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From Cancer Survivor to Ultra Endurance Athlete: Defying the Odds with Nick Klingensmith · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

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Today we sit down with Nick Klingensmith, the inspiring founder behind Stride Motivation.
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Nick's story is one of incredible resilience and transformation, a testament to the power of the human spirit.
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We delve into Nick's journey from a pivotal moment hitting rock bottom when he was thrown out of a Vegas hotel, to facing the unimaginable challenge of cancer not once, but four times.
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And if that wasn't enough, Nick has also conquered the grueling world of ultra endurance racing, all while navigating life as a type 1 diabetic and a recovering alcoholic.
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We'll explore how these life shaping experiences led Nick to redefine risk and resilience both personally and professionally.
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He'll share the transformative power of mindset, the core mission behind Stride Motivation, and how he empowers others to dream bigger and rise above their own perceived limitations.
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Nick's story is filled with invaluable lessons on finding purpose, embracing authenticity, and building a successful business against all odds.
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As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
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Okay, Nick Klingensmith, founder of Stride Motivation.
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Welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
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Dave, thank you.
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I'm happy to be here.
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Absolutely.
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We are so happy to have you.
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Okay, so Nick, let's start with the moment you describe as being thrown out of a Las Vegas hotel.
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Now that's a powerful image.
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What was the absolute rock bottom turning point that made you realize something had to drastically change?
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It was the hours after that moment.
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And let me tell you what led up to was July 12th of 2014 and I was in Las Vegas for a conference, for a sales conference with the company I was working at, in which two days later I
2:03
was supposed to appear on stage.
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I had just given up drinking a few months ago, or tried to give up drinking a few months ago.
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Alcohol had become a problem in my life.
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It was unavoidable at that point and I just wasn't ready to do something about it.
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But I tried and I white knuckled it for months and I was miserable.
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Miserable.
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And I attempted fate.
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I went every happy hour.
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You know, I threw beer Olympics at my house.
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I was doing everything I could to put myself in a terrible situation.
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And then the best thing happened to me.
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I was diagnosed with cancer for the third time.
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Only this time was different than the other times because there's a tumor pressed up against my vocal cords in my neck and the doctors didn't want to operate.
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Now, spoiler alert.
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It's been over 10 years and I still have the tumor in my neck.
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But at that time, all I heard was that there was just nothing left to do but drink.
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And so I had taken myself off the hook because after all, who's going to mess with the guy who had inoperable cancer?
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And so that's what led to me drinking that night in Vegas.
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That was my excuse for what led to me drinking that night in Vegas, where I blacked out multiple times throughout the night.
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I apparently got in a fight.
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I'm not a violent drunk.
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And apparently, well, not apparently.
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I remember this part.
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I tried to have sex with a hooker in a broom closet while my girlfriend slept down the hall.
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And that wasn't even the worst of it quite yet.
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First I was being told I had to leave.
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Getting thrown out.
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But not just me, her too.
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We weren't allowed back.
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I had to lie to her about some nonsense about how it wasn't my fault and everything, blah, blah, blah.
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I had to call the CEO of my company.
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I called our company attorney.
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And it took about four hours to find another room and to find another bed.
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It ain't like you see in the movies where you.
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They just let you do anything in Vegas.
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No, like you.
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They will wake you up.
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And it was those hours proceeding, getting to put my head to a pillow.
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And there was nowhere for me to hide.
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There was no lie.
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I could tell I was on full display.
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I had a problem, and it was either live or die.
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I had to do something about it.
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Okay, now, Nick, you faced cancer four times.
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How did those experiences shape your perspective on risk and resilience both in life and in business?
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I wish I could tell you that throughout my initial journey with cancer, that I grew to be resilient and that I was hopeful and inspirational.
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But that's not the case at all.
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When I went through each of those iterations of cancer, I was playing the victim.
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I simply became more resentful.
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I was angry, I was pissed off, and I felt like I was special because I had cancer.
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I created a victim mindset for myself that was entitled and it kept me stuck emotionally, professionally.
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It wasn't until I later discovered obstacle course racing and became an ultra endurance athlete and reflected back upon my journey and I was able to see now that I was playing the victim.
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Here's the biggest A to B though, for me.
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And I actually posted a video about this, about a three minute video I posted on my YouTube channel the other night.
