Overcoming Impossible Odds with Terry Duperon, Duperon Corporation

You could say that the odds were stacked against Terry. Being born with dyslexia, dropping out of high school, never learning to read and write. Yet he learned that his dyslexia was a gift and he harnessed it to start the Duperon Corporation. With his daughter and partner, Tammy, the company has grown 25% year over year.

In this episode, we talk about:

• How to Turn Failures into Gifts
• Finding Inspiration in the Power of Dreams
• How to Embrace the Life You Have

Links:

The Duperon Corporation Website

Book – Dare to be Different

Book – Misfit Millionaire (Coming Soon)

Transcript:

Cliff Duvernois: Hello everyone! And welcome back to another episode of the Call of Leadership podcast. Today’s guest founded the Duperon Corporation, and actually it started with an idea back in the 1970s when the founder, who was also an inventor, Was looking for a way to protect pumps from the damage causing debris that was found in storm water.

From there, he founded his corporation and in 1985, the Duperon Corporation itself was actually established in Saginaw, Michigan. And, uh, since then, under the leadership of the new C E O, the company has grown over a history of 25% a year, which is absolutely astound.

And I want to share with you that their first law of simplicity is two parts, is one part too many.

I love that. I absolutely love that he is the author of the book, Dare to Be Different, as well as the Soon to be Coming Misfit Millionaire book as well. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the show, the founder of the Duperon Corporation. That would be Terry Duperon. Terry, how are you,

Terry Duperon: I’m good so far.

Cliff Duvernois: Excellent. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about where you’re from and where you grew up.

Terry Duperon: I, um, I’m from Indian Town, which is in Saginaw County. Okay. It’s a farm community. I grew up on a farm and, um, I, um, I really didn’t wanna be a farmer.

I liked the mechanics of the farm, but I didn’t like farming. So once I was 18, I left the farm and got a series of odd jobs and, um, I finally got one where I cleaned parts. For a machine builder and just steam cleaner. And then they, that turned into apprenticeship and, uh, I, I just, I started to understand mechanics much better.

So, and then I went into drawing. I learned to read, read prints and bill machines, and then learned to draw ’em. I’d ship jobs from b and k tool to Wilson Engineering, so I’d be on a drawing board, learn how to draw, and. Eventually I got my first patent and it all begun there.

Cliff Duvernois: Excellent. What I’d like to do is I would like to take a, a trip back cuz you and I were actually chatting before we hit the record button here, and I wanna make sure that we capture these elements. So as a child, you were dyslexic,

Terry Duperon: Yeah. I, and most of my life I couldn’t read and write and I can read a little better in the last six years. I make myself read every day, so I’m getting a little better at it, but not great. And I can’t write. I don’t write, and so I dictate that. So what happened to me is in the, in the third grade, my third grade teacher asked me to stand in front of the class and read a first grade book, Dick and Jane and I, and I could not read it.

And um, then I knew there was something wrong. because I couldn’t do what everybody else is doing easily. And now I’m exposed to everybody in my world’s in that room. And so it was the first time I ever felt inferior. I got sick to my stomach up there. And, uh, it was a, a changing moment in my life. I knew something was wrong with me.

So that year we just, we studied the inventors, Eli Whitney, Edison, Henry Ford, and they become my heroes. So, I thought they only had to do one thing and they were rich and famous. And now as time went on, I found out it was more than one thing, but I, I started to pursue that dream. My dream was clear to me I was gonna be an inventor and make my living off my inventions.

Well, I tore everything apart on the farm, couldn’t get it back together. But I was learning, learning slow slowly, learning at great odds with my dad cuz he needed that stuff. So I. I eventually ended up I think when I was 18 or 20 with a first patent,

Cliff Duvernois: Right.

Terry Duperon: and they’d come in the mail. It’s a US patent office.

Terry Duperon and inventor put me right back into third grade.

Oh wow.

So I, I remember committing to that dream. So now I’m saying, how does a third grade boy cause that future. Okay, how do you do that? And it, and I end up creating a class around that. As well, I have Duperon Education and it focuses, focuses on how creative people think.

And it doesn’t matter what you create. If you, if you create a business, you’re an entrepreneur. If you create a machine, you’re an inventor., painting artist, book author, But it’s the same thing. It’s the same ability to bring some something in the future doesn’t exist. Now.

