Turning Pain into Purpose: 6-Time Cancer Survivor Liz Benditt and The Balm Box

In this powerful episode of Growth Mavericks, host Adam Callinan sits down with Liz Benditt, founder and CEO of The Balm Box, to share one of the most inspiring entrepreneurial journeys ever featured on the show. Liz has faced — and beaten — six different cancer diagnoses, transforming her pain into purpose by creating The Balm Box, a company that redefines what it means to give meaningful, functional gifts to cancer patients.

From her early days in corporate marketing to building a business that brings comfort, compassion, and healing, Liz reveals how she used her experiences to fill a major gap in the gifting market. What began as a deeply personal project has become a thriving e-commerce business empowering caregivers and supporting patients with dignity.

They discuss:

• The moment cancer changed her perspective on life and work
• How she built The Balm Box from her garage into a growing e-commerce brand
• The difference between functional and performative gifting
• Lessons from navigating funding, patents, and product-market fit
• The power of resilience, perspective, and living intentionally
• Advice for entrepreneurs on starting lean, staying flexible, and prioritizing health

This conversation is raw, emotional, and deeply practical — a masterclass in purpose-driven entrepreneurship, resilience, and building a meaningful brand.

Episode Highlights

• (01:00) Liz’s path from Disney and Hallmark to entrepreneurship
• (07:00) How breast cancer inspired her first business idea
• (13:00) Surviving six cancers — and learning to live fully through them
• (31:00) The birth of The Balm Box during the pandemic
• (36:00) Product-market fit and the art of functional gifting
• (44:00) Advice for first-time founders: flexibility, funding, and focus

Listen to Explore:
🎧 Growth Mavericks Podcast

💝 The Balm Box

🚀 Pentane — The Command Center for E-Commerce Profitability

Creators and Guests

Host

Adam Callinan

Adam Callinan is the founder of Pentane, a financial and advertising command center that empowers brands to drive predictable revenue and intentional profit. Previously, Adam co-founded BottleKeeper, a bootstrapped consumer brand that scaled to $8M in sales within three years – without employees – and was later acquired in 2021 as an eight-figure business with a team of four, marking Adam's second successful exit.

What is Growth Mavericks?

This podcast dives deep into the tactical moves that drive business success, as well as the mental and physical resilience required to sustain it.

Hosted by Adam Callinan, a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple exits, an avid outdoorsman, and an family man with crystal-clear priorities, each episode unpacks real-world challenges, actionable insights, and the mental and physical disciplines that fuel long-term personal and professional growth.

Whether you’re scaling a startup or refining your mindset, disrupting your default is how business and life strike a balance.

Adam Callinan (00:00)
How, where are you calling in from part of the country?

Liz Benditt (00:02)
calling in

from Overland Park, Kansas. It's a suburb of Kansas City.

Adam Callinan (00:06)
Amazing, got it. How's the weather there? It's getting cold here in Montana.

Liz Benditt (00:10)
Yeah, just, today's the first, like, yesterday and today are the first long sleeve days. Like, it's, all of a sudden, we went from like, you know, sweating gross hot to lovely cool fall.

Adam Callinan (00:20)
Did you grow up in Kansas?

Liz Benditt (00:22)
I didn't, no, I'm a transplant. My folks moved to Kansas City when I was...

in college and I came here after college or after grad school rather when my mom herself was diagnosed with breast cancer and I wanted to be closer to her. So and then I thought for sure I would go back to California and it didn't happen. Met a boy, got married, bought a house and now we joke, you know, you can fit our mortgage inside my little brother

Adam Callinan (00:46)
Yeah.

Liz Benditt (00:53)
lives in Northern California. So we can fit our mortgage inside his four times over and we can fit his house inside ours four times over, right? It's like, you know.

Adam Callinan (01:01)
I moved to Montana in 2020 from Manhattan Beach. So I, I,

Liz Benditt (01:05)
love Manhattan Beach. ⁓ You can only imagine

the square footage differential, right? Yeah.

Adam Callinan (01:13)
When we moved here, we kept our house there for a little bit, mainly because my wife, Katie, had to have an escape from the winters. And it was fine. But it was like our house there could fit inside our house and fall dead about 25 times over. Entirely different situation.

Liz Benditt (01:19)
Sure, yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

it's a different, it's just a different life. It's a different life. mean, you know, there are trade-offs, absolutely, but, you know, I don't regret it at all. It ended up being, I think, a really good place to raise a family and, you know, start a business, right? Like, every cost is one-third, right, of everything that my friends on the coast pay for, so.

Adam Callinan (01:47)
Absolutely. So obviously we'll get into the business and its starting point, but I think it's helpful to understand the what happened before that. So you graduated. Yeah, you graduated college. You ended up back in Kansas outside of Kansas City. Were you working corporate or were you were you a startup junkie early on like I was? How did you do that?

Liz Benditt (01:55)
Yeah.

I did.

No, I

was always a corporate nerd. It never...

It never occurred to me to do my own thing. So my undergraduate degree is in broadcast and film. went to, my very first job was working for, one of my college professors was hired by the Disney Institute in Orlando, Florida to start up a business. if like, I mean, now we're gonna go way back and just turn, in my early 50s, but yeah. His name is Steve Sklow.

Adam Callinan (02:32)
No, let's do it.

Liz Benditt (02:38)
this big barrel of a manly. was just really big and interesting and fun. So the Disney Institute was Michael Eisner's idea of the Disney version of Chautauqua.

And I think that the biggest mistake they made is that they plopped it because it was really cheap to do so on one of their resort properties in Orlando, Florida. And I do think that like it was such a cool idea, but they needed to put it in a more elite location. had they done it in Breckenridge or I don't know, like even Miami, you know, like just somewhere that wasn't Orlando, then it might've been successful, but it actually failed. So I was part of a Disney startup failure, which is pretty unique, interesting experience.

Adam Callinan (03:10)
Hahaha

Liz Benditt (03:15)
as part of that experience, so the first couple years we created this Disney News Network studio and guests would come in and we would guide them through creating like an entire news program. like reporters would go out and create little packages and it was really fun and I did a ton of editing. And then one of the things that nobody thought about was when people were done they're like, I'd really like a copy of my...

