Balance & Beyond Podcast

What happens when life forces you to completely step away from the business you've built over 30 years?

For Jennifer, CEO of Integrity Marketing Solutions, this unexpected journey began with a breast cancer diagnosis that changed everything.

When Jennifer discovered she had metaplastic triple negative breast cancer—a rare and aggressive form affecting just 1% of breast cancer patients—the statistics were grim. With a 50% five-year survival rate, she made a powerful decision: "I just have to be in the top half of the class, and I've never not done that."

Throughout our conversation, Jennifer reveals the surprising factors that contributed most to her complete recovery. While most of us focus on diet, exercise, and avoiding toxins, research shows these are actually lower on the priority list for cancer survival. Instead, love, support, purpose, quality sleep, and stress reduction prove far more crucial—a revelation confirmed when her surgeon candidly told her that stepping away from her business "probably saved your life."

Perhaps most moving is Jennifer's decision to reject isolation and shame during her treatment. By openly sharing her journey, she discovered an "army of angels" who supported her through the darkest moments. This vulnerability created connection at a time when many cancer patients feel profoundly alone.

Jennifer's story transcends cancer, offering wisdom for anyone facing life's challenges: "You are not defined by your statistics or by your circumstances." Her journey reminds us that chronic stress requires more than management—it demands real change. Most importantly, she shares a message of hope that applies to everyone: your life is a gift worth living well.

Ready to reduce burnout and create more balance in your own life? Visit balanceinstitutecom for resources that have helped thousands of women thrive.

Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive, and where you have the power to define success on your own terms. I honor the space you’ve created for yourself today, so take a breath, and let's dive right in…

Jo (Host)

Welcome to Balance and Beyond. I have a special guest today who comes from the US, but I've had the pleasure of hugging in person. Jennifer and I have been on quite the adventure together. She is from Colorado, had a varying upbringing in the US and is the CEO of Integrity Marketing Solutions, a firm who, and I guess an agency who takes care of attorneys has been highly successful. Welcome to the show, Jennifer!

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

Thank you, Jo. It's great to see you. It's great to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this.

Jo (Host)

So you've had quite the adventure in the last 18 months. You've a CEO, you're a mom of two boys, you're a grandmother, but something changed your life 18 months ago. Tell me about that.

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

Well, let's go back a little bit farther. In January of 2024, I slipped and fell on the stairs and I injured my knee. So I had knee surgery in February. My husband and I went on vacation to beautiful Sedona, Arizona, where I was really trying to swim to rehabilitate my knee.

And I thought that that was a big deal that I had this whole knee surgery thing. I was like, oh, woe is me. I have this knee thing. Well, I got out of the pool one day and I was changing my clothes and I felt a lump in my breast. when I was a younger woman, I was a marketing, a chief marketing officer for a healthcare system.

And I have run hundreds of mammography clinic, mammography scanning clinic breast cancer education programs. So I knew immediately what it was. There was no in denial on my part that, maybe it's just nothing. Maybe it's just a cyst or something. I just knew immediately while we were still in Sedona, I started making appointments for when we got back home. So I did not waste any time at all.

Within two weeks, I had had my diagnosis, which is very important that I got that very quickly because what we discovered was I had what's called metaplastic triple negative breast cancer. Only 1 % of all breast cancers are of this type. It is extremely aggressive and fast growing. I could actually track it growing in the time between when I found it and when we started treatment.

I got the diagnosis over email, which I think was just horrible. There was nobody calling me, talking to me. It came in my email and I didn't even expect it to come in my email, but it showed up in my email and somewhat foolishly, I immediately went to Google and Googled it, right? And the first studies that I saw were probably five or six years old.

 

 And the survival rate for this, the five-year survival rate for this cancer was zero. No one in the studies had survived five years. That, yeah, that was, that was pretty shocking. But as I continued to research more recent studies, we have had a lot of breakthroughs, cancer research is just galloping.

