want to be miserable. And I saw what I saw. And I never wanted to have that edit. I didn't want to go that path. Which is my advice always to, you know, everybody who asked me, I see the head of the law and a business degree, what do you what do you think I should do? I was like, I don't understand. You can sit in on two classes at the law school that you can't get the rest of it's awesome for cocktail party discussions in or legal discussions. But you know, go take contracts, go take bankruptcy, maybe legal writing, but just sit around those classes and go to business school, save two years, you know, or one year if you're deciding between the two of them and, and work on the business side.
Katie Rotolo 1:04:38
Sounds like you followed your gut to you just really well. I
Kelly Perdew 1:04:41
spent four years figuring my gut. Yeah. Do as I say not as I do.
John Tabis 1:04:47
Alright, so so you start a company. You you get the bug early. Oh, yeah. Post early meaning post military post school. Yeah. And you sort of dive right in in the entrepreneurial world
Kelly Perdew 1:04:57
raised or is that first business That first business is called image tel. And it was a video conferencing system. Six by nine aspect ratio. You don't have to play with a whole bunch of buttons to turn it on. We made it what we called CEO proof. So it's an integration play. We got lenses from Germany. We were going up against if you remember, pitch hotel, you know, there were there were like three major players, one went public, we had really big clients, each system cost 150 grand at each end. I mean, we were literally like, in Goldman Sachs conference rooms, we were I mean, the FBI was sourcing us. And I learned how to factor orders to make cash flow meet. I raised money from friends and family, like a lot of them. And about right when our what equivalent to now would be kind of a series A was happening. And we had somebody out wrapping us to do it. Two little companies, Intel, and Microsoft, announced a cu c me little video ball that sits on the top of your laptop and provides video conferencing to the desktop for $1,000 a seat. Which, oh, boy, that was the right laugh. And that was the right comment. So that was a that had a very chilling effect on our business model. And I stayed in that accruing expenses not getting paid 100% because I had raised money from friends and family, you know, going way, way past, where I should have gone, even for even for friends and family. Because I felt that, you know, responsibility to deliver for that, right. And it's one of the things that I didn't have that I highly encourage anybody who's an entrepreneur to have is not a, of course, you have an advisory board or Board of Directors, but try to develop a personal advisory board that has no comp, tied or attached. They're just worried about you. Right? And there can be one or two or three of them at a time and you rotate them in and out. But it's like, you know, a YPO forum ish kind of thing. Like, um, you know, hello. I mean, not everybody can be in YPO. Obviously, I'm not YPO. But it's the same type of trusted people where you're like, Am I lost my mind? If I gone? You know, yes. I
Unknown Speaker 1:07:17
don't want to check you. Yes,
Kelly Perdew 1:07:18
I have perseverance. In subsequently hurt. Yeah, you, you, Kelly, you put yourself in harm's way. You should have just cut it, done something else and got made those people hold the next deal. Right. You know, however
John Tabis 1:07:30
you can. It's that sense of responsibility is important, right? It's personal relationships, friends, family,
Unknown Speaker 1:07:35
you don't know you've gone too far too. You go too far.
John Tabis 1:07:39
You become an entrepreneur, this this company doesn't work out, obviously. Correct. Microsoft came along and had like, you know, something for 1% of the cost of what you had. So fast forward a little bit. And along comes a show called The Apprentice. And the first season comes out when you see it on TV. I remember watching it was like fascinating. Yeah. First, the first season that came out. How do you end up applying? How do you end up sort of involved with the show.
Kelly Perdew 1:08:07
So there are at least four ways to get on to a reality show and specifically the apprentice at that time. One is you fill out the online form and do your own video and send it in. And I think that's how the apprentice got to a million applicants. You can also know a casting agent. And that's more for the Hollywood scene. That's how bill Ramsay got on season one, he was actually going to be a contestant for the Bachelor. And the casting crew said, hey, there's this new thing with Donald Trump. You want to like his first season, nobody knew about it. And it's very smart of him to say, Yeah, I'd rather do that. I didn't know any casting agents. The third way, if you'll remember was, they would do casting calls in cities as kind of PR elements, right? and was like, let's make a deal lines around blah, city blogs.