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But when I would go get treated at Moffett Cancer center, which is one of the best cancer centers in the world, I would wear my sunglasses.
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I would not make eye contact with anyone.
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I wouldn't chitchat with anyone.
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I told myself that I didn't want to feel like a patient, but that wasn't the truth.
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It was that I was walking out of there and I don't know that about the guy next to me.
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And it made me feel very uncomfortable.
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It wasn't until very recently that I realized I have just tremendous survivors guilt and I didn't know what to do with it.
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And now that I've kind of forced myself into being in a position where I talk about it and where I can be vulnerable, vulnerable about it, I've realized that I have the opportunity to help others with it, whether
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it be by sharing my own experience.
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Fundraising from the American Cancer Society.
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I race with the words cancer written across my chest, which surprisingly, actually helps reach a lot more people than I would think.
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And so the whole journey of cancer is not just the fact that I survived it, because that didn't make me into a better person.
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That just kept me alive.
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It was the transformation that now puts me in a position to do something with it.
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That I can say that I've overcome it.
6:46
In my world, a personal brand is invaluable.
6:49
A year ago, EasyDC was brand new with just a couple of customers and no online presence.
6:55
Then I found Hicks Marketing.
6:57
They helped me amplify my personal brand, build a solid content strategy, publish my podcast and 10x the number of customers we serve, all in less than one year.
7:07
Do you need a marketing partner who gets you and cares about your success?
7:11
Reach out to aliciaxmarketing.com for more info and tell her Dave Gula sent you.
7:17
And being a type 1 diabetic, a recovering alcoholic, and dealing with significant physical injuries, how you manage to find the sheer willpower to even start, let alone complete these extreme endurance races.
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I like to call it a glorified temper tantrum.
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It was about eight and a half years ago and my boss had walked to my office and challenged me to do a spartan race.
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And at the time I was not interested at all.
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It sounded miserable to me.
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An 8 to 10 mile trail run with obstacles like hell no.
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I had no intention of being that uncomfortable.
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But I went home that night and that's when I really discovered the problem is I had everything going for me.
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You know, I four time cancer survivor, type 1D.
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I'm sorry, four time cancer survivor.
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I had just decisively beaten cancer for the fourth time.
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I was dating a new woman.
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That's my now wife.
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I was two years sober I was a VP of sales and crushing goals.
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Life was so good.
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And that I realized I already was uncomfortable because I was stuck.
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I had created and allowed all those things that had happened to create like this bubble around me.
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I had such limiting beliefs.
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I was convinced that I couldn't run because of my diabetes, that I couldn't adventure because my sleep apnea, that I would always be held back because my addiction.
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And I basically threw a glorified temper tantrum that said, you know what?
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Yes, I can screw you if I have a bad back.
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Who says I can't do this?
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Who says life is supposed to be without pain?
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Who cares if I have diabetes?
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And it's going to be challenging being 15 miles out in the middle of the woods in the middle of a race somewhere.
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Well, I'm going to have to figure it out.
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But I just got tired of being held back.
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And when I realized it was me that was holding me back, I was able to do something about it.
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Okay, now everyone struggles with self doubt, particularly entrepreneurs.
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So when you're doing these like the Boston, the Chicago Marathon and then like the Spartan ultra, what was the internal dialogue like?
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You know, I say this from time to time and I think people think it's cliche, but it's, it's accurate.
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I say that I don't train for races.
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I train for life.
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Races are just a celebration of my progress.
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And so what is my head going through when I'm running like the Boston Marathon?
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It's holy.
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I'm running the Boston Marathon.
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My first Boston Marathon was 18 degrees in sleeting.
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It was 40 mile an hour headwinds the entire race.
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The high of the day was 40.
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All right.
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It's a point to point course.
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It was the worst weather conditions in the history of the Boston Marathon.
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That was my first marathon ever and I enjoyed every second of it because it was the boston freaking marathon.
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122 people donated money to put me in that race, donating to charity.
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And I remembered and I carried them with me and I carried the cause with me.
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So I'm just happy to be out there.
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When I run ultras, part of the reason I race with cancer on my chest is because I'm not running it for me.
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You know, I actually just as an example, I was out in Jacksonville, Florida a couple of weeks ago, and it was about 44 degrees or something stupid at the start of the race, which is pretty chilly for a
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race.
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You're going to be running through water and mud and, you know, stuff like that.
