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Inside the Detroit entrepreneur club built by a cancer survivor who never gave up
Jannel Aweke has created a space where entrepreneurs can gather in Detroit and work together.
DETROIT (FOX 2) - Jannel Aweke has always wanted to be an entrepreneur.
Now, after battling and beating cancer, she owns her own business to help other entrepreneurs in Detroit.
"You are here today, you may be gone tomorrow. So, I feel like that’s my push, why I have the time that I’ve been blessed with, and I'm here, that I have to make an impact on doing something," she said.
Aweke said she was diagnosed with stage 4 non-hodgkin's lymphoma in 2007, when she was 24. Doctors didn't think she would survive.
Going to chemo treatments, that's what the saddest part of it was, going into this place – here it is I’m young. Most of the people around me were old, so it was like you get these thoughts like, ‘Wow, I’m dying,'" she said.
Doctors told her if she survived, she probably wouldn't be able to start a family. She has four children with her husband Ephraim.
"Doctors aren’t the judge, God is," Aweke said.
Throughour her battles, she kept up her dreams of opening a business, and after two years of work opened Unorthodox Business Club across the street from Palmer Park in August.
"This is my baby. I built it, like lipstick and a hammer," she said.
It's a space for other entrepreneurs to come together.
"Helping one another, building. It’s not about people being lazy or don’t want to do the work. Some people don’t know how, some people don’t understand, they don’t know where to go to," she said. "You can do anything if you put your mind to it. Dreams do come true. You don’t have to have $1 million to make them happen – you just have to be creative work hard."
You can join the Unorthodox Club here.