Cliff Duvernois: It’s interesting that you, at that point in time in your life when you were the most vulnerable, that all, you know, I don’t know if it’s, if it’s fate, but you start studying inventors.

Terry Duperon: No, just mechanics. Cuz I couldn’t read the book, so I couldn’t really study the inventors. Right. We just, they talked about it in school and they become my heros. So I just believe they could do that one thing. I didn’t know what it would be. So I just started to have at it. And the dream is extremely powerful in our lives, So as I got studying that further, I’m thinking it’s probably the most powerful thing in our lives is the ability to dream that vague notion.

You don’t know how to get there. You don’t know how to do it, but you, you believe it could happen.

Cliff Duvernois: Right.

Terry Duperon: And I think it’s, it’s. It’s not magic. Once you have a dream, it puts you in the inquiry. You’re always looking for the next clear step to get to your dream. And I think we talked earlier, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of like if you buy a, a new red car, you see red cars everywhere.

Yeah. Because now you’re aware of red cars 

Cliff Duvernois: Because of, yeah. 

Reticular Activation.

Terry Duperon: Yeah. So it’s, it’s human nature to do that well, when you have a dream, it’s human nature to start seeking out the next clear step. It, the how to always shows itself. It never not shows itself. So the, the dream has taken me a long ways, much way beyond my expectations.

And basically all I do now is I have I have two things. I don’t know where to, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say in this, but I was an atheist for a long. And eventually I yielded, I surrendered and asked God to come in my life. Well, nothing happened. So a year and a half later I realized that I have a sense of gratitude I hadn’t had before.

So six months after that, I seen it from that night forward, from the night I surrender before that life was defeat me. I become less able, less competent to take care of. And then from that day forward, nothing’s ever defeated me. Makes me squirm, but it doesn’t defeat me. So something happened to me that night, that’s clear to me.

So I don’t, cuz I had not read the book, but I, bits and pieces I hear what, when I finally surrendered and come to my creator he never said shame on you. He just, Tilt your head and say, Look over here Terry. I have something more for you. And then after that I started to ask if God was gonna talk to me, how would that sound?

Because I believe Christ’s in Christ. And he said, You have a teacher and a guide, a Holy Spirit. And I said, Well, how, how would that talk to you? And I think I’m the author of Mu in Confusion. It would, it would be clear, you know what, you know, you trust your mind that it’s clear. I just do it. Okay. So. I just head for the dream, take the next clear step.

That’s my act of faith. I don’t need to know where the step’s taken me. I just do it because it’s clear. And then my trust of my of God is I don’t ask for two steps. I don’t go in the future. I have a really good imagination. I can scare the heck out of myself so I don’t go there. 

Right? 

So all of that got me where we are.

To me, I, you, you never arrive. I’m still on this journey. I don’t know where it’ll make me next, but I’m, I’m open to go there. 

Cliff Duvernois: Beautiful. Now I understand why you’re a writer. 

So let’s go back cuz you were talking before about when you were somewhere, you know, 18, 20 years old. You got that official. Package from the US Patent Office that said, you know, had your name on Air, terry Inventor.

Yeah. 

What did that feel like? Cuz this was like, to me it seems like this was like the very first step for you to take, to make your full dream to be a reality. So what was it like to actually hold that in your hand? 

Terry Duperon: that was exciting and I got it.

I got, cuz it put me back to the third grade I got that kid caused this. And how did he do that? So when I was asked to teach senior engineers at the university, I was trying to figure out how that third grade boy. So I, I concluded it’s in the way You think that’s the only difference. The, the people I was teaching at the university were smarter than me.

Way more educated than me. Could read and write . But the only difference could be is the way I think I could get patents and I could start businesses, and they struggled with that. So I set out to find that difference. And then the whole class evolved around just the difference in the way we think.

So the class basically now I’ve had, uh, about 3000 people take it already.

Beautiful.

And about six professors from universities take it. And if you look at who I am, a high school dropout, they can’t read and write. I have, I have no, I cannot figure this out that I’m teaching at a university or I have this.

Okay. The only thing I can come up with, the dream is really powerful.

Cliff Duvernois: Well, I’m gonna put this out there and I’m gonna say that maybe that really isn’t a requirement after all.