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And I almost decided to not run shirtless because I was a little bit too chilly for me.
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But then I thought about a friend's dad who had recently been diagnosed with cancer.
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And so I decided it was important not he doesn't care if I race like that or not.
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I felt it was important that I suffer, that I do something that sucks for just a little while.
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So I'm embracing those opportunities when I'm out there.
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You know my favorite race of last year, I failed it because I got injured with cramps 10 miles into a 30 mile race.
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But those 10 miles, I've never worked so hard in my life.
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I have never pushed myself beyond fear.
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When you talk about doubt, move into doubt.
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If you doubt yourself, go find out.
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Doubt sucks.
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I'd rather know.
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Just lean into it and it suffer and suffer.
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And you know what?
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Even though I was unsuccessful in achieving my goal that year, that last year, I was able to leave it out on the mountain because I knew, literally I gave it my all and it felt good.
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Okay, and so, Nick, your company, Stride Motivation.
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What's the core mission behind that brand?
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And how does your personal journey translate into the value that you provide for others?
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So my purpose is to overcome every obstacle and inspire others that they can too.
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I have literally found a meaning to my suffering and a purpose to my life.
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And the message that I share though is about a mindset shift.
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It's about going from victim to victor and ways that we do.
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That is we build mental toughness by embracing personal responsibility as empowerment.
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We align purpose and seek higher purpose in what we do and understand the power of why we do what we do.
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It's about aligning your priorities and taking relentless action towards those goals.
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And so as Stride Motivation, I'm an inspiring keynote speaker.
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So I want to tell my story and the relevant lessons from it into the people that I'm talking to.
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None more important than the power of self belief.
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Because if you don't believe it, then you cannot achieve it.
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And for the rest of my business, as a coaching business, I work one on one primarily with salespeople.
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But their goals are wildly different.
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And the thing that I do with them is I give them a framework to set high impact goals and then we break them down into wildly specific and stupidly simple action steps to drive them forward.
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Okay, now, Nick, in your journey, you've publicly shared your past struggles.
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What challenges did you face when opening up about such personal issues?
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And what advice do you have for others who want to be authentic in their own story?
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Let me Tell you the before and after, before I started sharing vulnerable stories.
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Actually, let me go back a second.
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When I wrote the book through the Fire, the first copy, the first version was125,000 word mindless manifesto.
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It was like the ego version, all right?
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It might as well have had the Rock and Jake Gyllenhaal on the COVID And it was a cool book into like obstacle course racing and endurance sports.
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And it told some of my story, but it wasn't honest because even in that Vegas story, I made excuses.
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I alluded to the fact that maybe it wasn't all my fault.
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You know, I made stuff up to protect myself.
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And then when I looked at the second version of that book and I had to cut and I cut and I cut and I cut and I revised and I cut out 37, 000 words.
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And in that process is when I cut out all the lies.
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When I realized that nobody's gonna care about some dude who climbs on jungle gyms in the weekend if they don't know about who.
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Who I was and why.
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It's important that what I went through and what I went through it.
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So I had to be brutally honest.
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And there was a point, you know, I'm listening to Mel Robbins book Let them right now, the let Them theory.
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And there really was a point when I went to publish my book and I was like, you know what?
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What if thousand people read this?
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Well, number one, that wouldn't be a problem.
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But if they did, and 999 of them hated it and made fun of me and said, who am I?
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Or this?
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And that said, you're a piece of.
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And blah, blah, blah.
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But one person benefits from the message, so let them.
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Screw them.
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They're not the person I'm trying to reach.
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And when I started putting out daily videos, which I pretty much do almost every day, I realized that vulnerability is a superpower and that I'm not unique.
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And there is nothing I've gone through that somebody else hasn't experienced.
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And there's nothing I'm going through that somebody else isn't experiencing.
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So when I started sharing about it, two things happened.
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Number one, people started just relating to me instantly, which meant I was talking about things they were going through.
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It also made me realize I'm not alone because I'm able to share that and realize that I'm not alone.
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And it removed all the power that any of those things had over me.
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And so now, honestly, in the age of AI, be authentic, there is nothing more valuable than Your authentic self.
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And yeah, you know what?
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Not everybody's going to like you, but screw them.
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My message isn't for everybody, it's for the person who needs it.
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Love that.
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Okay, now Nick, you've also mentioned defying limitations.