And the biggest breakthrough for this type of cancer has been the approval of immunotherapy to really turn on your own immune system to attack this cancer. So the five-year survival rate for this cancer is now up to 50%. So that is still pretty dismal. I there are a lot of breast cancers where the five-year survival rate is like 99%, right? We're doing pretty well with most breast cancers, but this one is pretty rare.

But when I saw that, I said to myself, "Okay, I just have to be in the top half of the class and I've never not done that." So that was my high achiever, right? That was my mindset. I am going to be in the top half of the class. So we we were definitely going to, to beat this one way or another. What I didn't understand is, and I think this is pretty common to me, chemotherapy is just a word. You don't really know at all what it means.

Jo (Host)

High achiever all the way!

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

This particular cancer typically does not respond very well to chemotherapy. I'm very fortunate that mine did. but it's very aggressive. And so the chemo is very aggressive. So I sat down with my family, my kids, James and Michael both work in the business and have all their adult lives. we've been in business for over 30 years now. I think James is coming up on his 20 year anniversary with the business.

So, we had a family meeting and I gave them the diagnosis and I said, and by the way, James, you're going to have to take over the business. I mean, it was like that much preparation, right? And I told him, I assured him, I reassured him, I'll still be here. You know, I'll be able to help out. I just will not be able to work full time. And I said that based on, you know, friends of mine who have been through chemotherapy and were able to continue to work. But I didn't.

I didn't have any idea what I was in for. So I had about a year of chemo. after, in week two, I got sepsis and was in the, ambulance ride to the hospital, emergency admission. And as I mentioned, it was kind of downhill from there.

I was so sick. My world was from the bed, to a chair, and that was a good day, and back again. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I was just horribly, horribly sick. So James had to run the business without me. It's like, I didn't look at financials, I didn't talk to the team. I thought I would, but then also, you look so horrible. I lost my hair, I lost my eyelashes, I lost my eyebrows.

I was taking steroids, my face was huge. You don't really want to get on and talk to anybody, even if you felt like it, you know? It's like, the temptation is really to be isolated. And I did not do that. I refused to be isolated.

So one of the decisions that I made early on was I was not going to be ashamed when I was not going to suffer in silence. And I was going to let everybody know what I was going through. There was some discussion about whether it might be bad for the business if we announced this on social media that people might flee the business thinking it was going to go down. And I said to myself, if that's how they are, then let them go. I'm not going to worry about that.

So, I did announce it on social media and everywhere. Nobody, none of our clients looked at it that way. I think everybody had confidence in James that he would take care, you he would run the ship as he did. But Joe, what really happened, I was totally shocked, humbled, and grateful.

People came from everywhere. A typical post of mine would have 175 comments on it of friends of mine from, well, people that I've noticed from kindergarten, my very best friend from elementary school, friends like you, friends all over the world, people in my network, people I hadn't talked to for a long time.

One of the great things that came out of it was a reconciliation with a family member who I hadn't spoken to for years. There was not a week that went by that I didn't get in the mail, a card, a letter, a gift. I was completely upheld and overwhelmed.

And then there would be people who would just start a chat conversation at 10 o'clock at night or two o'clock in the morning. I was absolutely never alone. I didn't have people so much right there in the room with me, but because I was open and transparent, I think it gave people the opportunity to step up and they did in amazing, amazing ways.

I call them my "Army of Angels."  You know, that I was just totally upheld. People prayed for me. It was crazy. It was honestly crazy. My family came through. My brothers came through for me. Michael, my younger son, went with me to every single infusion. He sat with me.

And some weeks we were in the hospital three days a week because we'd have a doctor's appointment, lab work, and an infusion. And infusions would last eight hours. Yeah. you know, what was sad was sometimes you look around the clinic and some people are there alone. And there's a lot of sadness and a lot of despair in this cancer journey for a lot of people. I was very, very fortunate that I had so much support from so many people all the time.

Jo (Host)

Doesn't it just go to show that when you're vulnerable and when you are open, humans can rise to the occasion, but we have to go first. You had to have shared what was going on and risk that what others may have perceived a shame or risk that vulnerability of your hair. Cause I remember you posting pictures of various wigs or without your hair or as it started to come back or you you, you with your dogs.