John Tabis 1:08:53
local news comes down.
Kelly Perdew 1:08:55
And they bounce around differently
Unknown Speaker 1:08:56
are you doing here? Hey,
Kelly Perdew 1:08:57
and I I can't even get in line at a regular bar. I mean, I can't get selected, you know, to come into a bar when there's a line for the books. I'm like, that's not working either. And then dick
Katie Rotolo 1:09:06
cheney was that one of the options is getting nominated,
Kelly Perdew 1:09:08
but it didn't help me didn't help me. Right. So I, what most people don't know is Burnett, incredibly savvy businessman. His teams did like close casting calls at all the LA business schools. So I'm sitting, I lived in San Diego for about a year. And I was in San Diego and I get my email from Anderson. Everything comes back to Anderson right.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:32
So I've Anderson,
Kelly Perdew 1:09:34
a close casting call with this hot hit show the apprentice, you know, at enters and blah, blah, blah next week and I saw it I'm like, I don't want to drive out to LA. So delete. So my next youngest brother, how Purdue also went to Anderson A few years after I did, he got that email but he was in Florida and he sends me the email with all caps. He never uses all caps. You must go to this. You know, casting call with you know, try out or whatever, right? Like, and he's like, yeah, you'll kill it. So we go, I go, I died fine. drive up.
Cousin Bill 1:10:06
So
John Tabis 1:10:08
brother is is the instigator. The instigator of the catalyst that makes you actually get totally the catalyst. So
Kelly Perdew 1:10:13
I show up at corn Hall, right with the amphitheater. And there's probably two or 300. Basically dudes in suits, for the most part. And I'm late, the door slams, everybody kind of looks over. And everybody's filling out papers, and I walked down to the front, I just stay up at the front with the casting crew, and I'm filling it out kind of on that, you know, the front, the front stage thing, right? I'm just trying to write and the pen doesn't work. And I'm making noise and might do this electronically. I haven't written anything like more than two sentences in like, 10 years without typing it. Like when it's like, No, no, fill it out, right? So. So we end up breaking out and they put us in 10 people in, you know, a classroom with a casting agent, this woman's got our papers in front of her and she's like, I'm gonna throw out questions for everybody. And you guys just talk amongst yourselves. And then we'll change subjects as we go. So she said, What do you think of women in positions of power in business? And the guy next to me was going with, you know, politically correct as long as possible. Like, I believe that everyone is the same, you're treated the same no matter what you and I went for, like 30 seconds. And I had my Big West Point ring out and I slammed the table. And I said, that's the biggest bunch of bullshit I've ever heard. Women in positions of power will eat. They're young. And shocking. All the woman starts cracking up, he's offended every like, ah, and I just sat back and like, they went out again, I did something else A few minutes later. And she, you know, pulls me by my sport coat on the way out and say, Come here, and she goes, Hey, we want to have you come back for a callback or class. I can't remember all
Unknown Speaker 1:11:40
was that a calculated? Were you?
Cousin Bill 1:11:42
Were you acting during
Kelly Perdew 1:11:44
the past 100% calculated? I mean, I'm with 250 of me. Just the same look the same talk the same act the same, like you got the you know,
Unknown Speaker 1:11:54
there's but you didn't mean that obviously.