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So what does that phrase mean to you in the context of building a business?
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And how do you help others do the same?
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First thing I talk to anybody about is they need to dream bigger.
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Know there's an exercise I like doing with people and this is a, it's kind of a personal mission but it interwinds their, their professional aspirations as well.
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Where I, I asked them to do a vision map, if you will, of the final, final five years of their life.
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And they're describing what life is like, what they've been like, what they've accomplished, etc, and the overwhelming majority of people, even though we're talking about people who are writing about something 40, 50 years in the future, write about
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their dream, but it's still limited by something in their life today.
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So I'm trying to think of an example but you know, you just don't see yourself making billions of dollars when you're struggling to pay the mortgage today.
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And so, you know, their dream is usually like, well, I'm financially stable.
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We only see each ourselves getting out of the problem that we have instead of dreaming to where we're going.
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And you know something, I talk about people in the freight market all the time.
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If you're tired of surviving on scraps, stop fighting for them.
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We need to dream bigger, aim higher, ratchet up expectations.
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Personally, professionally, when you limit your beliefs, you limit the actions that you take.
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And when you limit your actions, you limit your results.
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It's a self fulfilling prophecy.
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I would much rather say I'm going to be the number one speaker in the world and fail tremendously and end up being the 232nd speaker in the world instead of thinking I can't do all that great and then
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completely being a nobody forever.
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It's not even about risk versus rewards, is that risk inherently equals rewards.
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Okay, and how, how is the discipline that you developed through endurance racing translated into the discipline needed to build a successful business?
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You know, I wish I could say I'm the most disciplined person in the world, but if there's an area of my life I could use improvement, and I think this is true for a lot of us anyway, it
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is discipline.
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What I have done very well at though is intention.
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And what I mean by that is I'm very particular about what I'm working On when I'm working on it, why I'm working on it, I want to make sure that it's impactful towards my goals.
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I think that I would benefit greatly from being more disciplined in my habits.
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I think that's something that I can continue to do.
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But a lot of it comes from necessity.
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And what I mean by intention, too.
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You know, there's a guy that I'm working with right now, and we had a conversation a couple weeks ago where two things.
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Number one, he talked about wanting to run a marathon.
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The rest of the conversation was about how encumbered he is by his responsibilities right now.
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And I.
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He was like, so maybe when the time is right.
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And I actually challenged him to do it now.
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Because sometimes we think we're so busy, we're so caught up in the whirlwind, it's because we're trying to do too much of the unimportant stuff.
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And so by adding a substantial focus, like a marathon.
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Training for a marathon is no joke, right?
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You're talking about 12 to 16 weeks of.
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Of focused activity.
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And it forces you to make uncomfortable decisions.
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It forces you to say no to certain activities that are not helpful.
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It says forces you to say no to distractions.
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I live in Florida, Tampa Bay.
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My.
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We got hit by two hurricanes in two freaking weeks last year in October.
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All right?
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We barely recovered from the first one.
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We got hit from it again.
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My screen, my backyard looked like a trailer park.
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All right?
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Things were falling down all over the place.
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You know what I did about it?
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Nothing.
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Because my role is to make money and make the business successful.
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It was going to take me three times as long as somebody else who knew what they were doing to fix the stuff back there.
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It wasn't worth the time.
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And sometimes you just have to ignore things that are not that impactful in order to focus on the most important.
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Okay, all right.
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And what specific tools or practices do you use to maintain your mental and emotional resilience, especially when you face a setback?
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That's funny.
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I talked about setbacks this morning.
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You know, setbacks are inherent because many of us get the impression that success is supposed to be linear, and we think that there's just one end result.
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You know, talking specifically in, say, sales or even any sort of an achievement, just because the movie ends at the end of the big fight or the end of the big game or the end of the big sale,
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life doesn't really work that way.
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And so it's about continuously setting benchmarks and goals for progress and Working on yourself and not necessarily the.
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The things peripheral to that.
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So in other words, my number one goal every day, every year, is to stay sober 365 days a year, one day at a time.
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And there are various activities I do every single day.
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And why is this vitally important?
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Because without number one, it doesn't matter what number two is.
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And so I prioritize that next practice, which has to do with my.
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My physical health.
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And so there's certain things in there that I will prioritize above everything else.