Terry Duperon: Okay.

Cliff Duvernois: So you’ve gotten a patent, ,,,you’ve gotten more patents. 

Terry Duperon: Yes. And 

Cliff Duvernois: you were talking about, getting a patent and starting a business. So I know there’s a couple different avenues that you could have taken. You very real, you know, you could have gotten the patent and then licensed that out to somebody else and then just collect a royalty check for the rest of your life, you know, play golf or whatever it is.

But you opted to take that probably the hardest journey of anything, and that is to start a business. 

So why did you decide to do that?

Terry Duperon: I make all my decisions based on who I am. I know who I am by the things I love, and. Matter me, make a difference to me. Not all my faults. I don’t look at those. I just look at the core.

And so I got to patent and I got choices, probably hundreds of choices that you could do with that. But I had to dream, which was, which was the lifestyle of Henry Ford, I think. Okay. Which meant it had to start my own business.

Interesting. Interesting. You pick Henry ford, okay. Go.

 Yeah, I, I kind of was fascinated with Henry Ford.

He had a lot of flaws, but he had some, And the thing on my wall right now, it says it was from Henry Ford. It says, I asked what they wanted. They, they would have said, Faster horses. Mm-hmm. . And so most people can see what exists now. Henry could see beyond that. Another way to do it. So most of us just deal with what’s known, not what’s unknown.

He could do that. So I think that’s what inventors do. They see beyond what’s here now and they bring something in the future. It doesn’t exist now. He probably was the key figure as my hero.

Cliff Duvernois: actually gonna circle back to that cuz I already know the end of the story, I wanna make sure we lay it out for the audience cuz this really is intriguing. 

So you go out there, you start your business, right? Duperon corporation is out there. You’ve incorporated, you know, you’re getting clients, the business is making money, but it was not all sunshine and rainbows. The end of the story, there was a a handful of times you really struggled.

Terry Duperon: Oh, constantly. Yeah. The first three years. I carried a pup tent in my trunk because I would make a sales call and I couldn’t afford a hotel and gas. So I just sleep in a tent at night and save the money for gas.

The thing is, once, once you have a dream, there’s no work in it. There was, it did not. I love my life. I don’t think I’ve worked in 50 years. But you, when you’re in a pursuit of a dream, it’s not a straight road, okay? It’s a series of fails, failures and successes. You pretty much build on the failures, 

right?

So that I see failure as a benefit, not anything else. A, a failure says, Don’t go that way, go this way. Okay? So that’s all it was. So it didn’t, didn’t have the impact of a failure. And I can’t say I didn’t feel it. I feel failure. I feel the emotional impact to that. I think it’s, nobody’s comfortable likes it, but I accept it as as a benefit.

So in the early days there was a lot of, lot of things I come up with that didn’t sell. And so I quit doing that and I got patents that didn’t sell.

So I, uh,

Your pursuit of the journey is greater than the failure of the things you try, right? You know, So once you have, you keep your eye on the dream. In fact, there’s only one thing I know that can kill a dream, and that’s that it loses presence in your mind then is dead.

As long as that dream’s alive, you’ll start seeing ways to get there. Well, it’s not a straight line.

Cliff Duvernois: yes, that’s true.

Terry Duperon: true. ..See, I think every my, you know, family life’s messy. Business is messy. Life is messy, okay? And I don’t have an expectation that it would be different than that. I think for a long time I hid that I was dyslexic, that I couldn’t read and write.

Most time I didn’t know, didn’t have a name for it. It, it would just dumb.

right. 

Okay, So you wanna hide that and you protect that. And one day I decided that I to quit doing that. Okay, this is what I am, this, this is what I’m gonna go through life in. And now I see it as a gift. At first it was a, a detriment. So I think once I started to see my life, these things I have as a gift, not, not a penalty.

to give you an example, In school, I have, I, I question everything and I analyze everything. So the, I would be asked a question and they’d say, Well, he probably was, and I’m saying he’s probably dead. I’m analyzing the whole question. Well, by the time I get ready to answer it, there are three questions now.

So the class in place won really, really fast to me. So it really hindered me in school. But when it comes to inventing, uh, solving a problem, it was an asset. So the very thing that haunted me become my biggest asset. So I’m grateful for it now, but I wasn’t most of my life. I know. If that makes sense to you,

Cliff Duvernois: Well, it does. 

