Starting A Business With Cancer: How To Succeed

Starting a business is always difficult. It’s even more difficult if you’re currently struggling with a chronic, debilitating disease like cancer. While this article is going to focus on starting a business with cancer, specifically, it can hypothetically apply to almost any entrepreneur with some kind of debilitating health condition.

How do you succeed in starting a business with a cancer diagnosis?

The Realities of Cancer

Unfortunately, it’s hard to give broad advice about dealing with cancer because there are so many different types of cancer and so many different ways the body can respond to it. For example, peritoneal mesothelioma is an extremely rare, deadly, and aggressive form of cancer that can be absolutely debilitating; there also aren’t many viable ways to treat it.

If you have any kind of mesothelioma, the challenges of entrepreneurship are going to be even harder. While there are no “good” types of cancer, there are some more common, more easily treatable types of cancer that aren’t as threatening.

In dealing with cancer, you’ll face challenges like attending regular appointments, dealing with the time requirements and incapacitation of certain treatment methods, managing chronic pain, and muscling through a wide variety of possible symptoms. Collectively, this impact can rob you of your time, distract you mentally, and leave you in weak physical shape.

However, none of these things preclude you from starting your own business.

Starting a Business With a Serious Illness

These strategies can help you maximize your chances of success:

1. Work with your doctors:

Work closely with your doctors and talk to them regularly. Use them as experts to enhance your own understanding and trust their advice. They are likely going to be the best judges of what you can and can’t do, as they understand cancer much better than you do and they genuinely want you to get better as a top priority. If your doctors recommend a certain treatment method, strongly consider taking it. If your doctors discourage you from intense activity for a few days, take those few days off.

2. Know your strengths and weaknesses:

As you become more acquainted with this disease and how it affects you, get to know your own strengths and weaknesses. Are there certain days or times when it’s harder for you to focus? Are you still capable of generating great, creative ideas? Be ready to plan your business and your team around these qualities.

3. Get help (if you can):

Starting a business alone is an incredible feat, even for someone who isn’t struggling with a debilitating chronic disease. If you have cancer, it’s even more important that you seek help to whatever extent you can. Consider working with mentors, fellow entrepreneurs, partners, and experienced experts in the field to get a better sense of how you want to develop your business and facilitate faster execution. You don’t have to do everything by yourself.

4. Set realistic goals:

It’s always important to set business goals – and ensure those goals are realistic. But when you’re currently struggling with a disease like cancer, you need to be extra mindful not to set goals that are strictly unrealistic. Take into account as many factors as you can, including your current and future condition, the state of your industry, and your current access to resources. If your goals are grounded in realism, you’ll be much more likely to achieve them and keep your business moving forward.

5. Be patient:

Starting a business takes time. Making a business successful takes even more time. Try to remain patient as you navigate this complicated territory.

6. Have a backup plan

Even with an excellent business plan, there’s no guarantee your primary business is going to take off. Accordingly, you should have a backup plan. Is there a way that you can pivot? Is there an alternate career path that sounds interesting to you?

7. Be adaptable

Adaptability is one of the greatest competitive advantages you can have in business – and it happens to be even more important if you’re struggling with cancer. It’s hard to tell exactly which days you’re going to feel at your strongest, and even the best oncologists may not be able to predict exactly how your cancer is going to develop from here. Accordingly, you and your business both need to be ready to turn on a dime and adjust your approach and expectations as you glean new information.

Entrepreneurship is not an easy career path. The demands of being an entrepreneur are significant and multifaceted, challenging you in terms of intellect, strategy, time management, financial pressure, and resilience.

Having cancer makes things even harder, but never impossible. If you have an entrepreneurial spirit and a solid business plan in place, even the rarest and most aggressive forms of cancer shouldn’t be able to stop you from achieving your goals.