On a recent episode of The Sales Hunter Podcast, Mark sat down with Darryl Clark, COO at Wallace Eannace & Associates, to talk about what it takes to get motivated—and stay motivated—in sales and in life. Darryl’s journey from warehouse worker to the boardroom carries lessons anyone can use to fuel consistent, purpose-driven motivation.
From Warehouse to Boardroom: Darryl Clark’s Story
Darryl didn’t start at the top. While attending Hofstra University, he took a part-time job working in the warehouse. That entry-level role quickly became the starting line for an impressive career progression, fueled by curiosity, discipline, and a relentless commitment to growth.
Clark moved from loading trucks and repairing products to assistant warehouse manager. He started attending industry trainings on his own time, then landed an inside sales role. Driven by a desire to excel, he studied sales classics by Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, and others. Eventually, he rose through project management, outside sales, and leadership, culminating in his current executive position. His story is a masterclass in self-motivation and self-improvement.
Find Your Purpose and Passion
What keeps a person moving forward, even when the work isn’t glamorous? According to Darryl Clark, the secret starts with wanting it for yourself.
“You have to want it. You really do. You have to find your purpose and your passion in life.”
Clark sees too many people chasing someone else’s expectations without taking an inventory of what they truly enjoy or excel at. Lasting motivation, in his view, comes from figuring out your strengths—and then finding a way to build a business around them. Without that self-understanding, it’s tough to summon up daily drive.
Discipline Beats Motivation
Motivation isn’t about feeling pumped up all the time. Consistency, Clark stresses, comes down to discipline: “doing what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.”
Even when warehouse work wasn’t his dream, Clark made a conscious decision to be the best he could at each level, seeking ways to add value and grow. That mindset paved the way for every promotion and new opportunity down the line.
Surround Yourself With Fuel
The environment matters. Clark credits his mother for introducing him to motivational icons like Les Brown early in life. He also devoured books, treating each one like downloading a new operating system into his mind.
“When you read those books, you’re downloading the consciousness of the author into you. As long as you take it and apply it, that’s the key.”
Knowledge, he insists, only becomes power when put into action. Whether attending seminars, reading daily, or listening to outside voices, Clark’s approach is to fill his mental tank with fuel that pushes him forward.
Lead by Example and Invest in Others
True motivation isn’t selfish. Clark holds himself accountable by striving to be a role model for his family, especially his children. He wakes up early, exercises, and reads daily, so his kids can witness—directly or indirectly—the routines that lead to success. The ripple effect is real.
“You want to be an example and you have to be motivated to be that example of what success looks like, of what hard work looks like.”
Clark measures impact not only by career wins but by how his discipline transfers on to others. That includes the thousands of people who receive his daily 6am audio message, designed to jumpstart their day on a positive note.
The Formula for Staying Motivated
The themes from this conversation point to a clear set of habits:
- Take inventory of your passions and strengths. Let your genuine interests drive your path.
- Develop daily self-discipline. Don’t rely on feeling motivated, instead rely on consistent action.
- Pursue constant self-development. Read, listen, and learn from experts and mentors.
- Hold yourself accountable; not just for your own sake, but for the example set for others.
- Surround yourself with motivated, positive people. Energy is contagious.
Top performers aren’t just born, they’re made, day by day, by the choices and routines they commit to. Motivation isn’t a burst. It’s a habit.
This episode is a reminder: Living with purpose, investing in yourself, and building consistent disciplines aren’t just paths to personal achievement. They set off a chain reaction for those around you. And that’s real success.
As Mark Hunter wrapped up: “When you surround yourself with excellence and you invest in other people, it’s amazing at what can happen and what will happen. That’s how you get motivated. That’s how you stay motivated.”
Mark Hunter :
How do you get and stay motivated? Hey, we all know in sales, more important than ever. Well, more important than just life. You gotta be motivated. With me today, Darrell Clark. And the show begins right now.
Meridith Elliott Powell :
You’re listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter where the focus is to help you as a salesman sell with confidence and integrity. And now, here’s your host.
Mark Hunter :
Okay, so the question is, what do you do to get motivated? What do you do to stay motivated? With me today, Darrell Clark. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Darryl Clark :
Thank you, Mark. It’s a pleasure to be on your show. I appreciate that. Thank you.