Kelly Perdew 1:11:57
I mostly didn't mean that. And I know Mitch, she's phenomenal. She would need any young. So, the next step step was two hours in a closed room with a beta cam. Like on me asking me every single thing under the sun. What would your last girlfriend say about you? You know, who's your favorite poet? What would you like? It was literally I couldn't keep track of all of the different things as grilling you or hours on on video. Right? And you know, at some one point she shot that Diet Coke out of her nose. He was like, almost started crying. Like it was like, literally like intense deep stuff, right? Yeah. And then they're like, okay, turn it off. We want to we want to have you we're going to present you to the producers. Am I okay? I don't you Okay, she did you fill out the application mean? I'm like the online thing or like, I do like 10 minute video of mine. I'm like, No, because I can do the electronic thing. But you can you just chop up you just took two hours of video me put what everything there, you know, you have to do it. It's like the, it's absolutely law required. We have to have the same packet on everybody. And that's the video that I don't know where it is that I don't want getting out. So Mark Burnett, if you're listening to this, now please don't put me included like doing early morning push ups with my shirt off. And like, you know, that was at a wine like it was a whole bunch of crazy stuff.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:19
So somebody's gonna find that video
Kelly Perdew 1:13:22
that was showing up somewhere. And
John Tabis 1:13:24
then we'll do some push ups. As of right now people just give me a pause.
Kelly Perdew 1:13:28
I definitely emphasize the military component. And then like Air Force. Yeah. So
John Tabis 1:13:33
for your personal brands, all good. All right. Well,
Kelly Perdew 1:13:37
the next step was okay, you're in the final 50. There's 18 of you and they take us to some hotel, keep us all separated. You know, IQ tests, personality tests, interactions, all sorts of stuff for two days, to the point where you're like, really, is this going to end my life? Go like what? And then it's like, okay, you're, you're on
John Tabis 1:13:57
Do you not have a job? Like, did you as all this, you're just missing work? have had it?
Kelly Perdew 1:14:02
Had it? That was like Saturday, Sunday, Monday, whatever, okay, I get one or two days. Okay, got it. And most of my jobs as an entrepreneur, you can kind of manage your schedule point. Good, right? So then it's okay, show up in New York, no branded clothing, take away your money, take away your ID, and you're owned by, you know, Mark Burnett productions for eight weeks, seven weeks. And it's back to back to back to back. You know, you get a task in the morning. 48 hours of cat fighting and craziness through the task. There's the end of the task, there's a losing team, there's somebody fired, and not the next Thursday, like everybody who's watching TV thinks it's the next morning. So it's in a very cloistered environment, minimal food, high stress, common shower area. I'm like, and you know, some, you know, significant individual yelling at you that has a significant position of power and like, Oh, it's the military.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:57
Like you're This is just not like, whatever.
Kelly Perdew 1:14:58
It's all cool and about You know, as you can see, it's more difficult on people who haven't had that type of stressor, right. And then they forget that they're on camera and being taped. And
John Tabis 1:15:08
that clearly brought you home. Right? That was your It was your secret
Kelly Perdew 1:15:13
weapon super comfortable. Not stressful.
John Tabis 1:15:15
So that's when you meet Donald Trump.
Cousin Bill 1:15:18
I did,
John Tabis 1:15:18
yes. And from you know, he's now the president of the states. We see him every day on TV, we see him on Twitter. And I won't go political on this on this program at all. But just from a personal interaction on the show perspective, what can you tell us about what it was like, sort of being with and around him at that time now, this is how many
Kelly Perdew 1:15:40
years ago? This is 2005 was the year I was with him after the show?
John Tabis 1:15:44
Yeah, it was a long time ago, 3040 years ago, but just any, any insights into what it was like working with and for an outlet alongside Donald Trump in that environment?