So, you know, let me ask you this question. Let’s put it in context here. Would you give up the life that you have now?

Terry Duperon: that you Oh, I love my life. No.

Cliff Duvernois: So then if we could go back in time, right when terry’s being formed, 

if we took away this gift dyslexia, would you have the same life?

Terry Duperon: life. No, no. I probably have a job someplace, you know? Now I think the worst thing that could happen to me is I have to get a job. So I love the lifestyle. I love the the challenge. You’re fully alive in this game.

Yes, you 

are.

You know, So it doesn’t have to go smooth. You don’t expect it to go smooth.

 I think that I would just get a job and like most everybody else. But I think this pushed me out of that, Now I was asked by, I was working on a first book called A Different Ability with the Professor, a Low Plager. And he had, he was a principal of schools that teach handicap people. To chain to get people.

And so I, I was going to schools, talking to kids on their short bus and, and, I thought, what if I could leave him a book? So I worked with him on that and the first question he asked me is, Most kids that have what you have crawl the corner. They never do anything with their lives. What made you think you could do anything?

Cliff Duvernois: Good question.

Terry Duperon: Okay, so I, I took me a month to answer that. And my father and I didn’t get along very well. He’s a hotheaded Frenchman and he swears a lot, and he mad at me a lot.

Cliff Duvernois: I wouldn’t know anything about that 

Terry Duperon: So, It, it, I would kind of avoid him cuz he was scary to me. But what he did never let me off the hook. He never let me not run.

He always put me back on the tractor. Okay, no matter what, I screwed up. This is how you do it. You’re gonna do this. 

Well, even though it was harsh, the message sent was, You can do this. Okay? So every time I mess up, it never got me off. He would just holler and swear at me and say, This is how you do it. Do it.

I didn’t know it was a gift till I started working that book. And it is a thing that made me believe I could do something. Cuz he reinforced that now every time. And if you take a parent that says, say you asked Johnny to take out the trash and one parent, he spills it all over to get some blow. You say, I know you can do this Johnny, but I’ll, I’ll take the trash out from now on.

Message Sent: you can’t even take out the trash. Or my father would start screaming at me and say, You grab the basket like this. You’d pick up this mess and you do this every day. Okay, So you never let me off the hook. Message sent as you can do this. So that was the gift, and I didn’t realize it for a long time that my father gave me that gift.

Most the time I was just afraid of my, stayed away from mad at me all there but he’d gimme a gift. So that’s kind of where it came from, the belief that I could do something.

Cliff Duvernois: What I would like to do is we talked briefly about the struggle. That you had with your corporation and you kept going, you kept plugging, and then at some point you decided to hire a CEO come in and run the company.

Terry Duperon: I’m a really lousy manager. Okay. I can invent, I can create companies, but I can’t manage ’em. So I brought in Tammy, who’s my partner, who’s just the opposite of me, my oldest daughter. I mean, we are total opposite. She’s a terrific manager. And once we come together, this whole company really started to grow.

Cliff Duvernois: it did. 25% year over year. 

Terry Duperon: you’re, Yeah, and it’s a lot because of the combination between the two of us. So I was trying, I have a theory about that. I have a theory about everything,

Yeah, but not surprised.

surprised I think every, everybody’s oblong, you know, you’re really good at this out here and you’re not so good at this. So your ability to influence the world kind of shrinks between your thicks and thins, what you’re good at, what you’re not.

But when I brought Tammy into the business, she just opposite to me. She’s oblong, you know, completely opposite of me. So give you a graph. She would be, And she has the same thing. She’s really good at this management, not so good at the creative stuff, good at creative management, but not create machines and businesses.

You can manage ’em. So I thought it was like a catalyst. Once we both decided to work on what we do. At first we didn’t get along very well because we’re so opposite. But then I come to a point where I developed a profound respect for what she brought to the table. And she did for me too, and everything took off.

So I think this is like a catalyst. Your, your ticks and thins shrink us both down. But once she starts working only in her strengths and me only in my strength, it just expanded. It become very, very dynamic. And we built this business up to where it is, where now we have a president runs it and he’s really good at what he does.

