THE ROSS PEROT I KNEW

Today I got maybe 20 text messages telling me H. Ross Perot died. I had the chance to meet and work with him for a short time. In 1999, H. Ross Perot bought my company Hire Quality. My short time with him was the best three months followed by the worst three months of my life. After the purchase, we started a new company MilitaryHub.com, together with my father as the CEO, and his man Henry Stien as the CFO and I as the President. It was an "equal" partnership. 

Six months after we founded a new company together. I was fired as a prelude to the company going out of business. It was a causality of the .com bubble bursting.  

He made the investment to buy Hire Quality personally, not through any of his companies/investment vehicles, because he wanted to personally be involved in helping the military community. We initially met by phone. I cold-called him. He answered at 555am! (before gatekeepers were in the office.)  I was in his office the following week.  

The day I met him face to face I got a haircut down the street from his office. The barber was actually the same guy that has cut Ross’s hair for 30 years, every week, same time. He and the other barbers all had stories about him. The car he drove to work each day, an 89 Mercury I think, can’t remember, but the fact he drove an old car, drove at all, was notable. (His son, Ross Jr. came to work in a helicopter and landed it on the roof.) The Barbers commented on my shoes and how they were going to be up to his standards (spit shinned like only a Marine can do). All the stories were about how ordinary he was, how funny he was. One barber started coming in early just because it was so fun to listen to him.  

Mr. Perot's office was awesome. It featured the Magna Carta (not kidding the Magna Carta itself, or I was told), many Fredric Remington original sculptures, and all types of original Americana paintings all of which any American has seen many times. The one of Abe Lincoln stuck out in my mind. He had a life-size bronze of each of his grandkids playing (really cool). The walls were covered, littered, with photos (think the wall of family photos randomly, haphazardly, put up on walls down the stairs to your grandmother's basement). It literally looked like he would get a photo he liked, and go out and put a nail in the wall wherever it fit. My favorite photo was of him and Dana Carvey. (https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/dana-carvey-ross-perot-saturday-night-live-857008/). Also, I remember he had a terrain table of the entire Dallas Fort Worth area. It showed the land he owned, and the land he, and his son, were after. It was explained to me he was more interested in water rights than the land.  

The first story Mr. Perot told me was about buying his first bicycle. How he saved, and finally bought it. He said everything he has done since with money was less important to him than buying that bicycle. He was maybe the thriftiest man I ever met, well maybe next to my own father. It's probably why they connected so quickly. Well that, and they both agreed that I, and my right-hand man and roommate from college, Tommy Palladino, (the only person from Hire Quality to be brought over to MilitaryHub), needed some adult supervision. 

I was young and was prone to use business buzz words. I guess to try to overcome my lack of experience by trying to sound smart. He would interrupt and say, “Stop using ‘25 cent words’ when Nickle words will do”. He was a plain talker. He simplified everything its essence. Something I try to emulate to this day. The thing I remember most was when I was presenting what my company did, there was a pie chart, something about veteran’s internet usage. There was a 2% segment and some other big segments. He ignored the big segments, which were the point of the chart, and asked about the 2% segment. He asked about 10 questions about the segment. My response to every question was, “Sir, I do not know but will find out”. His response, “well I think you should know, don’t you?” The fact was I didn’t think I should know. I mean who cares about 2%, right? In hindsight, he was right.

My favorite thing I ever head his say was something like, ‘I bought this (plane) from one of those middle eastern kings, and it's full of gold, real gold. I figure that was because if you’re a middle eastern king, you may have to leave your country in your bathrobe and your flip flops, and you’ll need that gold wherever you land.”

The least favorite things I heard him say was “I should never have given you all that money, I should have dripped it in with an eyedropper”, and “well, you don’t have enough money to sue me”.  

The best thing I received from Mr. Perot was a photo of him in an enlisted navy working uniform covered with dirt. I think it was from his midshipmen cruise after his pleb year at the Naval Academy. I like it because it reminded me he came from humble beginnings. His Dad was a cotton trader/ broker. He still has his father's ledger's meticulously tracking every penny. He loved tracking every penny! 

My biggest actual take away from knowing him is my ability to impersonate him. I think it is on par with Dana Carvey.

Years later while working with Military Mobile, I heard another story about his about the real reason he ran for the Presidency, from a former Under Secretary of the Air Force.  As I heard it, then Vice President George H Bush did not support (enough) Mr. Perot's efforts to find and bring home the POWs from Vietnam. So Mr. Perot decided to run against him. He was the type that would do that... in his words, "The activist is not the man that says the river is dirty. The activist is the man that cleans up the river". He wanted to get those people, he says he knew where still there, home. If it took him being the President to get it done, well so be it.

He was one of a kind. I am glad I got a chance to know him, even though it was rather superficial and only business-related, it was exciting. It was thrilling. 

Fair winds and following seas, Mr. Perot.