Filene Lehman: CannaPods
We are all all-too-familiar with why we need to grow our own food. We see the sprays, the pesticides, the misleading packages… The only way to know how our food was actually grown is to grow it ourselves. But that solution in itself breeds a whole new flood of questions. What about weather? Seasonality? Space? And as important as it is to have fresh organic food… the solution to do it ourselves is simply overwhelming. But before you get too comfortable with letting the idea go, meet Filene Lehman, founder of PonicPods and CannaPods. She’s creating controlled-environment pods to grow your own food and, for the cannabis patients, your own meds! As a cancer patient herself, she knows how important both of these are for the health of the human body and she is here to empower others to make the change to start now, and grow your own!
What was the deciding factor for you to join this particular industry?
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in mid-2009. When I started chemotherapy and radiation I started doing my research about the causes of cancer so I could fight this dreaded disease. I quickly learned that the use of hormones, antibiotics, genetically-modified food, and pesticides were the crux of the problem with not only cancer, but many other diseases. Bluntly, the world is killing itself.
In searching my heart and soul for an answer, I decided to eat only organically grown food. I decided I would use my father’s connections with a company he had been closely acquainted with and joined with him and my sister, Estelle, to start researching and developing a truly sustainable and ISO-compliant way of growing our own food.
In searching my heart and soul for an answer, I decided to eat only organically grown food.
As we evolved, we added equipment and ancillary options such as water retention roofs, ventilated slabs, and self-leveling foundations.
What were you doing before?
My father and sister were distributors for the building material that we are now using and I was a real estate agent working with an real estate developer building hotels and apartment buildings out of the same building material.
Tell me about the point in the time you realized the coming of the ‘green rush’?
When the word started getting out about the PonicPods turnkey growing environment, we started getting calls to sell to the emerging cannabis industry. It was then that the magnitude of coming industry really hit us.
Right now, where are you guiding your passion and energy towards?
We are currently focusing on the medicinal marijuana market due to all the calls coming in for our systems. That, along with the agricultural market and bio-fuel industry maintains our position as the leader in sustainable, sealed growing environments.
Describe your work ethic to me in one word.
Integrity.
Tell me about a time in your career that didn’t go as planned and what you did about that? How did you handle it?
Clearly, things didn’t go as planned when I was a real estate agent and developer when the real estate market collapsed. The principal of my company died and I was diagnosed with Invasive ductal carcinoma breast cancer. But look at me now… I turned lemons into lemonade.
What book have you read that you’ve been inspired by? Any particular read we should put on our list?
The Butterfly Effect: How Your Life Matters by Andy Andrews. One flutter of a butterfly’s wings can change weather patterns; the minor choices we make now have the power launch ripple effects into the future. Andrew’s compelling story about how one man’s choice, made over 100 years ago, affects today’s world will inspire you to do the right thing; even when it’s difficult.
Tell me about an esteemed achievement of yours.
Defying all odds while building this company!
What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?
“Move On”
What is the most important thing for us to know now about the legal marijuana industry?
If higher ethics, transparency, efficacy, and potency are not achieved by the leaders of this industry… the patients that really NEED “God’s green medicine” will not be getting the quality of cannabis that they need to heal. We must all strive to achieve those four things.
If we are sitting across from each other a year from now, how will our conversations about the ‘green rush’ be going?
We will be discussing the most valuable advances for mankind and the exceedingly overdue stop to the prohibition that was a bleak cloud in our nation’s history! Finally “We the People” can take back what was so wrongfully taken from us at the start of the “War on the People” (not the war on drugs) initiated by the” Corporate conglomerates and the forces that be.”