Can I get a VHS tape? I mean, this is how old this was, right? So they were like, I get a VHS tape of my Disney News Network experience? And we were like, gosh, that's such a good idea. And so I got it. mean, here I was 21 years old and I got put in charge of figuring out how to do it. So I had to like work with the people at the gift shop to create a process to order, like how the orders would come in, how people would pay for them, how we would get duplicates made.

Adam Callinan (03:39)
Yeah

Liz Benditt (04:04)
just the whole nine yards. And so I created this little profit center for our department and it was super successful. And I kept talking to my dad about how great it was and how proud I was of like creating this. He's like, are you sure that you really want to go into film? Like, because it seems to me that what you're really energized by is this whole business thing. And I was like, that's just such an interesting point. So yeah, so I ended up after kind of doing that, I started thinking about grad school because of course my degree was in something very

artsy and I needed more math and operations background. And so I applied to grad school and I got my MBA at USC in California. So went from Boston to Orlando to Los Angeles in less than five years. And then graduated right at the top of the dot com boom. And like I said before, I really did want to go work for, I wanted to go work in dot com and e-commerce

for

sure, but my mom was sick and she had breast cancer and I wanted to be closer to her and they at that point were living in Kansas City. My parents bopped around, I moved around a lot as a kid. My parents moved, like I said, to Kansas City. I had gone to visit, but I wasn't ever really, it wasn't a place that I knew very well. And I got a job at Hallmark.com and that was...

great experience, did not love, it was not a great fit for me. Hallmark is an extremely conservative organization and that...

just came through in lots and lots of different ways. And so was, I don't wanna disparage it, it's a great company, but it was just not a good fit for me. And I had the opportunity to bounce and go be employee number three at Bluetooth Wireless Technologies, and I took it. then I kind of did the same thing. I did that for a couple years and loved it. I ended up traveling so much, I think.

I think in less than two years, I earned like hundred thousand frequent flower miles or like something really crazy. so my husband and I went on this very bougie trip to France and then we were like, how in the world are you going to, you know, get pregnant, let alone have a baby and or see that child on the schedule that I was on? I was like, that's a really good question. So left Bluetooth went to go work in house at an ad agency in Kansas City.

So, you know, that's kind of like my whole circle ended up doing agency and then in-house advertising and marketing for companies for the past 20 plus years. So that's kind of like my whole, that's the background if that helps.

Adam Callinan (06:41)
No,

it is helpful because there's, you know, there, you know, any listener that's heard this podcast before I talk a lot about chapters, there's these really clearly defined chapters through there that are that they, it's like you're making this big bowl of soup. And all those chapters contribute to the soup. then one day you taste the soup and you're like, this is really good. And it all kind of comes together and tells a story and picture of, of how and where you got got to where you are today.

Liz Benditt (06:48)
Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Got you where I

was. Yeah, so the last corporate job I had for about four years, was VP of marketing at a commercial transportation company. Again, very, very conservative. I was the only woman on the leadership team, only woman that presented to, that was owned by a group of PE companies. And at the time I thought, wow, this is so cool. Look at me. And it was very isolating. It's just really, really hard.

I got very tired. And in that time, so if we go back to my current chapter, that was also the year, in that timeframe, I had my first breast cancer. And up until that was my fourth cancer at that point. And so the, and we can talk about the cancers at some point, which is.

They overlay, right? But I had my breast cancer and to their credit, they were incredible. As a small company, they just worked around what I was able to do, my schedule, my surgeries, my treatments, everything. Like they really were phenomenal. But you come through all of that and start to think about, this really what I want to be doing? Am I happy? Is this the life? Are these the people I want to be surrounded by? And the answer really was no. And so I started thinking about, and that was also at the time, know, especially when I was going through all the breast cancer stuff, people kept bringing

me all of these things that were so gifts that were so well-meaning, Like they were all about, know, here's a pink warrior t-shirt that says my tatas tried to kill me. And like, I'm not going to wear that, but it's funny, right? And a lot of food and a lot of flowers. And especially when I was going through my radiation treatments, I really couldn't eat normally and cents were a problem for me. Like they just were very

Adam Callinan (08:28)
Yeah.

Liz Benditt (08:40)
And so, like anytime someone brought like a really powerful, you smelling dinner or like flowers or anything like I couldn't be in the same room as that stuff. Like it just, again, all these things were so well-meaning. So everyone wants to help. They don't know how. And I kept thinking like, why can't gifts be functional? Like I need an ice pack that won't leak through my clothes. I don't need, you know, these irises that smell so strong, go away. And, and that was really where the idea for

my current business, the Bomb Box, was born with this idea of functional gifting. But that really wasn't the time of my life. I go back to chapters where we were living on two very specific incomes. My husband at the time worked for Sprint, now T-Mobile. And when you're living on two salaries, you can't just...

go rogue and live on one. mean, people can, but by choice, it's not a great idea. So we started thinking about, what would it take? How could I go rogue entrepreneur? And what would that look like? And how much money do we need to have saved?

Adam Callinan (09:27)
Yeah.

Liz Benditt (09:39)
How do we need to change our lifestyle? And one of the biggest expenses for us at that time, or the biggest expense at that time, was childcare. And so the thought was, okay, when we can get rid of childcare, when our kids are old enough to like drive themselves around to their own after school activities, and when we don't need any more childcare, that, you know, after taxes is like half of one of our salaries. So let's wait until we can do that. And fast forward to the pandemic, right?

Adam Callinan (10:00)
Yeah.

Liz Benditt (10:06)
pandemic and no one's going anywhere and we didn't need childcare. And at that exact moment, I had this crazy, it just dropped in my lap, this opportunity to go teach undergraduate classes as an adjunct at University of Kansas School of Business. So certainly while the income teaching is nowhere close to what I was making corporate, it was something, right? It was in the going from, okay, so I can go from

I don't have childcare expenses anymore. No one's going anywhere. We're not traveling because it's COVID. And now I have a little bit of like, you know, side hustle income from teaching that makes it very doable. And so that's when I could let go of my corporate stuff and go rogue entrepreneur. And then I've held on to and so the teaching has been amazing. So I've been able to hold on to teaching really for the past five years. I even won an award for being a good teacher, which

Adam Callinan (10:57)
Nice.

