Entrepreneurs have a history of making people feel better. Band aids, stethoscopes and x-rays have all been brought into existence by the determined and hardworking entrepreneurs who breathed life into them. When faced with terminal cancer which pushed her out of the job she’d grown to love for over a decade, Renee Robinson found her inner entrepreneur and set out to work from her bedside to help others understand how to deal with cancer.
Always a writer at heart, Renee began journaling her experience with cancer through poetry. She hoped that her artistic interpretations of “scary” doctors’ visits, “poisonous” chemo injections and “delirious” visions of heaven and death would help to ease the discomfort for other victims of cancer and explain the inner mysteries of the disease to their loved ones. With a body riddled with sickness but a heart full of determination, she wrote and networked between hospital visits for years,but it wasn’t until she began writing children’s books that she truly found her voice.
Inspired by a love for children and a desire to touch the grandchildren she would likely never meet, she wrote her way into the Amazon Best Sellers Top 100 for Children’s Books. It was then that her dad, a retired entrepreneur himself, rolled up his sleeves once more to help his “little girl” achieve her goals. He cold called every media outlet number his old phonebook listed, doing everything he knew how to get the word out about her books which were growing in popularity on the internet. After a finger numbing number of dials, it dawned on him where they should focus her products. She’d originally grown to poetically explain the process of battling cancer and now she’d learned to create enchanting short stories for children – it was time to blend the two!
He immediately pitched the idea to Nationwide Children’s Hospital. They expressed interest and later that night “Captain Chemo” was born. Renee is now vivaciously writing short stories for children battling illnesses. She hopes that super heroes like Captain Chemo will bring hope and healing to the children and their families.
Whether it’s a band aid or a super hero in a children’s book, the creations of entrepreneurs exist to benefit and inspire those around them. We all have a chance to breathe life into our ideas. In the case of Renee, she may have a few less breaths than the rest of us, but she’s certainly got a lot of life left to live and many children left to heal.
See her works Here
by Dan Woodward
