During Clark's rehab, he was asked by his coaches to speak to the Morgan High School football team. As Clark tells it, "I was feeling sorry for myself; the doctor had just told me I was not going to get better. I get to the school and I see that their coach, Jan Smith, has MS. I didn't feel as sorry for myself suddenly."

Impressed with Clark's message, Smith asked him to speak before the team's next seven games, and Morgan won the state title. "I started learning about the power of words and emotion," says Clark.

The football talks led to an invitation to speak to the entire Morgan student body, and then the Morgan principal spread the word and principals from other schools invited him to speak to their students.

"And my career was under way," says Clark. "There was a need for people to inspire others. I started getting in touch with my own emotions and what I believed in. I discovered there was more to life than lifting weights and running. You have to stop and ask the important questions. My injury forced me to do that. That's what a midlife crisis is. You realize you're not the guy you thought you were going to be. It's someone finally stopping to evaluate his life. I had my midlife crisis at 22."

Clark began speaking at dozens of schools while completing his degree in psychology. He eventually ended up getting funding to speak over the next two years to teens at every high school and junior high in Utah.

"I talked about the power of a dream and free enterprise and agency and ethics," he says. "I always made 'em laugh and cry. I tell 'em stories. I've always been a storyteller."

Clark caught a break — actually, he created one in his typical can-do style when he arranged a meeting with Zig Ziglar, the guru of motivational speakers. Clark had devoured Ziglar's tapes, and when Ziglar came to speak in Salt Lake City, Clark was determined to meet him. As soon as Ziglar was finished speaking, Clark raced to the front row of the bleachers and shouted, "Mr. Ziglar, you changed my life! May I buy you dinner!?" Ziglar paused, then replied, "I'm coming back in two weeks; call my office."

Clark picked up Ziglar at the airport two weeks later and took him to the Hotel Utah, where he had set up a presentation in a room he had rented. Ziglar was so impressed that he arranged to fly Clark to Dallas to make another presentation. He passed the test again and was sent to Atlanta, where he spoke to a teen leadership conference.

After that, he was off and running. Between his Utah and national commitments, he was speaking to three or four schools a day, five days a week, every week during the 180 days of school, for two years. In 1983, he began to work strictly on the national high school and college circuit.

"I invented the high school motivational assembly," says Clark.