Liz Benditt (10:58)
It's great. It's really fun. It's so great. I really enjoy connecting with the students. I get access to research. My colleagues are really fascinating. And so I've gone up and down in terms of as the business was in its early startup phases, I was up to teaching maybe three classes a week, and now I'm down to one. That's really all I can handle is the ones.

I'm not ready to walk away from it entirely, right? But it's really nice. It's nice to have it there. And then certainly it's always this little bit of like, you know, it's a little bit of air cover that should my husband ever get terminated or not terminated, laid off, you know, he's been there over 10 years.

then we have the source of healthcare or health insurance because my family cannot be without health insurance. yeah, so that was kind of the career path and then that gave me the airway, the runway I needed to able to get the business off the ground.

Adam Callinan (11:41)
sure.

There's a lot in there in that entire career path that I want to dig into. I'll try to not make this a three hour podcast.

Liz Benditt (11:58)
Yeah, yeah.

That's okay.

Adam Callinan (12:03)
What are you teaching? This is the easiest of the questions. cool, marketing.

Liz Benditt (12:05)
Marketing, yeah. my background

is in marketing. I've been a marketing executive, like I said, for about 20 plus years, 25 years. And the class that I've been teaching is called Survey of Marketing. It's the intro to marketing class that all students have to take in order to access 300 level or 400 level marketing classes.

Adam Callinan (12:27)
Got it. Okay.

Liz Benditt (12:28)
And then I filled in, like when teachers have been on, like I filled in to teach an advertising class when someone was on sabbatical, and then I've also taught CRM, you know, so.

Adam Callinan (12:28)
in it.

Yeah. If we go back, you mentioned that when I don't, and I don't know, this is what kind of what I want to clarify. Did the bomb box come up? You mentioned fourth, the fourth time that you had had cancer. So yeah, we can, yeah.

Liz Benditt (12:52)
Yeah.

I'm on six. Let's hope that we're done.

I'd really like to be done with it. I don't believe I am. I just kind of feel like this is sort of my life.

Adam Callinan (13:03)
Is that something that started young? And so it's sort of always been part of who you, okay.

Liz Benditt (13:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, my very first cancer, I date them by my kids. So if you think about it, my daughter just turned 20, right? So my very first cancer was melanoma. It was summertime. My daughter was three. My son was one. We were at the pool. And I tell this story about how my son, you know, when you're like the one year old is kind of close to losing the naps, but just kind of wiped out and my son had fallen asleep on my chest and it's July.

Adam Callinan (13:12)
⁓ wow. Yeah.

Liz Benditt (13:35)
in Kansas and it's hot. And so he's slippery because we're both sweating, but he's asleep and I'm enjoying it because I know, right? It's a second kid, I know that I'm almost done. And so I was in this like really contorted position to kind of hold him in place so he wouldn't fall off me. And my mother was there and she kept looking at this mole on my leg and she didn't like the look of it. And she's like, that just doesn't look right to me. You need to have that looked at. You know, I'm an executive, I'm busy. I don't have time to go to a stupid dermatologist. Like this is so stupid.

My mom was being ridiculous and my mom would not let up after that day. She was just on my butt, texting, calling, whatever. She made the appointment. She was really aggressive and my mom saved my life because it turns out that that mole was melanoma. They said, okay, well, we're going to do a lymph node biopsy and removing the melanoma is a surgery and you can't see on a podcast, but it looks like I have a shark bite on my thigh.

because it was huge chunk of skin they take off to make sure they get clean margins. But then they also had to check lymph nodes to make sure it hadn't spread. And what they said is if it spreads to lymph nodes, you have less than a year to live. And if it doesn't spread to lymph nodes, you're fine, wear more sunscreen. Those are the choices. ⁓ Right? Yeah. I had my surgery on a Friday, so I wasn't gonna... And it was like one of those...

Adam Callinan (14:39)
Yeah.

Wow, that is talk about a binary outcome. Holy cow.

Liz Benditt (14:58)
Pathologies that required like time or something and so I was didn't get the pathology until Monday so that weekend again mom to the rescue like just

It was helpful to have young babies at home who are just little need machines, right? Because they don't know that you're waiting on this call on Monday, right? They're just like, so bath time and snacks and activities and whatnot kind of took over. then Monday I got the call and they hadn't spread and just wear more sunscreen. so then I became a complete fanatic about hats and sunscreen and SPF. I found this SPF additive that I add to our clothes.

Adam Callinan (15:16)
Yeah.

Liz Benditt (15:32)
When my kids were little, they had to be covered head to toe. I'm so jealous. My little brother has little kids and nowadays they have the kid swimsuits that are already long sleeve and whatever. But I had to really find stuff for my children. Until my daughter turned about 13 and she was like, Mom, I am wearing a bikini and that is that. And I was like, okay, but if you get one sunburn, we're going full hijab.

Adam Callinan (15:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Smock. Yeah.

Liz Benditt (16:02)
And that's been the rule ever since. And even now at 20, like, that's the rule. One sunburn, you're out. And she's been like a sunscreen fanatic too, so it's fine. But yeah, no, that was melanoma number one. That was in 2009. And then a year later, I was getting a breast exam, just a normal, like, you know, I started my, because my mom had breast cancer, I was supposed to start my mammograms early. And so I went in for my first breast exam and they,

Adam Callinan (16:23)
Yeah.

Liz Benditt (16:27)
didn't like what they they were worried about something and at the time the surgeon started, you know, you know, when you go in for these things when everyone and their mothers feel in your boobs and and then she started feeling my neck and I was like, what are you doing? I don't understand like I thought the whole issue was the boobs and it turns out at that time at that time there was nothing going wrong. It was just a you know, an aberration or something in the breast tissue, but the at that time it was thyroid cancer.

