When Liz Benditt had cancer, people always asked her what they could do to help her, and she never really knew what to say.

For her, it felt like a “total landmine question,” even if it was “well meaning,” because she never felt sure what exactly they’d be up for, and also, there just wasn’t much people could do for her.

It’s something she felt during the multiple times she’s had cancer in the past 15 years or so. As she recovered from the various treatments, people gave her all sorts of gifts, including more than one “my tatas tried to kill me” T-shirt when she had breast cancer.

The questions stuck with her through each journey and ultimately planted the seed for her future business.

Called Balm Box, the business offers curated care packages for people going through cancer treatment, and it’s currently in the running for the top prize through Verizon’s Small Business Super Pitch competition.

Benditt has had six different cancer diagnoses

Benditt had her first experience with cancer in 2009 with a melanoma on her upper left thigh, which she planned to ignore initially, but her mom urged her to get it checked out.

The cancer looked so advanced that the doctors insisted on a lymph node biopsy to ensure it hadn’t spread and scheduled surgery within a week for removal. In the end, the cancer hadn’t spread to her lymph nodes and she didn’t require treatment beyond that removal.

Less than a year later, Benditt was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and after the treatment for it, she was left with a chronic thyroid condition called hyperparathyroidism that has at times been hard to manage. Through all of that, she learned just how different everyone’s journey through an identical illness can be because their body could respond to treatments in a variety of ways.

Later, she had another run in with skin cancer with a basal cell on her face. That ultimately required a removal, plus two plastic surgeries to address scarring.

By 2015, she was diagnosed with very early-stage breast cancer, caught during a routine mammogram, which was treated with a lumpectomy and radiation.

She recalls that particular experience being especially humbling because at the time, she’d felt pretty healthy and like radiation would be no big deal for her, but she was wrong. Benditt said she scheduled all of her radiation appointments for first thing in the morning so she could still go to work afterwards, but the whole thing hit her “like a ton of bricks.”

“It was really hard, I got debilitating fatigue,” she said. “I was just an absolute wreck.”

Issues with her skin around her radiation site forced her to pause radiation more than once, and she remembers feeling like there wasn’t much her friends could do for her, no matter how much they offered. (That is, aside from a friend who brought over Jell-O shots, because sometimes that is the answer, Benditt recalls.)

A few years ago, she had breast cancer again, this time more aggressive and more advanced. Her doctors pushed her to have a double mastectomy, though she eventually had a single mastectomy in early 2023, followed by a reconstruction surgery a few months later and some serious physical therapy to recover.

Shortly after that, as she was training to run a half-marathon, doctors found another melanoma on her skin, this time on her calf. That required a removal that forced her to sit out several months of training and miss the race, though she ended up running through the winter to train for the Rock The Parkway Half Marathon in 2025.

She planned to leave her job to start an entrepreneurial journey

Benditt first started getting the idea for what would become Balm Box during her first breast cancer treatment in 2015, but it didn’t feel like the right time to leave her career in marketing behind.

For one thing, she really wanted her life to go back to normal, but still, “it was always sitting there in the back of my head.”

By the summer of 2018, she was seriously talking to her husband about what they’d need to do to set the groundwork for her to “go rogue entrepreneur.” A decision was made to wait until their two kids were a bit older, so they didn’t have child care costs. They also wanted to spend some time seriously saving their salaries to prepare for a transition to one regular salary from her husband.

Benditt said she planned to give herself two years to focus on building the business, which would be a good point to assess whether it was working or not.

During the early days, the whole business was run out of the guest room at her family’s home in Leawood, and Balm Box did a lot of evolving away from her original idea to do subscription boxes into what it is now.

She prepared a survey for people who previously had cancer to gauge what the majority of them had wanted or needed during their illness. Another survey was sent out to ask specifically about gifts.

She found that, generally, cancer patients rated functional items like lotion and blankets as beneficial, though they were mostly receiving things like teddy bears and flowers.

The survey, in Benditt’s perspective, “identified this huge gap between what people want and need and what they’re actually getting.”

So, she wants Balm Box to help “close that gap,” with its care packages that are specifically curated for cancer patients’ treatments and full of “non-prescription things that are supportive and helpful during cancer treatments, for one reason or another.”

For example, a lot of patients receiving chemotherapy report problems with brittle fingernails that break easily. Some of the boxes include nail care kits intended to help with that.

Balm Box specifically offers boxes for different treatment types, like radiation, chemo and surgery, but also has boxes for specific cancers, including through a partnership with the American Liver Foundation for liver cancer patients.

You can also build your own box and fill it with items specifically for the loved one you’re shopping for and their individual needs. Also, you can take a quiz to find the right items or boxes, too.

Additionally, the business has since graduated to having a real office space, near the Overland Park Convention Center, with a couple of employees supporting her efforts.

Benditt won a regional small business pitch contest

Through networking with other female entrepreneurs, Benditt got connected with the Verizon Digital Ready platform, which offers training and tools for small business owners and start-ups.

Sometimes, those things can feel a little remedial for Benditt, who has an MBA, but a lot of them are beneficial, specifically trainings dealing with artificial intelligence. Plus, it connected her with some grant competitions in the past and let her know about the Verizon Small Business Super Pitch, which is tied to the telecom firm’s sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup.

Carrie Hughes, associate vice president of social innovation programs for Verizon, said Verizon is doing the Super Pitch contest as part of its effort to support small businesses, though this specific program is part of the World Cup festivities.

It all kicked off with hundreds of businesses posting a video about their business on social media, and from there, 20 businesses were selected to compete in regional pitch contests around the U.S. Benditt competed in one hosted in Kansas City, and she won.

During the regional stage of the competition, Benditt had to stand up and pitch her business without the help of any visual aids or product samples in a three-minute presentation to a panel of judges at Kansas City Memorial Hall.

But she was ready, since she’d spent countless hours rehearsing with the help of one of her son’s friends from the Shawnee Mission East debate team and some professional contacts she’s made along the way.

Through all of that, she earned support from what she calls her “fan club,” which included her kids, her husband, her mom, her employees and friends.

“My community was 100% behind me, and knowing that and having used all of these people’s help and advice was awesome,” Benditt said.

Hughes said she found Benditt’s story to be particularly “compelling,” even from the beginning with her initial submission video.

“From what I hear from the judges and just everyone who attended, she was fabulous. So, we’re really excited to welcome her to the finals event,” she said. “[I] wish the best of luck to her.”

Now, the four regional winners will compete in a similar pitch contest in the New York City area to attend the World Cup Final and for a chance to win the $20,000 grand prize. One of the judges slated for the national contest is Carli Lloyd, a former U.S. soccer player who was on the national team during multiple women’s World Cup victories and Olympic gold medals.

Benditt is bringing the same energy she brought to the regional contest into preparing for the national one.

“I’ll go back into high gear,” she said.

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