Kelly Perdew 1:15:54
Yeah, I mean, they have a lot of documented, you know, interviews and podcasts and everything else with the free and then the lead up and him coming into the election and then posts but it's, it's pretty phenomenal to watch him intentionally work the media at the time. I mean, you know, two weeks before the next apprentice starts the next season, randomly, you know, goes after pig, Martha Stewart once, right. And that just Flurry, I mean, it was in, you know, calculated intentional move, like master media worker, like, purposeful, exact head on. It's something that, you know, in my role is working with all the different entrepreneurs and their companies is, you have to have a media plan. Your competition will and if you don't, you're going to get your lunch eaten. I mean, it's just that simple. Right? So it's incredibly important, right, especially in the direct to consumer business, as you know. Yeah. So that story, that message, how you work it was was pretty phenomenal to watch. I think the thing that stood out the most was, and this was my like warning, because a bunch of my westpoint friends were part of the transition team for getting 4000 plus new people jobs in this administration. But it was like you kind of have to kind of change the tempo in the opposite the white house because what I witnessed was from like, 6am, till at least 10pm and a nine people waiting to see him. Three assistants managing flow, two different deals in the office simultaneously negotiating differently in front of the other one in front of them, yelling, Hey, get me, you know, Mar Lago with Tiger for next Saturday, a Domino's Pizza commercial waiting to film in one conference room in an apprentice show ready to film another. And you can almost see the line move all day, literally six days a week with no zero signs of strain or stress or wear down or machine. He's a deal machine. And that mean, I think we can kind of see that that has occurred. I mean, a lot of what he was doing, then he had a significant depth of experience and maybe less so obviously less so now with a different dynamics. But it was a you know, brilliant, absolutely maniacal focus on deal flow. And it was amazing to watch. Yeah.
John Tabis 1:18:16
So you win the apprentice. And he worked for Trump for a year. Yeah. And then more entrepreneurial journeys. Yeah. Somewhere along the way, you meet your wife.
Kelly Perdew 1:18:30
Yes. Who's lovely, who hadn't seen hadn't seen the show? Oh, really? Yeah, single mom. She had seven year old hunters, my stepson. He's at USC now. But it was like in the year or so after the show. And she'd been busy building media companies built also an entrepreneur. Yeah. No, I mean, she puts me to shame on the business side. On the women in power. And she is she is she is impressive. Yeah. I'm typically introduced referred to as Don's husband. Not. So I'm good with that, too. Yeah, so we met and enough people were still like commenting and saying stuff about different episodes and all the stuff that was going on. It's finally like, okay, and I asked burnetts team for the unsweetened because there weren't, there wasn't any real easy way to watch it. And when somebody taped it or whatever, so I got the unsweetened discs. And we did a marathon weekend with her son like laughing at me and looking at stuff and seeing nature. So So that's, I mean, it took a month or so. But yeah, a lot a lot of laughing at me.
John Tabis 1:19:27
Nice. And And so then, you know, take us through and sort of the Quick Hits on how you ended up with with moonshot.
Kelly Perdew 1:19:36
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a serial entrepreneur, you know, 10 companies that I've been a part of the founding team and are starting to out of business five exits, three still operating profitably, and all along the way. I mean, the impetus for me starting to invest was hold on really quickly. Yeah.
John Tabis 1:19:57
What in all those journeys A lot of companies start or be a part of what was always your role? Like, what is it that you did what part of the founding team were
Kelly Perdew 1:20:09
in only, it only so so my chops are in kind of business development and finance. So that's usually the role that I had and only one instance. And I like to think about entrepreneurs kind of in two buckets. One is the industry expert ideation, I know what's going on, I understand that I can solve the problem. And then there's a business builder. And usually, the ones that start off in the ideation you know, Eureka, I know that have an idea for a solution have to learn the business building side if they can do it, right. And that's a hard thing to do. You're being successful at doing it, but it's a hard thing to try and, and a lot of times that ideation person can marry up with a built for businesses before I know this yet I've seen this movie, let's do it together. And if the chemistry is right, and it works, that's, that's a beautiful solution, right? In any event, I'm not the ideation guy. I did one ideation company with my business partner, who is a co founder at Pandora, the co founder, sorry, the founder, the co founder, but he's the CEO, john Kraft. I don't know if you met him before, but you should. He's awesome. He's here.