Mark Hunter :
Hey, I want to jump in right now because I want you to tell the audience a little bit about your story and then kind of what you do because you put out a video every morning, an audio every morning. Morning at 6, I get it at 6am and it’s amazing. It’s a powerful motivation message. We’re going to put a link in there because I want other people to be able to sign up to get it from you. But tell the audience your story because.
Darryl Clark :
Sure, yeah. So my story. Well, right now I work for Wallace and his associates. I’m the chief operating officer and partner and also the chief motivation officer and affectionately known as the creative thought scientist. And so I’m at the, I guess you can call it the top of the food chain now. But I wasn’t always at the top of the food chain, Mark. My career started while I was going to Hofstra University. I started to work here at Wallace Ennis part time to, you know, help support the family.
Darryl Clark :
And I was working in the warehouse here at Wallace Ennis. And to make, to kind of go quickly, I worked in the warehouse, saw what kind of products and everything that, that we were shipping and receiving. So I, the forklifts, I was packing the, packing the equipment, loading them onto the shelves. I was opening up the boxes, repairing things. When things went wrong, I was shipping things out. And one thing led to another, another opportunity opened up and I became a assistant warehouse manager. And then we had trainings on hydronic and heating and cooling equipment. That was the, those are the products that we sell and provide to the marketplace.
Darryl Clark :
And so it is a recession proof industry because everyone needs heating, everyone needs cooling, everyone needs domestic hot water to be able to take a shower, wash their hands, brush their teeth. And so one day, one of our trainers, his name was Dan Holohan, he’s world renowned, he was having a training in our conference room and I snuck out of the warehouse and went into the back of his Training room. And I said, wow, this is something that I can do. And so I listened to the training, I went back into the warehouse, and then another opportunity opened up for, for inside sales. And my mentor, Mario Fazari, at the time I went to him and I said, hey, Mario, I’d like a shot at this inside sales position. And he said, you think you can do it, Darrell? I said, I’m pretty sure I can do it. I’d love an op. I’d love just to have an opportunity, Mario.
Darryl Clark :
And so he gave me the opportunity, and I looked around at the guys that were doing the inside sales, and I said, you know what? I can be better than every one of them. I can be the best inside salesperson that this company ever, ever had. So I bought Zig Ziglar’s books, See you at the top, top performers. Brian Tracy’s book, Psychology of Selling, Jeffrey Gitter’s book, the sales Bible, or whoever you can think of. I had a pile of them on my desk. That and, and other business management books as well. And so, you know, I would have guys coming by, hey, Darren, I want you to take this order. And I would take the order.
Darryl Clark :
And you know, one of the guys, his name was Chuck, he had a fantastic memory, and he would, he was, he was more of an order taker than he was a salesman, even though he was out on the road as a, as a sales guy. And so he would have these orders, he would come by my desk. Darrow, take this order for AF supply. I want 144, 47 dash twos, 64 67s. And so I would just write it down and I’d take the. Okay, I’ll take it from here, Chuck, and I’ll handle it. And then Chuck said to me one day, you know, Daryl, why do you have all of those books on your desk? You’re not going to be anything other than just an inside salesman, so you might as well leave it doing that. And so that wasn’t any motivation for me because I, I knew what I wanted to do already.
Darryl Clark :
But, and listen, you can have an excellent career as an inside salesman. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. And so he was kind of demeaning that position, you know, with, with his comments. But anyway, so I excelled at that position, and I did become the best inside salesman that our organization ever had. And another position opened up for what they call project management and, and performance contracting, sales. And so they. My boss at that time, he moved me over into that position. And my first week out I got a fifty thousand dollar order from Carrier Corporation and, and I showed it to Joe.
Darryl Clark :
When I came back, he was like, back in those days, that was a very, very big order. I would still love a fifty thousand dollar order today, you know, because every, every, you can’t get to a million dollars without starting with a penny and without getting to a dollar. So everything counts. It all counts. So I did well in, in that position with performance contracting. But Joe was like, man, if this guy can do this in one week, then we need to put him out on, in mechanical contractor sales, where the big dollars are. And so he put me out into that division and I quickly rose in that division, became the best outside salesman and mechanical contractor, plan the specification sales. And eventually Joe retired and I moved into his role now as managing the engineered products group, that whole outside sales division and plan and specification.
