How to Restart Your Business After Breast Cancer

Seven breast cancer survivors share how to restart your business after breast cancer, from setting boundaries and rewriting limiting beliefs to building a support team that lets you step back from running everything yourself. Host Kandas Rodarte, who has lived with metastatic breast cancer since 2014, explains why gratitude and community are practical business strategies for women rebuilding after a major life disruption.

This episode contains some strong language.

If you’re a woman solopreneur trying to restart your business after breast cancer, this episode gives you practical ideas from women who’ve done it. They talk about who’s really in charge of your journey, how to say no without guilt, why your body is your best teacher, and how to protect your time and energy while you rebuild.

This matters because most business advice assumes you have unlimited energy and a clear calendar. These guests built or rebuilt their businesses around treatment, recovery, and real life, and each one brings something you can use this week. Several of them also have strong views on why nobody should rebuild alone.

What You’ll Hear:

• You’re the person in charge of your journey. Get opinions from your doctors, skip Dr. Google, and give the people around you grace when they react in unexpected ways.
• Beliefs you inherited aren’t more true than the ones you choose now. Merit Kahn shows how to look at the beliefs running your business and decide which ones stay.
• “No” is a complete sentence. Say it without guilt, listen to what your body tells you, and put rest and the things you love on your calendar.
• Time blocking protects your energy. Pick your interview days, your no-meeting days, and your treatment days, then build your business around them instead of squeezing your health in around it.
• Nobody should rebuild alone. Hiring a number two, leaning on a home team and a work team, and finding your own community can make the business better, not just survivable.

Meet the guests

• Deb Krier is the founder of Wise Women Communications, host of The Business Power Hour, and creator of TryingNotToDie.LIVE.
• Merit Kahn is a keynote speaker, stand-up comedian, and BRCA1 previvor who tours her one-woman show, Optimistic Personality Disorder.
• Deb Davis is a commercial photographer, founder of Detroit City Headshots, and author of The Faces of Transparency.
• Jenny C. Cohen is an award-winning belly dancer, somatic movement coach, and host of the Dance to Heal Podcast.
• Dr. Leah Sherman is a board-certified naturopathic oncology doctor, adaptive yoga teacher, and host of The Cancer Pod.
• Natasha Golinsky is a trauma-informed somatic business coach for female founders and host of the Never Launch on a Friday podcast.
• Erica Neubert Campbell is the author of The Mastectomy I Always Wanted and founder of the Horseshoe Breasties peer-support community.

Merit also mentions Fletcher Ellingson’s episode on rewriting fear stories, which is episode 275 of Gratitude Geek. Catch all the episodes mentioned in today’s episode: https://kandasrodarte.com/rebootaftercancer

Sponsor

This episode is sponsored by Heartbeat, the platform for building a community people will pay for. Try it free for 14 days at https://go.heartbeat.chat/gratitude and use the code GRATITUDEGEEK for 20% off your first three months. Heartbeat is this episode’s sponsor, and I may earn a commission if you sign up through my link.

Gratitude Geek is the business education podcast for Gen X women solopreneurs who weave gratitude and appreciation into their business strategy. Hosted by metastatic breast cancer thriver, Kandas Rodarte, who co-creates spaces, opportunities, and conversations for women business owners.

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Want to be a guest on Gratitude Geek? Send Kandas Rodarte a message on PodMatch here: https://kandasrodarte.com/podmatch

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