And we sold that to zag which turned into true car. So, that was a nice, but I mean, I was separately an individual investor truecar. So having, you know, that role. I had read Richard Kiyosaki book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, but the better book and the one that turned the light bulb on for me was cashflow quadrant. And cashflow quadrant is you're an employee, and you can make so much money. You don't have to think about things from Friday when you check out till Monday when you check in. And that's kind of neat, but that's one thing. quadrant two is Doctor lawyer, you make a lot of money. But if you go away for too long, you start making money, right quadrant three is build your flywheels. Right, so you build companies that make money while you sleep. And then four is the investment quadrant, where you start putting your money and stuff. And I went through the the first kind of startup after my failure with image tel called the teams that we got sold to active networks. And I went, that was one failure than it was two and a half years to sell to something that eventually became public, but it was nothing ish at the time. And I'm like, I only have so many much life left. If I'm going to be doing this, I have to get more arrows flying. So how do I get more arrows flying. So I sell my bizdev, finance chops as an advisor. And I buy in the companies along the way. And so I wanted to have in greater than 30. So I had an opportunity to take advantage of the asset class returns at the time, again, planned. And that's when I started investing, I got better at it. And then I got better at advising. So I could charge a little bit more for it. And then I got better at founding. So the fails happened in the first ones and the not fails happened. And as you went on, so just just kept building that. And ultimately, as I, you know, think all entrepreneurs are, it's like you have to be passionate about what you're doing, or because it's so hard competition so hard that if you're not passionate about it and willing to go until you drop, you're not going to survive, you're not going to be successful. And I just don't consider, you know, investing in entrepreneurs and helping them to build their business work. So from 2004 to 2014, I was an angel, right from 5000 to $100,000 checks, mostly in the 25k range. And then in 2014 with my business partner, also West Point, graduate, also a serial entrepreneur that I'd invested in, and we've co invested in ANGEL deals, we formed a syndicate as lead syndicate, and we deployed a little over 10 million into 20 companies. But we set up a structure to manage that as if we were a fund. So 100 plus deals a month, you know, associates, lawyers, controllers, finance experts, and not as our day job. On the side, we were seeing 100 plus deals a month, and looking at those deals, and really, truly wanting to help the entrepreneurs. And we'd see 100 Plus we Nick it down to two or three for the due diligence on those and every 45 days we funded 300 to $700,000 into 20 plus companies over a three year period. Now, this is what shifted us into a committed fund. Hey, john, I really love your deal. I love your business, you know, I can help you. And this is what I'm syndicate. I want to put somewhere between, I don't know 207 $100,000 in the next 90 days. Is that sound yummy? Yeah, you're like navy and like maybe I can maybe I can't you're like that sounds great. You smile and shake my hand and you say okay, I promise to save you at least 300 but you have to let me know by next Friday. Yeah. And then I go to my 437 closest following angels and try to you know, herd cats to get money out of them. Sometimes I do sometimes I don't I'm not impacting any terms. No way. I'm going to command a board seat to be able to do that. And so the shift into a committed fund was phenomenal track record. My part we partner are both operators. So we add a significant amount of value. We have domain expertise and some stuff. But when I talk to an entrepreneur now I say, I love the deal. You're out raising 2 million, you have a whole bunch of people who say they're in soft circles, Well, how about me not be a soft circle? How about leaving pen, lead with 700 800, whatever the number is. And here are the deal terms. Oh, by the way, that side letter you have with Uncle Bob that says he gets 5% of IPO, we're getting rid of that, because we want to be able to raise it with, you know, clean up all the hair on the deal, and help that entrepreneur, where, where I've been where Craig's been so many times bumping our head falling in the hole helped them avoid those and help them accelerate business growth.
John Tabis 1:25:42
Amazing. So what's the size of the fund? 20 million, 20 million. And this is the first one.
Kelly Perdew 1:25:47
This is the first committed fund is, which is which was a eye opener for I liken it to Ranger School. And I'm like, it may have been harder than Ranger School.
John Tabis 1:25:58
fundraising people the the best and the worst thing you can ever do.
Katie Rotolo 1:26:03
Sorry, do you ever eight, so Angel invest.