Darryl Clark :
And I did really, really well there. And the boss at that time, Hank Kunkel, he saw, he saw what I did from being in a warehouse to working for Joe and rising to manager of the whole division. So he made me an offer to become partner in the firm. And here we are today.
Mark Hunter :
I love that. This is what I love about you, because you love talking about motivation. You are an expert at motivating people, but you have done it, you have absolutely done it. Going from warehouse to boardroom, you’ve done that. So how do you, what are, what’s the secret for, for people to, to get motivated and to stay motivated?
Darryl Clark :
Yeah, that’s a very, very good question. You have to want it. You really do. You have to want it and you have to, you have to find your purpose. You have to find your purpose and your passion in life. Most people don’t know what that is. It’s very, very difficult to figure out what you want to do with your life. I believe that a lot of children that go to college, their parents are steering them in a direction saying, well, do this or do.
Darryl Clark :
They’re not doing what they want to do. They don’t really have a desire to do what their parents is pushing them towards. And they quite frankly haven’t taken inventory. Right. Of their strengths and weaknesses and figuring out what is it that they do well, what is it that they would do if they could do it every day, even if they didn’t get paid for it. Figuring out a way to do something that you love and to get paid well for it. So it takes to be, to stay motive, to stay motivated. It takes knowing what you want to do.
Darryl Clark :
Because if you don’t know what you want to do. Well, how are you going to be motivated to do anything? You don’t know what you want to do, but if you know what you want to do, right. And you’re passionate about it, then you do. You develop the discipline, right. To be consistent with it and do those things every single day. If you. I get up every day, right. I get up every morning.
Darryl Clark :
And, you know, my goal is to be able to touch somebody through the spoken word and through my audios that I send out every single morning, right? So people. People get those. And I get messages. I get messages back. Oh, thank you so much. I really needed that. I get messages. You know, if you didn’t send me that, I would have never started my own business.
Darryl Clark :
You know what? I’m so glad that you said that because, you know, I felt down today and now because you said that, you know, I’m in a different space, I’m in a different mindset. But it takes that kind of consistency to be able to have an impact on people, really. You have to figure out what you want to do, take inventory of yourself and what you. What your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, and figure out what you’re really good at. Right? And then, okay, how can I make a business out of what I’m really good at? And then being consistent, and then being consistent with it, doing it all the time, you have to have that discipline. Discipline. I define it as doing what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.
Mark Hunter :
Oh, I love that definition. That is. That is power. Hey, back up the audio 10 seconds. You got to hear what Daryl just did he drop. That was a mic drop moment. And I want to put that into perspective now, because when you were in the warehouse, you’re in the. Where.
Mark Hunter :
How did you motivate yourself in the warehouse? Because again, that wasn’t exactly your passion, Right, Right.
Darryl Clark :
No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t my passion, but it was. It was a starting point initially just to get some money to pay some bills, right? So I was going to college and, you know, I had to. Had to pay some bills that I had, you know, going on in college. So that was a starting point. And then when I was there, I was like, this is interesting because I did at that point, I didn’t say, hey, I want to be chief operating officer of this company. That was. That was not a thought in my mind at that time.
Darryl Clark :
My thought was, okay, how can I get a promotion? How can I make myself more valuable? Right? How can I Make myself more valuable just being a warehouse guy, because that’s tough. You know, you can. You know, you can find plenty of warehouse guys, but a neurosurgeon. Neurosurgeon is a specialist. So a neurosurgeon’s value is going to be much greater because there’s less of them. You can find a lot of guys that can work in the warehouse because it doesn’t take as much specialized knowledge. But while I was there, I said, hey, I can be the best warehouse guy, and let’s see where this can lead to.
Mark Hunter :
I hear three things in what you. You said, one, you were in the warehouse because you needed to get the money. So maybe that was your passion because you needed to get the money to pay for school.
Darryl Clark :
That was the motivation.
Mark Hunter :
That was the motivation. Two, you were curious. You were absolutely. Had a level of curiosity in. Three, you were committed to yourself. Because you were absolutely committed to yourself, saying, there must be another position that I can move myself into it. And I’m going to kind of say that those three things really started your upward progression, right?
Darryl Clark :
Yeah. So those. Those three things. And then plus my mother, she said, hey, I’m going to this seminar, and I want you to come with me. And I was like, oh, come on, Ma. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go to a seminar. And she’s like, oh, please, just come to me.
