Clark's anti-drug message won him an invitation to a White House meeting with first lady Nancy Reagan. He took her "Just Say No" campaign to colleges and high schools. Eventually, his message evolved into time management and positive choices and making dreams happen.

"I realized that 'Just Say No' was obsolete," he says. "You can't coach results, only behavior. Instead of worrying about how to say no, say yes to something positive, and you won't have time to do drugs, etc. It became a positive-choices program. Why did I come back from my injury? I dreamed a dream. I surrounded myself with people who are positive."

In 1990, after having spoken to millions of high school and college students, he made a transition to the corporate arena — "He's funny, he's inspirational, he's Dan Clark — changing the world one story at a time," Larry King is quoted as saying in Clark's promotional pamphlet. In the corporate field, Clark has addressed Honeywell, the NFL, NASA, Macy's, Office Depot, Harley Davidson, Delta Air Lines, IBM, AT&T, Kodak, Frito Lay, Marriott, Bank of America.

"The phone keeps ringing, so I must be doing something right," he says.

Over the years, as he rubbed shoulders with the famous and successful, he has mined their brains for stories and inspiration and clues to success.

Over the years, Clark has used his connections to adventure into other arenas. He has collaborated on country songwriting projects with Monty Powell (a songwriter for Urban and Tim McGraw), Larry Henley (who wrote "Wind Beneath My Wings"), and Mike Reid (who wrote "I Can't make You Love Me" for Bonnie Raitt), which haven't been recorded yet. A self-taught musician, Clark plays piano and guitar. He says he has written about 400 songs and self-recorded about 30 of them.

He also has turned the stories he uses in his speeches into books. He self-publishes most of them. He sold 100,000 copies of "Puppies for Sale" at his speaking engagements. He took 250 of his stories, boiled each of them down to 24 lines, and published them as a book called "One Minute Messages."

"I would take them on an airplane," says Clark, "and I'd find the most talkative, outgoing flight attendant, show her the book, and tell her, 'I wrote this. Read these pages and tell me what you think.' She'd come back a few minutes later crying. Then she'd have the other flight attendants read it. I'd tell her, 'I'll give this to you if you promise to go online and buy your own copy and give it to someone.' "

Clark sold more than 150,000 copies of the book.