And

so the thyroid cancer was, so that was 2010, like not even a year later, and that sucked. And the short version of thyroid cancer for me was I ended up in this teeny tiny percentage I had to have a thyroidectomy. Once the thyroid is out,

2 % of patients have this side effect that I had, is what's called, I became what's called hypokalcemic. So there are, the parathyroid glands are next to the thyroid glands. I don't know how deep into this we want to get, it doesn't matter. Whatever, point is I had this really, really rare side effect that is very, very serious and you can die from, and they didn't know at the time, and I went home, almost died, had to go back to the hospital, was there for two weeks until they figured out a medical treatment to get me off of.

of what's called IV calcium. It sucked, that was not good, don't recommend, zero out of 10. And it took me about a year to kind of get healthy again. And it was because you can't always rely on, like doctors will give you medicine, like all they know to do is write prescriptions, right? But there's a fair amount of other things I realized that I needed to do for myself to get healthy, including everything from a different type of exercise, more cardio. I had to drop gluten.

which interestingly enough, like really helped me hold onto my calcium better. So just a lot of those things. I think it was a, it was a very big aha moment that, okay, you can, you know, I'm not walking away from Western medicine, but in addition to Western medicine, you can do these other things and they can really help. And so I got into running, ran my first half marathon, then third cancer number three came along and that was

Adam Callinan (18:25)
Amazing.

Liz Benditt (18:28)
and

a basal cell. And so at least at this point, I'm really used to going to the dermatologist, go twice a year, get naked, you know, they look at every inch of your skin. It's a very humbling experience. And at this time it was just a little nudge on my nose and the nudge on my nose turned out to be basal cells. So again, basal cell, not nearly as aggressive as melanoma. No one's worrying telling me that, you know, take it off and maybe you'll die. But it was more of a, the problem was that the nudge was large enough that they needed plastic surgery to cover the

Adam Callinan (18:36)
Yeah.

Liz Benditt (18:55)
the

hole in my face. And the first plastic surgeon said, okay, well, we're gonna draw a line from the, I'm trying to think how to say this instead of show, right? From the inside of your eye and then all the way down your cheek and curve around your jaw. And then that will loosen up the skin enough that we can cover up your nose. And I'm like, so I'm gonna have this giant C-shaped scar on my face rest of my life. And he's like, yeah, he's like, when do you wanna book your surgery? And I'm like, well, let's just, know, let me just.

Adam Callinan (18:57)
Mm-hmm.

Huh.

Liz Benditt (19:26)
Let me just think about that. So I went to a different plastic surgeon that said is this, you know, is this the only way to do it? And he had a totally different process and his process was, to be fair, way more complicated and way more miserable. And I was, it required two surgeries and I was, it was bonkers. Like I had to be awake for one of them. I don't recommend that. But like they did this thing where they put the cut on the shadow of my nose and then did this thing. Like, you know when you stick your fingers in a turkey to like,

put in the stuffing. Like, I was awake for this. I can't tell you how much I don't recommend this. But they stuck his fingers in and like basically separated my skin, my facial skin from my skull, I don't know, face, whatever. And that stretched the skin out and then they put this like temporary bandage on my nose. Like, so it's sewn on bandage that I wore around for 10 days. And then after 10 days, you come back and take it out and it stretched the skin enough that they could cover up the hole without doing more

Adam Callinan (19:54)
you

man.

Hmm.

Liz Benditt (20:23)
aggressive surgery and so I do still have a scar but it's very subtle and you don't see it and so it maintained the shape of my face and that again so you learn right so you learn through this process like I can actually advocate for myself I need to you know be a little bit more aggressive about making sure that if I don't agree with the treatment or if treatment sounds terrible like maybe I can ask what the options are right so it's a lot of those little things and that made all the difference so that was 2015 2017 like

Like

I said, I had my first breast cancer that was on my left side. I was able to get away with the lumpectomy and radiation. And like I said, super miserable. was really, radiation is one of those treatments where I think people have the assumption that it's not as bad as chemo, which is absolutely true, but it's still, it was really rough on me. You know, you basically are accepting sunburns on your boob. It was on my under boob area.

Chunks of skin started falling off. I had to stop multiple times because my skin was in no shape to be continually radiated on It was just really tough. And I think what was particularly tough is I went in really arrogant I went in thinking you know, I'm in this like You know this waiting room of all these old ladies and me in my early 40s And I was like this is crazy like I'm so much healthier than these people like this gonna be no big deal I scheduled all of my appointments for like 7 in the morning so I could just knock them out and get to the office and

It just wiped me out. I was not prepared for how sick I was going to be. So like I said, the company I was with was incredible. I was so lucky, so unbelievably lucky. So I went from working 60 hours a week to barely being able to be in the office 25 without falling asleep and being in too much pain or needing a Vicodin or something. And they were absolutely amazing, worked with me.

and my staff was incredible and I just got this like rally around the forces situation was incredible. Right, not everybody has that kind of support and I got through it. And then...

you know, again, it took, takes time to get healthy again. So you get healthy again, gonna forget that everything is, that you're gonna get sick. And then fast forward, like I said, that was when I had the idea for the bomb box, but couldn't, didn't really have the time or the ability to start it. So it wasn't until about three years later that I started the bomb box. So we can come back to the bomb box if we wanna finish cancer, I don't know. What order do we wanna go in?

Adam Callinan (22:44)
I mean these are all defined chapters.

Liz Benditt (22:48)
Yes, I know, right?

Adam Callinan (22:48)
I mean that get you to where you are.

Liz Benditt (22:49)
And so in,

so then in 2020, I finally was able to start the bomb box, which was awesome. And I had two years of the bomb box before I had another cancer diagnosis. And so that was in 2020, the end of 2022, which was five years after my first diagnosis, which is when statistically you're supposed to be in the clear. I was diagnosed with a second breast cancer in the opposite breast. So it was not a recurrence. It was just a straight up different breast cancer. And unfortunately that one, had to have a mastectomy, but the good news

Adam Callinan (23:16)
goodness.