Darryl Clark :
Come with me to this seminar. I was like, okay, I’ll come with you. And it was at the Holiday Inn not far from here, and get to the seminar. And it’s Les Brown.
Mark Hunter :
Oh.
Darryl Clark :
So that was my introduction to Les Brown at around 21, 22 years old. And that seminar changed my life. He said, some things that stuck with me are still with me to this day. And that’s when I. When I heard his story, I said, okay, my story can be not his story, but something very, very similar. If it’s possible for him, then it’s possible for me. And that’s the title of one of his books, It’s Possible.
Mark Hunter :
I love that because, I mean, Les has an amazing story. And if. And if you. If anybody hasn’t heard the story of Les Brown, you can Google it. I’m sure there are videos out there on it. I’ve heard Les a number of times, and it is an amazing story. Now let’s again, back up this bus here a little bit, because I’m hearing you say something else. You allowed outside voices to come into your life.
Mark Hunter :
You said you had a stack of books on your desk. You know, your mother took you to the Les Brown event and it sounds like that’s a key. It’s almost like putting fuel, motivation, fuel into your tank to be motivated. Is that a strategy that you say works?
Darryl Clark :
That is absolutely a strategy, yes. You know? Yeah. When you think about your computer, right. And someone says, okay, hey, did you download, did you download that, that document, you know, that I emailed over to you, that has, you know, the IRS code on it or that has, you know, the, the NBA stats on it or whatever, you can download it when, when I, When I. When I read Integrity, best selling by Mark Hunter. I’m downloading the consciousness of Mark Hunter into my mind and I’m taking certain things from that and it’s becoming a part of me. When I read Tony Robbins Ultimate Power and Awaken the Greatness, I’m downloading that book in certain parts of it that I’m going to take and use every single day. So when you read those books, Napoleon Hill Thinking, Grow Rich and all the Other Great Books, 7 Habits of Highly Effective.
Darryl Clark :
When you read those, you’re downloading the consciousness of the author into you. As long as you take it and apply it, that’s the key. You have to apply it. People say knowledge is power. Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is potential power. It’s the application of that knowledge that is the power.
Mark Hunter :
I love what you said. There’s another mic drop. Moen, back up the audio 10 seconds and listen to what Daryl just shared. And, and again, I think it’s, it’s what you allow in your mind. That’s why I love your, your morning messages, your morning audio messages, because they’re so powerful. They’re so. Again, you know, I always say what you put in your mind, first thing sticks with you. And it’s so critical, so important.
Mark Hunter :
Do you find, kind of a side note, that as you put those messages together, that you get motivated because of what you’re sharing?
Darryl Clark :
Absolutely. Yeah. I, I get motivated as I’m, as I’m reading at night before I go to bed and thinking about what I want to say in the morning. That as I get up in the morning and I’m thinking about it and I start recording it, I’m like, wow, that was powerful, man. That was, that was serious. That’s gonna, that’s gonna touch somebody today.
Mark Hunter :
I love what you said because I find that so amazing in my own life when I take the time to invest in other people. It’s amazing at how I’m investing in myself. And there’s something just powerful about that. And I think that’s why highly motivated people hang out with highly motivated people. Because again, it’s almost like the motivation just kind of runs back and forth between everybody in that group. You also have applied something else. There’s a level of accountability. I think if we want to get motivated and stay motivated, there’s an accountability to somebody else and accountability to ourselves.
Mark Hunter :
You made the comment when you were working in the warehouse, you needed to get the money. And I feel like, I feel like every step along the way you’ve got your family, you’re actively trying to support your family and provide for them. Best. I’ve had a chance to meet your kids and it’s amazing how I see highly motivated people taking the time to invest in other people.
Darryl Clark :
Sure. Wow.
Mark Hunter :
Sure.
Darryl Clark :
Yeah. You have to. You really do have to. If you’re going to be in this business, in this field, stay motivated. You have to want to be a. Be an example, right. You want to be an example and you have to be motivated to be that example of what success looks like, of what hard work looks like, of what discipline looks like. Right.