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

Right.

Jo (Host)

But you were very relatable. That's one beautiful strength that you've always had is you said you're very transparent. In Australia, we say you'd call a spade a spade. You just say it how it is and you didn't sugar coat it. You weren't asking for pity. It was just, "Here's where I'm at." "This is my journey." "Let's go." "I'm going to beat this bugger!"

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, people can't read your mind. And I also, as when I started that journey of sharing, I made a conscious decision to recognize that a lot of people don't know what to say. And that that's okay. I'm not going to have my feelings hurt or be angry with somebody who does not show up.

Because, they just don't know. And I've been that person that didn't know what to say. so being afraid to say the wrong thing didn't say anything, right? And sometimes those people will come through at a different stage of that journey. And so just to give people grace, one of my dearest friends who I used to work with at the hospital, she is a nurse and she's just a hoot. She sent me a card every week.

She would buy these funny self-deprecating note cards and, you know, make fun of herself. And inside, she would just talk about her day. There was nothing about cancer. There was nothing about, hope you feel better. She would say things like, I bought this lipstick and I thought it was going to look great on me, but I put it on and I just looked like a clown, but I'm going to wear it to work anyway.

You know, just stuff like that. And it was wonderful because it was just like we were sitting at. and having coffee like we were at Starbucks, just having a conversation. And every week I would get this crazy funny letter from Deb and we're like, she is just as nutty as she always was. And it would, I would just laugh out loud and I loved it. And I share that story because maybe if you are one of those people that doesn't know what to say, just say something, you know, just knowing that somebody's thinking about you.

Jo (Host)

We need those people in our lives.

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

And she didn't have to say, I'm thinking about you. Clearly she was thinking about me. She sent me this card, right?

Jo (Host)

Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. What role do you think you've demonstrated beautifully throughout, I guess, this conversation already, your different mindset to everyone else? I'm not going to be ashamed. I'm not going to hide. I'm not going to suffer in silence. What role do you think mindset played in your outcomes and in you being able to have a result on the right side of that bell curve of results?

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

Well, I really do believe very strongly in that mind body connection and that it's pretty well documented. I mean, it's not this woo woo crazy stuff. When we have stress, our body reacts and our immune system reacts in a certain way.

When we have negative thoughts and when we give up and people do give up and they get discouraged and sometimes doctors are discouraging, I don't think they mean to be. But when we first started seeing this tumor firstly stop growing and then start to shrink, and then we couldn't find it, I was so excited and my doctor threw up every possible bad thing that it could mean, right?

It could mean that it has got this "Swiss Cheese Effect" and we just can't feel it anymore. "I don't wanna raise your hopes." "I don't wanna give you false hope." And you know what? If I could go back in time, I would tell her, "False hope is better than no hope." False hope could boost my immune system and turn into real hope.

And I don't think, like I said, it's not with a bad intention, but there is this idea that we have to be realistic. We have to face the truth. I started at the very beginning, before I even started treatment, I started praying for complete healing. Not just to survive, not just to be on the other side of this, but that I would be completely healed. And I did something crazy and I don't know if it made any difference at all, but this was something that I did in my meditations.

I told those cancer cells that they were not welcome in this body. This is not your home. You need to go away. You need to stop. is not, we're not gonna tolerate this. And that was really part of my meditation, whether it made any difference, but the meditation itself, I think makes a huge difference. The calming and the prayer, I'm a person who's very full of faith and I do believe that God heals, and he's been healing in lots of different ways.

I spent a lot of time in prayer in the mornings and I spent a lot of time thinking about what my life might look like on the other side of this and what's important to me and how I might change what my life would look like.

And I knew that I would not go back to living the way that I lived before because just pragmatically, that's whatever I was doing, set me up for cancer. I don't know what that was, right? Nobody can tell you, well, you did this and that's why you had cancer. It's probably just the terrain of your body that we all have micro tumors all the time and our body is fighting them successfully all the time. But something happens to where you lose that battle and so the cancer grows.