Liz Benditt (23:19)
was it was caught early enough because of all of the screenings that I get that I didn't have to get. I didn't need radiation and I didn't need chemo. It was just surgery. So was really lucky and so I was able to get the side of mastectomy and then about eight months later I had a reconstruction surgery called a deep flap reconstruction surgery which is totally badass. It's where they take your stump your belly fat and they turn it into a boob.

So I will take, it's a tummy tuck, boom situation, like for paid for by United Healthcare. ⁓ And yeah, this is awesome. And so don't get me wrong, it's a hideous surgery. It's really hard to recover from. But once you get it, you don't have, there's a lot of benefits in that it's real flesh as opposed to fake. And so it feels like a real appendage or at least slightly more than like when you have implants.

Adam Callinan (23:46)
You

Nice.

Liz Benditt (24:11)
Yeah,

that was 2023 was just surgery, surgery, surgery, recover from surgery, surgery, surgery, surgery. And then another probably six months of physical therapy, because when you have this surgery and they take all this skin and flesh from at least for me in your lower belly, for most people, you're hunched over, like you can't even sit up straight. And so it takes time to get to stretch out that skin so that you can sit up again and to really rebuild my stomach muscles, which were a mess after. So did all of that, got through it.

started running again, you know, I'm always a runner. So got back into running, decided and I was like, I'm gonna run another half marathon. I want my body back. It belongs to me. It doesn't belong to cancer. And I started training and then I got another fucking cancer. And this one at least, it was another melanoma, but it was on my calf. And so it took me out of running just long enough to not be able to, you know, hit my mileage goals for the Kansas City Marathon. So I had to go to a different marathon. That was October.

I was going to do an October marathon, so instead I an April marathon. instead of training through the hot summer, I trained through the cold winter. And I was doing 12 mile runs in 20 degree weather because I was committed. I just wanted it. I wanted to do it. And I did. And I ran my half marathon. I did not get a PR, but I finished across the line. And that felt really good. And I don't know that I have any great interest in doing another, I feel like.

I feel like a five to seven mile run feels great and I don't need to do any more 10 milers. I'm good.

Adam Callinan (25:42)
man, you are one badass woman. So there's so much buried in there. And I will say that I really seek out in my life people that have really gone through difficult things. other people in my life, I've interviewed them.

Liz Benditt (25:43)
So that was the last one.

Yeah.

God.

you

Yeah.

Adam Callinan (26:04)
on this podcast, but they're just in my life because I am absolutely fascinated and have so much deep love and respect for having gone through like truly difficult things like survived a plane crash, lost a leg, was born, you know, on a battlefield with no limbs and left in a box in a park and a nun picked him up like paralyzed, you know, quadriplegic at 30. I mean, really challenging things, which you very much fit into that, that sort of.

Liz Benditt (26:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam Callinan (26:31)
That sort

of thing. And the reason for me, Liz, is because it helps me. I have not had to deal with any of that. And knock on wood, I don't have to. However, it really helps me. And this is what I want to pass on. It really helps me reset my perspective of what difficult looks like and what a hard day looks like and what, particularly in entrepreneurship, like what we deal with in entrepreneurship is hard in that scope of entrepreneurship, but in the scope of life and the real challenges that some people deal with, it's like laughable. It's nothing.

Liz Benditt (26:37)
I hope not, yeah.

Yeah.

I think a lot of it, you know, I have such a...

I have such a love-hate relationship with cancer, right? Like on the one hand, it brought me my business and I'm so grateful for that, right? Like my business is bringing joy to people. business is bringing comfort to people. My business is doing good in the world and that feels amazing, right? Like that, the...

We get thank you notes from people that are private and make you cry. read, you know, when the order management system, like, I mean, the first two years, I was the only one filling orders. Like, it was physically me, packing boxes. And, you you read every single gift note, and they're amazing and heartfelt. And some of them are awesome and hilarious and deeply inappropriate to share on a podcast. And some are really religious. And, I mean, they just span the gamut. the seeing, connecting, you know, friends and family.

and helping them support and love their friends and family. What an amazing business to be in. And that makes me so proud. That is just such a gift. at the same time, it also does provide perspective that, OK, I definitely reduced my family's income. We changed our lifestyle. There are no more really bougie Christmas trips. And my kids and husband have just been nothing but supportive because they

they see how happy I am and how, I don't know, perspective, right? They see that I'm happy, they see that they're excited about the growth of the business, they were really excited when we moved out of the house because it was getting to be a lot.

So all of that and it does provide perspective, right? And so I, yes, I don't, you we're not going to Club Med anymore, but we also, the kids see me more, you know? And I have been able to go to every single one of my daughters ever since volleyball tournaments. And I didn't miss anything. didn't got to go to my son's tennis games. ⁓ And I travel when I feel like it. And I don't, you know, if I don't get the PNL done,

Adam Callinan (28:49)
you

Liz Benditt (28:55)
Until next month, like there's no one breathing down my neck for it. Like if I decide that I want to take a risk on some crazy idea, and I do, you know, like I don't I really am very much enjoying this side of my career where I don't answer to anyone.

Adam Callinan (29:10)
The fact that you see and have a love hate relationship with cancer like speaks. I mean, that is that's it. And that's where again, these my friends, these people that have my life, they have the same like my friend Yanni got, you know, broke his neck jumping into the ocean was a all American linebacker Georgetown. But now he runs a nonprofit that changes lives.

Liz Benditt (29:16)
⁓ Yeah

Yeah, yeah, right ⁓

Adam Callinan (29:35)
absolutely changes lives. He has a love-hate relationship with paralysis. Like,

Liz Benditt (29:40)
Like I wouldn't be doing this. Like

Adam Callinan (29:40)
there's so much beauty in that.

Liz Benditt (29:41)
I wouldn't have, and it's funny when I think about, you know, entrepreneurship, because you asked, did I always want to be an entrepreneur? And I say no. But then I think about how it kind of is a little bit in my blood where my, never met my grandfather. I think he died when I was two. So it my dad's father. But he was like, he grew up in Brooklyn and he was like a junk dealer. Like one of those dudes like, you know, that had like the junk mobile. I don't even know what it was. Like a push cart maybe. And then over time he grew into different businesses.