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I am the guy who used to skip doctor's appointments, cancer doctor's appointments, because I had a meeting to go to, or, you know, I really wanted to just see what happened with the numbers at the end of the
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day or any one number of a thousand work things that ultimately worth that important.
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There's no such thing as work life balance.
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The pursuit of work life balance is a myth.
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The only way you're balanced is when you're standing on your own two feet, not going anywhere.
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It's about prioritizing the most important things.
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So that's why I talk about, for me, it's my spiritual health, my physical health, and then, of course, yes, mental health.
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So I prioritize reading, I prioritize meditating, I prioritize my program of sobriety and things that will always have to come first, because without those things, I am no good to anyone else.
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Okay, and with everything that you've been through, what would you say is the biggest misconception people have about overcoming adversity?
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That just.
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Just because you survived it, that you overcame it.
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And what I mean by that is just because you had bad stuff happen to you doesn't make you tough, and it doesn't make you special, because I was that guy.
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And for a long time, I confused resentment with resilience.
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And I was angry, and it kept me stuck, and it actually kept me a victim of the adversity.
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At some point, we can't cry the victim.
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We have to actually take responsibility for the things that have happened to us and then find a way to use it for something positive, which usually comes in the form of helping others.
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But the biggest misconception, and I fell for this for the longest time.
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You know, people would tell me all the time, oh, you're so tough.
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You're such a survivor.
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And I'm like, why?
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Because I didn't die.
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I'm lucky.
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That's all I was, was lucky.
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And I did nothing with it.
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And I stayed in that cesspool of resentment, thinking That I was special and poor me and all this other stuff.
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But I hadn't overcome any of my adversity.
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I had only survived it.
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I needed an outlet that made me rise above everything that had happened to me.
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I needed something that was dangerous, almost something that was just saying, you know what?
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I am not going to be held back by these limitations.
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This is how I'm going to overcome it.
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And how you thrive is by helping others to do the same.
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All right, and if you could go back and give one piece of advice to your younger self during your darkest times, what would that be?
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Darkest times, huh?
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God, that's tough.
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Let me tell you why I don't think there's anything I can change.
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I don't think there's anything in my past I would be willing to change, because I'm right where I need to be, and I needed everything, including all my mistakes, to get there.
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And so if I were to give myself some sort of advice, honestly, even the stuff that would have made me have an easier road mentally, I needed to experience what I had to experience to get there.
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You know, if I really were to give some professional, I would give it to my professional self.
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And to say, you know what?
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Hey, screw that.
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Would just say, hey, screw them.
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All the people that you hold in your head, I would.
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I would.
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I let way too much people take up real estate in my head back in the day, and it made me edgy, it made me unfocused, it made me focused on winning, focused on ego.
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You know, these are things I talk about in my book.
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It's the Vegas story, only professional.
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I get really vulnerable about my own shortcomings as a leader.
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And so I guess if I was going to give any advice, it would be that.
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But again, I think for my own personal journey, I had to go through what I had to go through in order to get to where I am.
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So I had to learn it the hard way.
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Ah, okay.
24:51
And for our listeners who are facing their own battles, whether in business or in life, what's the single most important message you want them to take away from your story?
25:04
Mindset's a choice.
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Nobody wants to hear it, but it is.
25:08
Mindset is a choice.
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What you choose to focus on is your reality.
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You can define yourself by your adversity, or you can define yourself by how you overcome your adversity, or you can define yourself by anything.
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But I'm very particular saying that I'm not a cancer survivor.
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I'm the cancer survivor who became an obstacle course racer and defied it all.
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I'm not a diabetic.
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I'm a diabetic who became an obstacle course racer and defied it all.
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You define.
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You choose the story.
25:36
You define who you are.
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You're not defined by the things that happen to you.
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Love that.
25:43
Okay.
25:44
And Nick, if people want to get in touch with you, learn more about your coaching problem program or the any of the other work that you're doing, what's the best way that our listeners can reach out to you?
25:56
I am everywhere on the Internet, on social media, at Stride Motivation.
26:00
You can find me on my website and contact me and book a call@stridemotivation.com okay.
26:06
And we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
26:09
Well, Nick, we thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this valuable wisdom from your journey.
26:15
We greatly appreciate it.
26:17
Thank you so much for having me.
26:18
All right.
26:19
And that's all the time we have for now.
26:21
We will see you next.