Everything I do, I have to find a manager. Right now. I am, I’m a silent partner for a lot of young entrepreneurs to start business. I got 10 different businesses and, uh, but I couldn’t, man, once I got a group of, I couldn’t manage the group, so I hired Andrea to manage. I created TLD Holdings and all these companies are part of TLD Holdings, and she manages it and she does the marketing sales for it.

So it’s good to know what you’re not.

Cliff Duvernois: You know, and it’s interesting because my follow up question to that is, is a lot of the times ego becomes part of the equation and. You know, you’re struggling with your business. You really want it to go. I know a lot of people out there that would just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, but you had the presence of mind to think, You know what, maybe this isn’t my strength.

Maybe I should my somebody else in here to do this. 

in that, when tammy comes on board.

Terry Duperon: Yeah. Well, I’m a slow learner because at that time I lost everything I had plus a million bucks I didn’t have.

Cliff Duvernois: Wow. 

Terry Duperon: Okay, now, now you start to decide why. And so I kind of drew a graft and I said I started here and then I did making some money, got a good job, I got new idea, and I spent too much money too fast and pretty soon I’m in trouble.

Then I’m back up again. I’m doing 5 million projects, then I’m back down again. And then as on my way down again, I seen it. Every one of those things were bad management, bad choices not manage money very well. So once I seen it, then I could say, Yep, Terry, you’ll be doing this the rest of your life without her.

And that line just straightened out and we started growing.

You gotta fill in the blanks. You gotta fill in what you’re not, and it, the expectation that you have to know everything. You really don’t, you only have to know a few of the right things that you can hang on. 

So 

Cliff Duvernois: I have to share this with you cuz this has been very interesting to, to listen to you. You were emulating henry ford in so many powerful ways because I have actually studied henry Ford at Great Lengths. Yes, I have. And what I’m hearing is, and i, I want to share this story with. The audience because this is powerful, and I know that you, you probably have heard this story before. 

So back in the day, you know, Henry Ford is, you know, sitting at top of the world and there was a reporter from a local paper that was published in articles about how stupid Henry Ford was and how he didn’t know anything. And so Henry Ford invited him to his office. 

So this reporter came in the office and sat down and henry ford said, ask me any question that you want and I will get you an.

So the reporter’s like all excited, right? I’m gonna make Henry Ford look stupid. 

So he would fire a question. Henry Ford. Henry ford would pick up the phone, make a phone call, somebody would Kim in the office with the answer and then leave. 

So then he would ask the reporter, what’s your next question? 

Any question, any topic that you got more or A story is that I found powerful about that is the fact that you don’t have to know everything. You don’t have to be the smartest guy in the room, but if you surround yourself with the right.

You were talking about before, your dreams just become that much closer. So for you, you know, having that, being able to take your ego out of the equation and say, 

You know what? Tammy’s better at this than I am. Just like with all these businesses you were talking about TLD and how you got all these other corporations in there, you couldn’t manage it. Also, you brought somebody in to be able to do that for you. Now you’re being able to live your dream and be able to really impact and influence a lot of people because you know who to go.

To get the answers like you talked about before, fill in the blanks.

Terry Duperon: before.

Yeah. I, I can remember when I learned it. I was, I, I had built a machine, that company, I served apprenticeship and I had to go into the field and set it up. At Ford Sterling Plant, which is the biggest plant under one roof at the time, and I threw up twice on the way there because I thought I’d, I’d never be able to fill, fill the paperwork to get in the plant.

So I’m walking in there and kind of terrified that I cannot do that. I knew the machine, but I didn’t know how to fill the paper out, so I just bent my hand and said, I injured my hand. Would you fill that out for me? Problem solved. Okay. There’s other solutions, 

Yes.

 When you can’t do what everybody does easier, it, I don’t know what it is about it, but, uh, you’re more open to trust that you in what you need outside of yourself.

But it took an extreme for me to really figure out, I am really bad at this. So that’s when Tammy come in. And so that this what you see now as a result of those decisions that made all the difference. So I think that if I, I look at my past, the people I needed along the way showed up

Cliff Duvernois: Yes.

Terry Duperon: and I don’t understand that, but they always showed up and so they, some people come into your life for a short time and some for a longer time.

So now I’m trying to do a club. One degree. I meet you, you will change my life. At least one degree. Met my wife, change 180 degrees, but . So, so, but we will affect each other’s lives. So I wanna start a club where we have a lot of people who are up to something. I love to be around people, up to something.