So I knew that whatever it was that I was doing before, I wasn't gonna keep doing it.

Jo (Host)

And so "Time to change everything about life", she says.

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

Well, you you start thinking what could it look like? What could it be? And could I focus more on the things that bring me joy and that bring others joy? And, you know, go into that infusion clinic every week. If it doesn't break your heart, you don't have one.

And thinking about what could I do to help other people who are going through this to put a smile on their face to give them some hope, to give them some quality of life. And there was always one or two other people who would be in there who would be like me, who were trying to be happier, who had somebody with them, who were kind of spreading a little sunlight as they went along. I remember one lady, she was older than me and she was more frail, which is hard to believe that anybody could be more frail than I was, but she was.

And she had, she was using a walker, and we were wearing the same hat. And as I came into the hospital, she was leaving and she just lit up this big smile. Here she's just frail person on this walker and you know she just feels like terrible, right? And she says, "I love that hat!"

And it hit me, I want to be more like that, because she made me smile, she made me laugh and she was laughing. And like I said, if going to that clinic doesn't break your heart and give you a heart for other people, then you just don't have a heart. So that was a lot of what I thought about.

Jo (Host)

Yeah, as you said, the importance of spreading that joy and as you said, that mind-body connection, I got introduced to that quite young as a child. I used have a bunch of warts on my hands as many kids do, and I was conscious about them and they were impacting how I held a pen. And my mom actually said to me, which is interesting because she's not necessarily a woo person, she said, you know, you can wish your warts away.

 

I said, "What do you mean?" And she said, "Well, I'm going to put $50 on the fridge, which is how much it's going to cost us to go and get your warts frozen off." If you look at those warts and say, "Go away warts, go away warts, go away warts, they will go away on their own." I went to the doctor to get an assessment of how they could be frozen. And he said, "Right, I'll give you four weeks. I'll give you a month to see if you can wish them away. But you've got a lot of warts. They're very deep. They're not going to go away." Four weeks later, guess whose warts were all gone?

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

Wow, wow!

Jo (Host)

All of them, I had 10 warts on my hand and I would literally sit in class and look at my finger and just say, "Go away warts, go away." What I would imagine an army of things with clippers to come and hack it apart. So I didn't realize, but this was, I was about nine or 10 using intense visualization. Cause I was also very scared of pain. And so I didn't want them to be frozen off. Cause I knew I'd have to have a needle.

So there was a very big motorbike money avoiding needles and there was of me that went, "Wonder if I could actually do this?" So as you said, the brain body connection is unbelievable the more we understand about the power of our mind in healing ourselves.

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

I really wanted to talk to you about these six fundamentals that I learned from this book called Anti-Cancer Living. The book is written by Dr. Lorenzo Cohen, who is the head of integrative medicine at MD Anderson, which is a top cancer center here in the US. everything that he writes is research backed.

This is a principle that I think applies, Joe, across the board. This is a principle that applies to cancer. It applies to our marriage and relationships. It applies to business. We are not defined by the statistics. Okay, so a lot of us don't really understand statistics. And when they are quoted to us, we have this idea that they are facts.

You know, that this is this, these are the statistics. These are the facts. Well, statistics are just a numerical representation of an observation. Okay. So for example, my cancer has a 50 % five year survival rate. What does that actually mean?

It means that about half the people will survive five years after this cancer diagnosis but it also means that about half the people will not survive five years. So if you look at the statistical distribution, it's a bell curve, okay? On the left side are the people that don't make it to five years. At the top of the curve are the people that do. And then you have this, the curve comes down back to baseline and there's a long tail on the right side of that curve. And there are people over there who have survived 10 years, 20 years, 30 years of normal lifespan.

You can do things to try to put yourself on the right side of that curve. If you do nothing, if you just let life happen to you, you're probably going to fall somewhere on the bell, right? That's the averages. But if you say to yourself, I'm going to do actively, proactively, I'm going to do whatever I can.