Darryl Clark :
And so it was very, very, extremely important for me, having grown up without a dad, to be there for my children to make sure that they had a dad in the home. That was so important to me. I was like, my children are going to see me in the home. They’re going to be in my home, they’re going to be raised by me and they’re going. And they’re going to see me every day, work hard. They’re going to see me get up in the morning at 4 o’, clock, get up, go out, go running, get my exercise in. They’re going to see me do that. They’ll be sleep, but they’ll know that I did it because, you know, I have recordings of those as well.
Darryl Clark :
Then they’ll see me come home and read from 5:15 to 5:45 for a half hour every day. Sometimes they get up and they would see me when they were kids, but I did that every day. And it was that consistency, right? Reading. You reading for a half hour every single day. You end up reading, you know, and you. And then you take some lunch time and, and some other break time and get 15 minutes of reading in, 15 minutes of reading in here. And before you know it, you’re reading a book a week. Well, the average American mark only reads one book a year, right? If you read one book, if you read one book, one nonfiction book, if you read one Book a month.
Darryl Clark :
Well, you. At the end of the year, you would have read 12 books. Average American would have read only one book. I read a book a week. So at the end of the year, I’ve read 50 books. Right, where the average American only read one. Well, in five years, I got 250 authors like yourself downloaded into my consciousness. At the end of five years, 250 books where the average American has only got five.
Darryl Clark :
And so I’m getting up earlier than people in my field. Right? And I’m also reading more than people in my field. I’m attending seminars by people like Dr. John Maxwell, the 21 irrefutable laws of Leadership. I’ve met him and I’ve got pictures with him. I’ve taken some of his trainings. So it’s investing in yourself. Right, so that I could be there for my kids, so that my children could see, you know, an example of good leadership, good father, working hard for them, making sure that I was there, helping them with their homework, helping them with after school activities, bringing them to track, football, basketball, dancing, all of that kind of stuff.
Darryl Clark :
And just being there for them. And, you know, with them seeing the hard work, the discipline, the dedication that I put into it, well, it just kind of transferred over to them and they did the same thing. They did the same thing. My daughter, she got a perfect score in the SAT section of the SATs and a perfect score of 800 and did phenomenal. She went to Vanderbilt University, graduated, and she’s now working for Google. My son’s a cyber security officer. He went to the University of Pittsburgh, and now he’s a captain in the army with a unit of his own in cybersecurity. And I’m not saying this again, please don’t misunderstand me.
Darryl Clark :
I’m not saying it trying to impress you, but as some of the greats have said, to impress upon you what is possible when you focus your discipline. You put your mind to it and you apply that knowledge because that’s where the real power is in the application.
Mark Hunter :
That is a perfect way to end this session. You have demonstrated to us how to get motivated, how to stay motivated, and you’ve lived a life that has done just that. We’ve been talking today with Darrell Clark, gone from warehouse to boardroom, chief operating officer of his company. Darrell, how do people get on the list to get your daily audio message? Because I get it every morning and I love it.
Darryl Clark :
Yeah, go to www.wea-inc.com and leave it in the comment section that you’d like to be on that motivational list.
Mark Hunter :
Terrific. And what we’ll do is we’re going to put that link in the show notes so people can have that. But I’m highly recommend you get his every morning. Like I said, I get it at 6am or 5am or something like that. I don’t know. It always goes off.
Darryl Clark :
It goes, it goes out. It goes out at 6:00am Eastern time.
Mark Hunter :
6:00am eastern time. Okay. So typically I’m in Central time. So, so it’s 5:00am here.
Darryl Clark :
And yeah, some people in the west coast get it at, at 3:00am and then in China, I don’t know what time they get it.
Mark Hunter :
Well, you know what? I don’t care because they better be up by now then.
Darryl Clark :
Right.
Mark Hunter :
Because again, like, you run every morning. I run every morning. I’m up well before 5. I’m up about 4:30 every morning. And I love it. You do too, because discipline is so key. Hey Darrell, thank you so much for being with us. Again, we’re going to put the link to get his audio message in the show notes.
Mark Hunter :
What a powerful session here today. Two podcasts each week, one like this where we do a deep dive with a subject matter expert. Darrell certainly fills that bill. Second one is where I just take a single topic and unpack it for you. Why do I do the podcast is to help you see and achieve what you didn’t think was possible. Because when you surround yourself with excellence and you invest in other people, it is amazing at what can happen and what will happen. That’s how you get motivated. That’s how you stay motivated.
Mark Hunter :
I’m Mark Hunter, the sales hunter. Great selling.