You’re one of them. So we kind of support each other. So instead of having a speaker, And a little wine and cheese be mostly wine and cheese. Mostly. Let’s get to know everybody. Let’s get a culture and Duperon corporation. We have a very unique culture. When you, when we hire anybody in any position, everybody gets under ’em.

Everybody does everything they can to get ’em to succeed. I just talked to a couple of new employees, been here six months. They’re waiting for the axe to fall Paul, but it’s not going because the companies they come from. I make you look bad. I look good, and all that goes on.

Oh I, yeah. 

Okay. We don’t have it. 

That’s what you’re talking about. Yep. What? What we try and teach people is how to reinvent themselves and departments, and once you reinvent your department, then you own it and the culture changes. You’re not threatened by somebody coming in, and if you think about it, the person doing the job is the most equipped to figure how to make it better.

As long as you have a management that supports that, we allow a lot of, you can fail, you know?

Cliff Duvernois: Right

Terry Duperon: Right. So I’m on a tangent span, 

Cliff Duvernois: No, that’s okay. I’ve been enjoying this. 

What I would like to do is because you, your company’s established, it’s under good management. Yeah. You guys are seeing phenomenal growth, phenomenal growth.

Just, you know, you go throw that out there. just gonna double next year. 

we’re we’re cool with that. Yes.

Now at at some point, and I, and I know, like I said, I already know the end of the story, so you’ve got an opportunity now to, to teach, you know the kid that didn’t graduate high school Yeah. That struggled with reading and writing their entire life. You’re now being invited to the univers. to be able to teach. 

why don’t you share a little bit about what that is and what you’re, what you’re teaching.

Terry Duperon: my whole focus was, how’d that third grade boy cause that future?

Cliff Duvernois: Right.

Terry Duperon: So I’m, I’m in the class. I’m not, I have, I have two things that get me through two thoughts. One is, never be the one that limits you.

Cliff Duvernois: So I truth.

Terry Duperon: I would rather failed than not try. And the other one was, success has nothing to do with what You’re not run with what you got.

Right. I could probably fill this building with volumes all I’m not, Why would I go there? So when I was asked to teach the class, I’ve never been to university before. I didn’t really know what they did there. I had an image in it didn’t turn out like I thought, but it was, I remember never be the one that limits you.

My chances of failure was really high. But, uh, first day was awful. I put everybody in a coma in about 10 minutes, and then I talked to a real teacher and she told me what’s important so you know where the students are at. So when I drew that on the board, and then little by little by little, the class started to show itself and I taught there for three years.

Then I thought, if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna teach, uh, entrepreneurship, you ought to be able to start your own school. So I’ve had about 3000 people go through that and, and professor of university, I’ve taken it and, uh, I talk about these things and I have no explanation as to the why of it,

you know? 

Cliff Duvernois: Yes, I know. Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking 

about. Yep.

Terry Duperon: Yeah. So it’s just there and, and I think that I was willing to fail. I, I’m not gonna. I’m not gonna throw me out without trying before they throw me out, I not throw me out first. So I, and I think because of the dyslexic problems I’ve, I’ve learned to feel the pain of failure but not control me.

because. Yep.

So you’re talking to a one case study here. So they, they’re very unreliable. One case studies, cuz mostly I just learned from experience.

Cliff Duvernois: Well, you bring up a good point when you say learn from experience because say it 

Yeah, that’s absolutely true. 

And I think that when it comes to failure, first off, I think that there’s a real stigma when it comes to it. And then second off is, is, that we are raised in an environment where, where failure is punishment, you fail a. That’s just the way it is. If you don’t get enough questions right, you fail the test. Failing is bad. You’re not gonna get your diploma, whatever that is. I know, for me personally, it took me a long time before I could actually sit down and say to myself, you know what? I would rather try and fail than not do anything.

And that means that how you look at failure, the entire dynamic of it changes. Then being able to sit there and say, Okay, so I failed. What’s the lesson to be learned from this that I can take forward? 

So next time if I fail, I’ll fail better?

Terry Duperon: That one thought frees you. 

Yes. 