It's like back when we were in school, that would mean I'm going to do my homework. I'm going to read the assignment. I'm going to get some test prep questions and I'm going to go over them and I'm going to do the very best that I can to be on the right side of the curve. And it applies. talked about, you know, in business, three out of five businesses fail within the first three years. Well, you can accept that.

Or you can say, I'm gonna be one of the two and be like me that I've been in business for 30 years that doesn't just happen because, you know, life, you just let it happen, you're probably gonna go out of business. Half of marriages in the US end in divorce. Well, you know, you can try to put yourself on the other side of that.

And that's kind of how I have approached my cancer journey and my recovering my health and my survivability journey, is I want to do everything that I can to be on that long tail. You know, I'm 68 years old. If I get 10 years, I'm going to be really happy. Right? If I got two years, I'm going to be pissed off. I got more things I want to do than two years worth!

Jo (Host)

Yeah, absolutely. It does completely change your frame of reference on life though. What have you found, whether it's from this book or other places, other things that you can do, or what philosophy are you following to get you on the very, very long end of that bell curve?

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

I love these, he has this, what he calls a mix of six. And one of the reasons I love it is it applies to everything, but it specifically applies to cancer. It's like the lessons that we learn from this cancer journey can enhance our lives across the board. So he lists these out, he studied the people who do beat the statistics, the people that live longer than we expect them to.

And he's come down with these six, principles and he lists them in priority order. And one of the reasons it's so interesting is it's like reverse order of what you would think. Okay. So the number one most important thing to try to prevent your cancer from coming back or try to prevent yourself from ever getting a cancer diagnosis, which by the way, more than 40 % of us will have some kind of a cancer diagnosis if we live long enough.

So if you think you're safe, you're probably not. So the number one most important thing is love and support and purpose for your life. And he talks about defining your core values and aligning your life with your core values, creating a support network of people who support your core values, who are in alignment with your core values and who love you.

And if you are in toxic relationships, you know, you're headed for problems across the board in your business, in your relationships, in your health. But sometimes people will get a diagnosis and they will discover that their partner or the people in their network, their close network, are failing them. And so they have to reach out beyond that. 

And if anybody is listening to this and they're in that situation, because you know, it's a tragedy, but a lot of husbands leave their wives when they get a breast cancer diagnosis. I just want to say that you are not alone. There are so many resources out there and there are people out there who will embrace you and support you and reach out for them.

And if your significant other turns out to be a jerk, don't let that stop you. You are worthy of having love and support. And there is an army of people out there who want to support you. I sent a care package to a woman who I don't even know. And I put in all kinds of things. And the note that I put in that package was, do not know you, but we are sisters now.

And I just want to get that message out that if you are in that situation, that love and support is essential to your recovery. And don't let something that somebody else is doing that's failing cause you to fail, and be graceful or gracious to your friends and let them know what's going on because they can't read your mind and let them support you.

So, he finds that the people who have that are the most likely to survive cancer. Number one most important thing.

Jo (Host)

Which is ironic because so many women are incredibly lonely. They don't reach out to people, they don't make time for their friends. And we talk about an epidemic of loneliness anyway. So just interesting that, I mean, that's also the findings in the blue zones. If you've heard about the blue zones, which are the places where people live the longest from a longevity perspective, usually top of that list is purpose and connection. So, you know, holds true everywhere. Yeah.

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

Yes, yes. And we think it's the food they're eating. We think it's the food they're eating, you know? And to a degree it is, but it's that social connection. And so if you don't have it now, start building it. I had no idea. I had no idea the network that I had. I didn't know. And how much people loved me. It was very, very humbling and very uplifting to realize that.

And now, you know, it makes me want to be a better friend to my friends as well.

So the next thing, the second most important thing is sleep and rest because our immune system recharges when we sleep and we are horrible in this country anyway, we are horrible about sleep and we run without sleep and it is the second most important thing in your battle against cancer or your fight to survive is good sleep.

