What happens when a man is diagnosed with a disease the world has decided belongs to women? Jake Messier, known as @theguywithstage4breastcancer, is living that answer every single day. After a stage 2 breast cancer diagnosis in 2023 progressed to metastatic disease in August 2025, Jake turned his 30-year marketing career into a mission: building the largest male breast cancer community in the world and refusing to let men suffer in silence.

In this conversation, Jake opens up about finding a lump while putting on deodorant and brushing it off because no one had ever taught him that men could get breast cancer, too. He discusses the nearly year-long ordeal of four inconclusive biopsies, the moment he got the call that changed everything, and how he has recorded his experience from the highs to the vulnerable lows. 

We dig into the toxic masculinity that literally keeps men out of treatment rooms, the staggering fact that very little funding is specifically dedicated to male breast cancer, and what it means to plant trees you'll never sit in the shade of. Jake also shares the story of a man who hid his breast cancer for 14 years and why Jake's platform finally made him feel brave enough to call himself a survivor.

This episode is for anyone who has ever loved someone with cancer and didn't know what to say, and for every man who went on with his day when he should have made a call.

Find Jake online:

Website: theguywithstage4breastcancer.com

Instagram & TikTok : @theguywithstage4breastcancer 

LinkedIn: Jake Messier 

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Special thanks to:

Podcast Editor Jacqueline van Bierk of Pink Star Music

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