Kelly Perdew 1:26:06
So when there are deals I have Angel invested not since we did the final closing of the fund. But when I see a deal that I love that's outside the parameters of the fund. And I get my partner to say, Yeah, I don't care if you put, you know, do 25 it's it. My level of involvement isn't the same as it was before if I do if I do an angel investment, because I'm focused on for our LPs committing for the fund. Right. On the deals that we syndicated. We still syndicate when the next deals come up, right. So produce pay, you know, here was one, Id me as one, we did a syndicate into Slack, we got like, so there are a bunch of that are in that vein that we still will run the numbers in the syndicate on. But we're not like doing new syndicate companies. And it has to be an outlier from our, you know, our focus in the fund. And then I get kind of permission from my partner and to say that it's okay to do it.
John Tabis 1:26:59
What's the like, what do you look forward? sort of just in investing? Whether it's for the fund or just in general? Like, what are the areas that you're most geeked? About? Like, what do you see as the biggest opportunities either for the fund? Or do you just think, you know,
Kelly Perdew 1:27:13
for foreigners, so so our thesis at moonshots capital is, if you lay out the 68, companies that Craig and I have invested in on a spectrum of least successful two most successful and you look at them, and try to identify the factor for which we can control or know about ahead of time, like market timing, you can never tell macroeconomic factors, you can kind of maybe guess, but you're still you're still guessing technology, it's really difficult to know all the technologies that existed anywhere, you know, management team risk is the one like for us. Quality of leadership is the one on that spectrum that we think we can get the best handle on ahead of time. And by quality leadership. I mean, there's only one place in the world we know of where millions of dollars is spent training someone in leadership. And that's in the military. Doesn't have to be the US military. But so moonshots we Craig and I lean in heavily when there's a military veteran on the founding team. And we also value kind of multi time entrepreneur success, because you're kind of battle scarred in that leadership role from that as well. It's not exclusive, like 70% of our au M has been invested over the years and to deals that have military veteran as part of the founding team, but 30% hasn't so that the planning, the persistence, the passion, the ability to convince investors, employees that this absolutely idea nothing is super valuable, or work for me crazy hours and come let's build this vision together. A customer I have nothing to sell you give me the purchase order right now. Like all of the things that you have to do as an entrepreneur is their their leadership.
John Tabis 1:28:55
Awesome characteristics. Awesome. Kelly, thank you for coming on the show. Absolutely, really appreciate it. Where can people find you? What What should they check out?
Kelly Perdew 1:29:03
So best business tool I've ever encountered in the world is called LinkedIn. I also happen to have been an early advisor. That was one of the things I negotiated from being on the show, trading LinkedIn above the fold on my website and everything else. But I still believe that it's incredibly valuable tool. So you I'm Kelly Perdue on LinkedIn and then for you know, business plans or contact or what are criterias moonshots capital comm website.
John Tabis 1:29:28
Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show, man. Really appreciate it.
Kelly Perdew 1:29:30
Loved it. Thanks, john.
John Tabis 1:29:32
Wow, Kelly, Purdue, epic person. What an amazing hour and change I knew would go deep. That was deep. And Sorry for keeping everybody a little bit long. But I think we'd all agree that it was well worth our time. And I think we could probably have Kelly back for another two episodes, and dive in deep, deep deep in a couple different areas. Maybe we'll have him come back on the show. someday. super lucky to have such an amazing guest. And thank you all for for hanging out with us. Thanks to our sponsors, the boots company. Do you que es comm buy some amazing flowers? Firestone we're still holding out Oh, it's it's, it's the joke might get tired someday, but not quite yet. We still love the beer so much. And thank you to all of you for listening. Please follow us on social media app, give them the biz g IV, e m th e bi z. And we'll be back next week with another slate of amazing guests. And we're gonna make sure we have time to do some games. Maybe slogans heroes can make a comeback and I'm sure I'll be ranting for usual so Miss Katie Rotolo, Mr. A cousin bill. Thank you both for everything and we'll see you guys next week. Peace out y'all.
Cousin Bill 1:30:40
See you next time guys. Thanks for listening to give him the business podcasts from the books and podcast one. Be sure to download new episodes every Tuesday right here on podcast one on the podcast, one app or on Apple podcasts. And don't forget to rate review and share. also find us on Twitter and Instagram under the handle at give them the biz g i v e m th e bi z
