Apprentice 101: Best advice is to be yourself, says Season 2 winner
May 31, 2005 (Seattle PI) Kelly Perdew, winner of the second season of "The Apprentice," took time out from his duties managing three projects for the Trump Organization to talk with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about his experience on the show and working for Donald Trump...
...Perdew graduated from West Point, completed U.S. Army Airborne Ranger training, and was a former military intelligence officer. He is a graduate of the UCLA law and business school and an entrepreneur who has run several startups.
Question: Is "The Apprentice" entertainment or are there really business lessons to be learned from the show?
Answer: Definitely both. The business lessons learned are different for the viewer than the contestants. One thing the viewers don't see is the complexity of the tasks. It may sound simple to open a restaurant ... but it is extremely difficult with $20,000 and you have to find a certain type of endive in New York City because that is what is going on the menu. It was Herculean, and I think it kind of blows through it too fast during the show.
Q: Why do think you were chosen as Trump's apprentice?
A: Two reasons. Performance, actually winning the tasks. We crushed the tasks. It wasn't like you had to do it perfectly. All you had to do was be better than the other team. The other piece was consistency. At all times, I tried to win the task. At no time did I try to position myself not to get fired in case we lost. It was 100 percent all the time to win the task.
Q: I heard you used a 20-point project manager checklist. Can you provide more detail?
A: If we go out and have 70 percent effort and we get beat, shame on us. If we go out with 100 percent effort and we get beat, then great job.
I was looking to get to 100 percent effectiveness with the team the whole time. There were too many moving parts. These tasks were incredibly complex. And without any kind of what I would call in the military "operations order," it is very difficult to keep people directed and doing the right types of things. I solicited from everybody on the team, their top five things to remember as project managers.
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Like involve a charity, re-read the rules every two hours, spend 40 minutes of brainstorming no matter what at the beginning of a task. I organized and prioritized them as rules to live by and used it as a living document.
Then we went out and won the next five tasks in a row.
I also implemented an after-action review -- what did we do wrong, what did we do right, what do we need to add or adjust. That was part of the process, every time then I would map it out.
I got a lot of flak for being on the computer a lot ... the number of moving parts and accounting for every penny of a $50,000 task. The other team lost on a task because they didn't account for it properly. I wasn't going to let that happen to our team. When you own the operations order, in terms of actually having it in your possession and you are typing on it, guess who the point of contact is?
Q: What was your biggest challenge to win?
A: I originally thought Pamela. (Laughs) What was fun, was that I saw a little bit of myself in every one of the characters. The young idealist Andy, the emotional John, I-want-to-be-the center-of-attention Raj, the calculating and methodical arguer of the attorneys who were there ... I have spent time in all of those life periods of time. How you are growing and that is what you are going through. It was challenging and exciting to try to use them each to their best in terms of breaking down and delegating responsibilities.
A lot of people were so perplexed when I picked Elizabeth first for the final task. She is a marketing expert, she was dying and horrified by her earlier performance and couldn't wait to prove and show the world how good she really is. And she is good. And she was smart enough not to say bad things when the camera was on. John and Raj worked their butts off too, but they were mouthing off and then that was the only thing that got shown.
Q: Comment about the cattiness and fighting among the women.
A: I was amazed, it was phenomenal to me. I couldn't believe that people were arguing and fighting like they were. People who I am going to ask to invest millions of dollars for my deals in the future have this as a reference point. I don't want to be seen fighting in the suite. I don't want to scream like a banshee in the boardroom. I don't want to be seen doing that. That is not any boardroom that I have ever been in, but it makes good television.
Q: Best advice for future Apprentice candidates?
A: Be yourself. You will get found out. You can't fake what you are doing and you are being filmed 24/7.
Q: At what point during the show did you think you would be the winner?
A: When he said 'You're hired.'
Q: What was the stupidest mistake made during the season?
A: When Andy lost the cell phone. Not intentional but it was devastating from my standpoint. Anytime you lose command and control because you can't communicate with the other group, it paralyzes your unit.
Q: Besides winning, what are you most proud of from your time on the show?
A: Two things. I liked that we got Mr. Trump to give the extra proceeds to the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society from the ice cream task. It felt good. It got a whole lot of publicity for the society, which helps them. The second, was when Kevin, Ivana and I designed the Pepsi bottle. I was really proud of that, that bottle rocked. We worked seamlessly as a team. It was like the "A" team.
Q: Now that you work for Trump, have you ever openly disagreed with any of his decisions?
A: He solicits a lot of information so you pretty much have a good discussion prior to a big decision being made.
Q: Describe Mr. Trump as your boss -- his leadership and business skills.
A: His strengths are loyalty. He has created an amazing organization. There are people that have been there for 20 and 30 years. That is a testament to his leadership. There is a lot of upward and downward loyalty.
Q: How is your management/leadership style like Trump's? How is it different?
A: I definitely make a decision without 100 percent of the information and trust my gut. He'll listen to what people have to say and then he'll make a decision but he doesn't have to know every single thing about it before he makes a decision. I am very, very process oriented. To me, it helps organize and direct, and I think he is much more gut on a lot of stuff.
ABOUT THE SERIES
What can real-world business leaders learn from the NBC series "The Apprentice"? That's the question the Seattle Post-Intelligencer posed to Maureen Moriarty, who uses the show as a teaching tool in her Bellevue Community College leadership course.
Yesterday, she interviewed Seattle prosecutor and Apprentice candidate Alex Thomason about his experience on Season 3, which ended last week. Today, she interviews Season 2's winner Kelly Perdew.
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