Asking the public to fund your business: The realities of being a female founder in the cannabis-adjacent space.
“Violent Content and Recreational Drug Use”. Those were the accusations that accompanied proclamation from TikTok that my video had violated community standards and was to be taken down. I appealed of course, and they rejected my appeal of course. What was this heinous video that threatened the decency and values of the sensitive young folk on TikTok? It was my dog, in my garden, eating cannabis leaves.
I have been working in the cannabis space for over 20 years, so I am definitely no stranger to the hypocrisy of social media when it comes to this plant. Accounts banned, marketing impossible and promotion discouraged, those operating in the legal cannabis market have no hope of getting valuable information out to their consumers. And, as I have recently found, this reaches beyond those selling cannabis to those simply educating around it.
Enter Personal Plants. I founded Personal Plants last year as a passion project inspired by my own experiences as a 25+ year medical cannabis patient growing their own. I struggled to find content that spoke to me and my level of experience. I did not want to grow “ginormous buds” from a clandestine room in my parent’s basement. I wanted to grow it in the garden, like a plant. Taking a cue from the Food Network and HGTV, Personal Plants is a media platform that gives people the knowledge and tools they need to cultivate their own plant medicine at home and on their terms. We are a picks and shovels business, and we do not sell cannabis.
But, alas, according to the dark overlords of Instagram and Facebook, we might as well be a butane lab in a nursery school. And although a lot of our content does not even mention cannabis, the social media powers that be block it from promotion at every turn. But, I am too determined and committed to this project to let the social media iron curtain bring me down.
I believe that we as a society are ready to embrace plant medicine on a massive scale. We have seen the gradual adoption of cannabis as medicine, followed by psychedelic plants, but this is just the beginning. We are tired of pills, tired of focusing on illness and not wellness, and tired of being told that our health is dependent on professional treatment rather than natural prevention.
I know that in order to have wide scale adoption of plant medicine, we need to meet people where they are at and give them content that is easy to understand and reflects their identity. We need to show our mistakes, be humble, and willing to put aside our egos for the sake of helping people feel welcome.
Personal Plants is for you, your mother, grandmother, neighbor and teacher, for anyone and everyone who has felt pain, stress, depression, and searched for the healthiest path. That path is here, in the garden, and Personal Plants is your guide.
I am asking for your support. Personal Plants is designed to support the public, to curate and house authentic and evidence-informed content. We are building this platform to spread the message of plant medicine and to create a community around choosing plants over pills.
We are crowdfunding with iFundWomen. The money we raise through this effort will go towards integrating a store into our site so that people have access to all of the best plant medicine tools in one spot, and to developing additional video content with experts in the plant medicine space. We are dedicated to YOUR plant medicine journey. We appreciate the support. https://ifundwomen.com/projects/personal-plants-earth-medicine-everyone