At one point he had like a newsstand. Like I don't know all of his different businesses, but basically he was a serial entrepreneur. And my dad even has a little bit of that where he is an engineer with an MBA and he has gone in and he basically, you know, his career has been going into underperforming manufacturing companies and fixing them and then getting bored and moving on, which is why we moved around a lot of a family. But he also, I think,

just loves to run businesses, right? He loves, he's been, he's created lots of businesses along the way in terms of just product development and creating products and businesses. So he's done that with the, underneath the overhead, right, of bigger businesses. So it's not a surprise to a certain extent. Like I do think a little bit of it is in my blood to go out and like, you know, do my own thing, path my own course, create something from nothing. Right, I do think that there's a lot there. It's gotta be there.

Adam Callinan (30:59)
Yeah it's definitely

there. So talking about that can you explain to the listener what Bombox does?

Liz Benditt (31:01)
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, so, so you know, it's sort of all the moons aligned in the most incredible way. So if you go back to the pandemic, right, the stay at home order, put your mind there, that is when I thought, okay, this is put up or shut up time. This is my opportunity. And we all of a sudden, I didn't have weekend long volleyball tournaments in Omaha. And I didn't, you know, have to run around to 17 volunteer things and whatever, like, you know, all working parents know this. And I had this opportunity

And I kept thinking is it just me? Am I the asshole that doesn't like all this pink crap and doesn't want you know all of these you know generic gifts and really wants functional things as a gift or Is it just me or does everyone feel this way? And what is the market size? Like I don't even know who's out there buying gifts like is this tiny? this is this big enough to even make it a real business? And so I wrote this in

And the survey went down paths. And if you previously had cancer, you answer questions about things that you want to need when you are going through treatment, and you gave them ratings of one to three. One being, sucks, two being, I don't know, and three being, yes, absolutely. And if you hadn't had cancer, it asked you, have you bought a gift for a cancer patient in the past 18 months? If so, would you spend, would you buy? And because it was the stay at home order, and because everyone was at home and super online and bored, it went viral and collected almost

responses with no incentive and it took like 40 minutes to complete. It was like something to do and that was amazing and so the feedback was incredible. So A, I am not the only one. When you ask cancer patients things that they want to need, the top five items are all functional. They were all things like ice packs, lip balm, lotion, fleece blankets, essential oils, which is something that I had never really thought about. The bottom performing items, the things nobody wants. Kicking cancer tote bags, kicking cancer coffee mugs, worry stones.

Adam Callinan (32:33)
wow.

Liz Benditt (32:56)
inspirational poetry, right? Like nobody wants this shit. And yet, and then you ask people, what do you, have you bought a gift for a cancer patient in the past 18 months? Almost 80 % had, and what are they buying? Flowers, food, and trinkets.

Adam Callinan (33:09)
All

Liz Benditt (33:10)
So

you've got this huge disconnect, right, between what people want and need and what they're buying. And by the way, a lot of them are out there buying it. It's a huge market. And I thought, okay, well, that's a business model. So I wrote a business plan, borrowed a little money from dad.

built out, you know, a baseline product, right? So my idea at the time was in year one, I kept thinking, okay, I'm going to make it a subscription model so that cancer patients can buy this for themselves. And they would be, you would buy like a radiation subscription or a chemo subscription so that you would get a box every so often, every two or three weeks with things that you would need while you're going through treatment, depending on how long your treatment was. And as I was developing box one, two, three, four, I thought, well, gosh, these boxes could also be like one-off

gifts and so it was a very last minute decision to offer gifts and in year one 80 % of sales were gifts of these one-off boxes and 20 % were subscriptions and I was like okay I guess I built a gift store didn't know that so then we and then in year two I really monkeyed with okay if I'm gonna be a gift shop let's change our messaging right all the messaging if you're one was all about talking to patients in year two switched the messaging to talk to what I call caregivers and so caregivers is a very broad term

using, which is basically like any friend or family of a cancer patient. So it's not necessarily someone that's like, you know, taking away the, you know, the bedpan. Like when I say caregiver, I just mean friends. So caregivers,

Adam Callinan (34:36)
Yep.

Liz Benditt (34:37)
So we really focused on that caregiver messaging. How do you care for someone with cancer? What are things that you can do? How do you be supportive? How do you support yourself if you're caring for somebody with cancer? So really focusing on that caregiver message. So switching that around and then playing a lot with product. that when you say an entrepreneurship, product market fit. And so trying to figure out if I'm buying for myself, I know what my side effects are, but a cancer caregiver doesn't necessarily

especially if they're not physically there, right? So if they're three states away, they don't know really, they know you're going through chemo, but they don't really know if you're having neuropathy, they don't know if you're having hair loss, they don't really wanna ask, that feels really invasive. They just want a generic cancer care box. And so, I saw that where the neuropathy box got like one eighth as many sales as the generic cancer care box. And so eventually got rid of all of the side effect boxes and focused just on chemo box, radiation box.

mastectomy box, know, small, medium, large. And then we also changed up language. So instead of small, medium, large, we call them essentials, comprehensive, and tremendous. And the logic is if you're buying a gift for a patient and you receive the essentials box, you don't know that you got the small one, right? You just know that you got a box. So it's just kinder. And so just like lots of those little things. And so when we eventually got rid of all of those side effects, specific boxes, and focused just on these kind of more what I would call generic boxes with

Adam Callinan (35:46)
Yeah.

