Jennifer Moss Quotes

Our offerings as a supplier were very traditional. When we lost King’s Discount Store, it was an opportunity in disguise. We started to change our basket combinations and move away from that flat footprint into more container gardening with more perceived value on the baskets,”

I had to pivot very quickly and start to identify a couple of chains that we could gain to make up for the loss. That's the year I started to really earn my stripes and gain the respect of my coworkers and peers. At the end of the season, I was able to recapture 89% of the sales. It was tough. But that customer had done over a million dollars with us in 2016.

My mom showed me how to generate trust with people and to have faith in your decisions. My father taught me how to lead a team and how to hold people accountable. With my mom's softer approach combined with my father's drive for results, I developed a hidden talent I didn't realize I had until the last year, which is building teams and creating loyalty in my employees,

If something really hard comes in front of me, I ask myself, ‘Will this matter in a year? In five years? In 10 years? And if the answer is no to any of those questions, then I need to make sure I’m not giving it too much energy in that moment,

Candidly, that was the worst job I've ever had. However, it taught me a lot. Those hard jobs are actually really good for you. They build character and you learn what you can do and what you're not willing to tolerate. It was at that job where I was put in a couple of situations that I could not stomach. Going back to that core value of integrity, I put in my two-weeks' notice. That's when I went to my parents and said, 'Let's give it a go at the greenhouse.'

When I was managing the restaurant, I had to make very big decisions on the fly. And I didn't have a super strong mentor in that space, per se. I didn't have a bad one, they were a little bit more passive. And because of that, I was abrasive in my management, and I would anger easily. And that trickled into the greenhouse for a little while. I started to pay a lot more attention to how I was showing up to conversations. What was my body language, was my tone of voice right or how did I leave people feeling? And I have really worked on that over the last four or five years and fine-tuned it.

I've learned that failing forward is the best way to approach it. Failure doesn't disarm me, it doesn't scare me. I tell my employees that if you don't fail forward, the universe will continue to bring you that lesson and it will get harder and harder every time. So when something bad happens, don't ask, 'Why did this happen to me?' Ask, 'Why is this happening for me?'

That has been a really hard lesson, though,' she says. 'I had FOMO — fear of missing out. I wanted to be in all places and all things. But that's not the case anymore. I know where I stand as a human. I know what I want to show up for, and I know how much currency I have in the tank to be able to accomplish things.

I took a papermaking workshop at Penland last summer and have been making embossed panels out of paper pulp. It's all recycled computer paper and junk mail.

I went through a period where I was just the boss' daughter for a long time, yet my brother didn't have that stigma of being just the boss' son. And it pissed me off. That's when I became more aware of what and how I was projecting things,

I will never forget the day we lost our largest customer in 2017. It was Feb. 16 at 2 p.m. when he walked in,' she recalls. 'We were doing 30% of our business with this one customer at the time. And they walked in and said, 'We're liquidating the business. I hope we told you soon enough.' And my dad sat there and said, 'I've got 70% of the seed planted. No, you didn't tell us soon enough.' So I hit the ground running. We were in the middle of launching a wholesale houseplant program at the time, so I was already on the road trying to pitch that program,

I agreed with them at the time that my brother, who is younger than me, was a better choice to lead the company,” Jennifer says. “He was more level-headed, he was less emotional and he was more consistent. So that was the plan.”

I've set a gigantic goal for myself. I'm going to be in the best shape of my life by the time I'm 40. I just turned 38 in March, so I've got time,' she says. 'But part of that journey is getting really strong and getting my athlete body back. I'm strong, but I want to be this bad ass who handles it like a boss. So I told myself, 'I'm doing it. There's nothing standing in my way.'

I do not like the status quo. I am a person who holds space for everyone and I don’t make judgments,”

When I got to SCAD and took more weaving classes, I thought back to that experience and decided to explore it more. Using their computer-aided weaving, I started blending low-carbon steel with linen, silk, cotton, and other materials. When the fabric came off the loom, the steel was monochromatic gray, but then I'd wash it in salt water to start the color changing process. That body of work resulted in Transient Structures – her thesis show of huge woven panels of fibers and rusting metal "purposefully designed to fall apart."