Okay. The, the, I think most of us do not wanna live where it’s familiar and no one, And once you step out of that, once you do what you just said, you’re gonna do open the failure. Now you’re on this blank sheet of paper where there, there’s the, all the unknowns are there, it’s intangible, all the things there.

And it’s uncertain. And so once you start that direction where you’re not just trying to be ordinary you, you end up in this other world, which is very rich and rewarding, but it has pain.

It’s 

It’s messy. But then I think you could set on your couch the rest of your life. Pain will being human. We’ll find you. Okay. So why not play the game?

You know 

Cliff Duvernois: exactly 

Yes. I love that. Why not play the game? in addition to teaching your gift of dyslexia, you publish books and you’ve got a new one coming out, The misfit millionaire.

Terry Duperon: Yeah. I did practice a 

Cliff Duvernois: little bit, a little bit about being an author.

Terry Duperon: Yeah. I, I hired a writer to write it and then I, he wrote legacy books and I thought I, I didn’t really want a legacy book.

I would like to have a book, My great-great grandfather or grandmother, The Life in Times a book, and I thought I would really value that. So I thought I’ll do that for my grandkids. So I started the book and then I started with, as far back as I could remember, so the misfit millionaire the thing that bothers me about that title, the author did some studies, is that’s what we should call it.

And I’m. Is it Money has never been my motivator. I’m not motivated to just stay by money. To me, money comes and goes. My attitude towards money is the same as it is and everything, anything you hold too tight owns you. You know, even your health, if you’re all about your health, it owns you. So I tell my doctor, You keep me alive.

I’m going to go about the business of living. 

So I think. It’s, uh, I lost my train of thought. we were talking about, 

Cliff Duvernois: uh, you publishing books. 

Terry Duperon: Okay. so they, so the book is all about that. Well, my kids are gonna be shocked when they read this thing cuz it’s almost done. So the books I wanted, I always had a purpose in mind for the books. One is about the class and then the fourth book is being worked on almost done.

It’s called Glimpses of God. And I had, I did a talk, it released rain and I didn’t know what was expecting me, so I thought I would just talk about those little events in your life. It shift you

it. Oh my God, that’s beautiful.

and I called it Glimpses of God. Well, it sounds like I’d seen them. It was just awarenesses. 

So the professor at the university wants to do this book, said, uh, let’s call it Glimpses God’s Grace.

Well, then he adds grace. I don’t know what grace is. So I ask around, and Grace is freely given, undeserved, unearned. So I’m saying, All right, when did I get grace? You know, in the book I talked about my surrender, like I got grace then. But I thought, I can’t tell God when to gimme Grace I think I’ve had it since conception.

As I look back, I can see the hand of God, even when I didn’t recognize him. I think so the book is around those things that happened that shift your life and uh, losing everything was a big shift in what happened there is I got really depressed, couldn’t get outta bed, didn’t have any idea how to get outta this hole I was in.

And as before Tammy come and I’m laying in bed saying I got nothing. I don’t have another idea. . I just lay here, don’t know what to do. If I got up and I get this one very clear thought and it was do only what’s clear, Pretty clear to get out of bed. , 

right? 

Pretty clear to take a shower bed in a while. Pretty clear to go to the office. Three years later, I didn’t even have a car payment. I did not mastermind my way out of that. I just, one clear thought at a time. And I’ve been living that way ever since. I just looked for a clear thought. So see where it’s taken me. I don’t really care where it takes me now. You know, I, it’s, it’s a fun journey. You know, I’m really, I love the lifestyle.

So that book is about those changes in your life. And there was several of ’em that shifted. Um, so I don’t know a lot. I’m talking about God and Christ, I don’t know a lot, just that it’s, it’s not a philosophy. Something happened to me. Okay, It changed. Nothing defeated me. I didn’t do that. I can’t talk about that. 

Right? 

Uh, because I don’t know a lot about it, but I just know how it affected me

Cliff Duvernois: For our audience, we’re gonna have the links to these books and the social profiles and the show notes down below. 

Terry, I would like to ask one parting question of you. Yes. 

And that’s for our audience that’s listening. 

If you could give them one piece of advice, what would that be?

Terry Duperon: Pursue your dreams. The dash on your tombstone is really short. Game on

Cliff Duvernois: Beautiful. 

Absolutely love that. Terry, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I’ve, really enjoyed our time 

Thank you.