Liz Benditt (36:00)
a little bit of everything in them. Our conversion rates doubled without me changing anything about advertising. And then we're off to the races, right? Now, now I can afford to actually hire an ad agency. Now I can afford to hire people. And so over time, and that was by the end of year three. So we went, we doubled sales, doubled sales, tripled sales. Like it was really moving the needle forward in a very meaningful way. And so that was very, very exciting. And so by the end of 2023,

You know, I was having still running everything out of my house. My the guest room was what we called bomb box world headquarters and the I had completely taken over the garage and and that was the warehouse and my husband was not happy about having to dig his car out of the snow like but you know, he was great like I make jokes, you know, he was so supportive and It was and you know, we pack all of the boxes with a bunch of kind of you know green shreds to protect

Adam Callinan (36:32)
you

Liz Benditt (36:55)
protect

the items in them and there's green shreds all over my house. Like just green shred-a-thon. Couldn't get rid of the green shreds and at some point it just, we were bursting at the seams. had nowhere to put stuff. I was starting to like take over space in the basement or the dining room and my husband was like, really? Really? Like are you sure that you don't need, you're making money, you're making a profit.

Adam Callinan (36:59)
you

Liz Benditt (37:15)
Can you afford to move? And I was like, that's such a good idea. I even think about that. So we called a friend, he's a real estate agent. And he was like, yes, you need to move. And he found us some amazing, this amazing space and we're really, really happy in it. So moved in early 24. So yeah, I've been here almost a year. And it's been just completely life-changing. because before when I was working out of my house, you have to hire people.

kind of know, right? They're in your house. Now I can have anyone come through or like, you know, it's a little bit more broad and it's not quite so hardcore. Not to mention I have two full-time staff now that need desks and computers. I don't know where I would have put them in the house. you know, that would have been someone who lost a bedroom. I'm not sure. So yeah, like a lot of that, you know, the ability to expand, the ability to have more warehouse space and the ability to not have to babysit packages. Just a lot of stuff like that has been just a game changer in terms of just

ability to grow, getting out of the house was huge.

Adam Callinan (38:12)
Yeah, I'm sure it was. Are you selling that entirely online or do you also create relationships with like hospital systems and things like that?

Liz Benditt (38:21)
Such a good question. So

wholesale is an area that we have been dabbling in. And in fact, I could not keep up with.

the B2C direct to consumer side of the business is so encompassing. Every time I kept trying to work on the wholesale side of the business, it just was a secondary assignment and there's just only so many hours in the week. And so eventually I hired a full-time staff member to take that over and she started this year, April or so. And so,

Oh yeah, so I guess we've been here a year and a half. Time flies. So so Marnie came in and...

Adam Callinan (39:02)
It does.

Liz Benditt (39:06)
middle of this year and has been building out our wholesale business. In fact, after this interview, we have a call with a pharmacy to talk about our retail product line. So it is absolutely in the growth plan. I'm hesitant to go into hospitals right now until we finish the patent process on some of our products because I'm a little nervous about them getting ripped off. So we have a provisional patent on one product that we created called our Drain Holder. And next

Next year we'll work on the patent process for our pillow products, but I can't do two at once, it's too expensive. I'd love to, but I don't have enough cash.

Adam Callinan (39:39)
It

is side note and I will caveat this with I am not an attorney. Although when we, Bottlekeeper, my last company got acquired, we had 42 patents. So we spent a lot of time in the patent process. When, ⁓ man, when your patent goes live, have your patent attorney make sure that they file a continuation. It's called a CIP.

Liz Benditt (39:44)
you

I can only imagine how expensive that was.

Okay. Okay.

Okay. ⁓

Adam Callinan (40:00)
and that leaves the patent open so that you have the ability to amend the patent over time

and it becomes a new patent because people will design around your patent and it allows you to encapsulate their redesign. Patent attorneys are like doctors, good note, and accountants, some are really good, some are really bad. So make sure that when you get to that point, that's the thing that comes up. It's called a CIP. Yeah.

Liz Benditt (40:13)
Okay, that's good tip. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I will. I will. We're probably about another year away. think, well, we

have to, we have to file in first quarter and we're in for the utility fattened. Yeah. And that one.

Adam Callinan (40:32)
for your utility.

Yeah.

Liz Benditt (40:38)
But there are some changes I'm trying to make. I'm sorry, are you hearing the dog in the background? Or is it just me? Okay, I apologize. okay, Michaela's taking her away, sorry. So yeah, we can say that again. Maggie is very upset that she's not part of this conversation. I apologize, you have now created editing for you.

Adam Callinan (40:44)
Yeah, it's okay. No, I can't. It'll, it'll, it'll edit out. That's okay.

Ha ha ha

No, no, it's totally good. We'll make a note and we'll clip it out. And while I'm clipping that out, when we're done and I click stop record, don't hang up because it has to like upload. It'll just take a minute.

Liz Benditt (41:01)
Yeah.

No problem.

Yes, we filed the utility patent about nine months ago. we have another, I guess that's not true. Filed the utility patent this year.

Adam Callinan (41:19)
So you've filed a provisional

patent this year or utility patent?

Liz Benditt (41:24)
Provisional. So yeah, it's a placeholder. But I want to make some changes to the clips. And so I've been working with our manufacturer in Taiwan. And so he's...

Adam Callinan (41:25)
Yeah, so it's your placeholder patent. So have 12 months. Perfect.

Liz Benditt (41:37)
He's so great, but we do communicate through a language translation app, which is hilarious. And there was actually, the fun fact is, through this language translation app, we were thanking each other, and in thanking each other for our work, he said, you're my best friend, and I'm positive that's not what he said, but I'm dying to know what he really said. Who knows? yeah, so we're...

Adam Callinan (41:44)
You

Maybe?

Liz Benditt (42:01)
So we now refer to Andy as my best friend in Taiwan, is, yeah, it's hilarious. So yeah, we're working on just some changes and so I'd like to finish those changes before we file the utility app, the utility patents, yeah. So my best friend is out there working on it for me. It isn't it? Yeah.

Adam Callinan (42:04)
That's awesome.

Ha!

Utility. Got it. Great. That's good to have a best friend in Taiwan. Yeah.

so generally in this podcast, we would spend some time talking about like, the things that you do and the practices that you might have that help you sort of deal with entrepreneurship. and I, so I want to,

Liz Benditt (42:27)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (42:33)
I want to go down that rabbit hole, but I want to, I want to add an element to it because we have actually spent a lot of this time talking about some of the really difficult things that you have done and, gone through. so I will add a caveat to that of thinking about it in the context of like, not only what you do, but what advice would you give a 30 year old first time entrepreneur? You know, that hasn't had to do with the really hard things that you have that may, may not be quite as probably anti-fragile as you are.