The third one is stress reduction. And he talks a lot about, you know, we have this whole idea of stress management. And he says, you know, that's good stress management. You've got meditation, you've got yoga, Tai Chi, exercise, lots of things we can do to manage our stress. But the people who really survive, the people who really beat cancer, reduce their stress.

They make changes in their lives to actively reduce their stress. And you asked me, you know, what was the thing that probably was the biggest thing for me to beat this cancer? My surgeon, who I met with at the very, she was the first physician I met with and the last physician that I met with, because I had my surgery after my chemo.

When I came in and we had the pathology report that I was cancer free, I'd had a complete pathologic response. There's no sign of cancer in my body. She said to me, I couldn't believe it. When I met you and I found out you were the CEO of a national marketing agency, I did not think you would get a good outcome. I thought you would have too much stress.

She said, what did you do? I said, well, I stepped away from my business completely. My sons and my team ran with it and they ran it successfully. And she looked me right in the eye and she said, well, they probably saved your life. 

That's from the doctor. Well, all the chemo, all the immunotherapy, all the surgery, what does she think saved my life? I reduced the stress. I stepped away. And that's what Dr. Cohen says in the book. He said, you know, we can try to manage our stress and those are all good things, but we're not very good at consistently managing our stress and chronic stress. 

We're not built for chronic stress. You know, we're very good at responding to crisis and that type of stress and then resolving it and then coming back to stasis. 

Jo (Host)

But as you said, can see stress feels like a sleep, which feels like a joy. So they're all connected, right? Yeah.

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

Exactly, it all goes together, right? So one of the things that I want to kind get that message out is don't live with chronic stress. Don't just say, this is my life. I have to manage it. I have to go take a vacation. I need to go to the spa. I need to self-care. No, you probably need to make some changes. If you are in a toxic relationship,

If every time you come home from work, you and your spouse are fighting and arguing, you need to change that, not just deal with it, not just cope with it. And that may mean that you go to counseling and you figure out a different way to greet each other at the end of the day so that you're not giving each other that stress. It could mean you have to get a divorce.

It might mean that, but your life is worth living and living in constant chronic stress is not good for you. So this idea of managing it is fine, but if you hate your job, get out of it. Make the changes to reduce your stress.

Now we get into the ones that people like to focus on. The number four is exercise. Exercise has been proven to be as effective as chemotherapy against some cancers. But it is number four. I want to stress that it's not number one. Number five is diet. What are we eating? What are we not eating? Again, that's where everybody wants, here's the three that we want to focus on, diet, exercise and then the number six is toxins in our environment.

What are we again? Yeah. It's like that's what the media focuses on. That's what we want to focus on. Let's reduce our toxins. Let's eat better and let's get exercise. But if we don't address these other lifestyle things, then we're missing the big payoff of stress reduction and sleep and love and support and purpose. Those are the things that really make the big difference. And if you have those, then sticking to a healthier diet, sticking to a healthier exercise regimen and kind of detoxifying your environment, it's all a lot easier. It's a lot easier to do that when you have those other three things in place.

Jo (Host)

Absolutely such important lessons. Jennifer, if there was one message you wanted everybody having come so close to almost feeling like you were going to lose your grip now you talk about survivability, what's one message having been so close you'd love to share with everyone? What would you love them to take away from this conversation?

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

Every life, your life, my life, every life is a gift and it's worth living, it's worth living well. And you are not defined by your statistics or by your circumstances. There is a cancer center here in the US called City, well actually they're international, called City of Hope. And I think hope is the most important thing that we can have.

If we can have hope, if we can give hope to other people, and that quality of life and realizing that your life is a gift and you deserve to live it well. That would be my message.

Jo (Host)

Such a powerful one, as you said, hope can drive so much. So thank you so much for sharing your journey, Jennifer, wishing you all the best for healthy life in your new locale where you've always wanted to live with good health, you're back running again. And I hope to give you another hug again in future soon.

Jennifer Goddard (Guest)

I would look forward to it! Thank you, Jo. Thank you so much.