Liz Benditt (42:34)
Yeah.

Yeah,

I will tell you that the number one thing that has given me, well, okay, two things that I can think of immediately off the bat. The extent to which you can start without borrowing money from.

know, venture or PE or whatever, where if you can do private, if you can start it on your own with a minimum viable product, right, and not have to answer to anyone, that gives you so much flexibility, so much flexibility. So that when I was going through, you know, cancer number, whatever, five, and I was slow to complete reports and I, you know, I took probably a month off of just straight up work and delegated to everybody, all of that

Please.

It's not like anyone cared. I didn't need permission, right? So if the P &L didn't get done or the budget wasn't done or the expense reports weren't done, it's just me. I'm just answering to myself. So those are things that I think are important to do and make sure that they are done so that I'm following my business. But I can let go that for a month or two while I give myself space to heal, right? So if you're going through anything, whether it's personal or professional or health related, just having that

flexibility and not answering to anyone is I think invaluable. So I would start with that. So the extent to which if you can at all do it and so then which is connected to number two I know that there's a lot of different theories on this. I think it has been such a gift that I had this flexible part-time job teaching at KU because it's provided me a little bit of income at it and versus going just straight up income free which is really hard to do.

And so just enough income to like pay the bills and, you know, and keep us in.

coffee and bagels, you know, like it's just enough. And that to me has been also giving and that gave me the runway that I needed to get to my product market fit because I didn't need to take an income out of my business. I was just getting paid by KU. So I didn't start paying myself anything until 2023. And that's a long time to go without any income at all. So, but being able to bring in at least something was awesome. And I doesn't have to be teaching.

be working at Starbucks, it doesn't really matter. I'm just saying, it's something to bring in, I think is huge. I know that there's definitely some folks that think, no, you gotta be hungry, you gotta be scared, that's what's gonna be really great for business. I don't agree with that at all. I really, really think that having time and space to figure your shit out is important. And...

learning to live with just a little less income is also really helpful.

Adam Callinan (45:38)
I think both of those are incredible points that I deeply agree with. And it's certainly how I have always built and I have a lot of friends and have seen in this world specifically that I have seen the other version of that where they do go raising a bunch of money. And because they remove that constraint of capital, they make a lot of really bad decisions and they spend on things that they would not ever. It doesn't make them bad operators. They're really good operators. It's just the constraint.

Liz Benditt (45:43)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah!

Adam Callinan (46:08)
Removing that constraint can lead to really bad things.

Liz Benditt (46:11)
Yeah, right?

So when you're cash constrained, then all the priorities bubble up. it makes it really clear to see, OK, that's not like even.

It's not urgent that we get all of our patents at once. It's just not. It's okay. We can wait. There's one that I think is more important than the other, so we're doing that one first, right? So it's those little decisions, not to mention, but I also was like, it's worth it. I absolutely need to bring on somebody because these other growth opportunities aren't happening until I bring in staff. And so...

Adam Callinan (46:26)
Yeah.

Liz Benditt (46:42)
I made that choice to make that investment and it's been one of the best investments, right? And just all of the work that is getting done and growth that I'm seeing and that, you know, that it's gonna happen. I mean, right now she's a cost center. That's okay. She was meant to be. Like that was the intention. But she's gonna be, but she's key to growth and that's gonna happen in 26 and that's okay. So it's a lot of like...

Adam Callinan (46:48)
Yeah, that's great.

Yeah. ⁓

Liz Benditt (47:04)
being able to make that choice, but having to make, that was a hard choice to make, right? Going from being profitable to breakeven is really hard. So, yeah.

Adam Callinan (47:12)
Yeah.

Well, this has been incredible. How do you want people to find you and to find Bombox?

Liz Benditt (47:19)
find us on the web, on the interwebs, w.thebombbox.com, T-H-E-B-A-L-M-B-O-X.com.

Adam Callinan (47:29)
I will make sure all of that links and everything end up in the show notes. So that's easy. Are you, are you screaming and yelling on social media at all or

Liz Benditt (47:31)
Yeah.

We are, we are, we're gonna do our first influencer campaign in November, excited about that.

We mostly, in terms of advertising, the best advertising for us, we are heroin drip addicted to Google shopping. The goal for 26 is to diversify, but it is such a good tool. It's been such a great tool for us in terms of gross growth. How do you find people, how do you target people that are friends and family of cancer patients, right? That's so discrete, unique. It's just not very targetable, or hasn't been.

Adam Callinan (48:06)
Yeah.

Liz Benditt (48:09)
that is just such a good tool. So I'm not suggesting we walk away from it, but I think we just need to add other things that to grow. So we just signed on with a new ad agency this year and I'm really excited about that and investing a lot more in SEO. But no, we haven't like really invested in growing our social following. And that's something that it's if you talk about bubbling up, right? Because I'm still self-funded. Like whatever the business generates is the

money we have to spend, right? And growing those social platforms hasn't been a priority and I think in 26 we need to revisit that. But part of that has just been, you know, bandwidth, right? And so adding staff, adding people, changing, like the new agency is a total game changer.

Adam Callinan (48:52)
Yeah.

Liz Benditt (49:00)
So those things all will contribute to us being able to do more there. So we are on the socials. You can find us on Facebook. can find us on Instagram. We do post all the time, but we just haven't invested in growing that following, which is, we need to do that. It's on the list.

Adam Callinan (49:16)
Only so many things you can do at one time. Totally get it.

Liz Benditt (49:17)
Totally, right? Yeah, totally,

yeah.

Adam Callinan (49:20)
Awesome. Well, thank you for being so honest and sharing your story. It really is an incredible story and I think will resonate with a lot of people. So really appreciate your time, Liz.

Liz Benditt (49:24)
Thank you.

Thanks for having me.