Fifty Cups of Coffee #37: Jessica Mozeico
Date: December 12, 2024
Location: Zoom
How we know each other
I believe Jessica and I first met via Instagram. I remember reading about the story of her family’s winery, and then falling in love with her wines. We connected online for a while before we finally met in real life at the Et Fille tasting room. She’s a dynamic force in the local wine industry, and I love how she is constantly supporting important causes through her business. Like when sales of her STEM and Root Pinot Noir supported STEM programs for young women.
What Jessica is doing now
Jessica is the owner and winemaker at Et Fille Wines. She lives in Sherwood, Oregon with her 9-year-old daughter, Gabriella. I often run into Jessica not only in her tasting room (Alain and I are wine club members), but also at various wine industry events throughout the year.
Three questions
During these Fifty Cups of Coffee chats, I ask each person the same three questions. The reasoning behind each is as follows:
Question 1 – Social media makes it easy for other people to think that they know us, when truthfully, we all only see a small sliver of someone’s life and who they really are. This is the interviewee’s chance to share something that is important to them that, for whatever reason, other people may not know.
Question 2 – We all have fears, no matter who are are or where we are in life. This helps connect us and show we are all more alike than we are different.
Question 3 – I believe the answer to this question helps show each person’s true values, passions, and their why in life.
There are no right or wrong answers to any of these. I’m including each person’s answers in first person. Their answers have been edited from my notes for length and clarity, but these are their words.
What is one thing you wish more people knew about you?
“I am an extrovert, and I think other people think that I’m always comfortable in large groups. But actually, I gain my energy from one-on-one connections. What gives me energy is being able to connect deeply through one-on-one authentic conversations. And you’ve seen this. Say I’m at a tasting event. I get a lot of energy from the event, and I like it. But what really feeds me is being able to going deeper with one person at a time. When I come home, I don’t think, ‘oh my gosh, I talked to 50 people.’ I think ‘I understand that how Marlynn feels about her son going to U of O’ – individual details like that. And that is the type of connection that feeds me.”
“In what we do, I feel that there are certain components of our story that are very public, but that doesn’t mean that I’m always very public. It means that I’m comfortable sharing those particular elements in one-on-one circumstances.”
What is your deepest fear?
“My deepest fear is that is not having a growth mindset. And what I mean by that, is that there are always unforeseen circumstances that happen to you, around you, or with you. And certainly in my life, there have been things that I never thought would possibly happen, both tragic and miraculous. And the through line is that no matter which of those unforeseen circumstances happen in your life, that to approach it with a growth mindset and to approach it with a, ‘Now we’re here. Where do we go from here? What can we learn? What is the lesson? What is this trying to teach me?’ line of thinking. And to me, I’m more fearful of not having that growth mindset than I am of any specific circumstance that could come my way.”
“I think that we spend a lot of time thinking of our fears as the avoidance of a negative outcome happening to us. But in reality, it’s not about the most negative thing that could happen to you. I’ve had some pretty negative things happen to me. Sounds like a victim mindset, so I don’t like saying that, but I’ve experienced some things that, at the moment, felt like my worst fear. When my dad died in an accident, that was certainly the first thing that I said to my best friend, is that this was my greatest fear. So sometimes we think that it’s about the thing that could happen to you, but it’s not really. It’s about what you do with that. Do you get a little bit more resilient? Do you learn something from it?”
If you had unlimited funds, what would you do with your life?
“I’m not going to say it’s going to look exactly the same as my life does now, but it would look a lot alike. I would still be doing what I’m doing with the winery. I would still be living where I’m living. I would still have the lifestyle that I have. The only two things that I could think of that would be look a little bit different is that I would worry less about retirement. I mean, I’m going to work until I’m a million years old because I had Gabriela very late in life and it is my goal to work until she is of the age where she can determine if she wants to carry forward with the winery or not. She’s nine years old. So we’re realistically 20 years away from that and I’m 51, so I’m certainly going to be working until I’m 71 before I can even start to transition things or accept that that’s not what she’s interested in, and work on plan B from there.”
“I’m originally from Hawaii and I want to spend a lot of my time in retirement in Hawaii, which feels like my other home. I’ve always felt like I have two homes: Oregon and Hawaii. I would simply have less worry about my ability to do that. That’s number one. Number two: if somebody plopped a million dollars in my lap today, I would immediately take my mom and daughter traveling. I would take them to Japan tomorrow. My mom’s 78, and very healthy, but I still feel a sense of urgency about traveling with my mom and daughter now. That’s what I would do in the short term.”
Lessons Learned
I really enjoyed this opportunity to chat with Jessica one-on-one. Here are a few of my biggest take-aways from our conversation:
- Being extroverted does not mean we draw our energy from big crowds. I can relate 100% to what Jessica said about drawing energy more from one-on-one conversations. I love people and will easily chat with anyone I meet, which some people believe classifies me as an extrovert, but I draw my energy from meaningful conversations with small groups or individuals.
- It’s not the thing you fear, but how you deal with the thing you fear that matters most. I appreciate Jessica talking about having a growth mindset, and how her deepest fear is not having that growth mindset to deal with the unforeseen challenges that may come.
- Family businesses are rewarding but have their unique challenges. I think about all of the winery owners like Jessica who run a family business. Will their children want to take up the business too? What happens to the winery if they don’t? We face the same thing with our main website, although I already know that my children don’t want to take over once I retire, so our main option is to sell. But how do you sell something you’ve put your own blood, sweat, and tears into building for 20 years? Whether your family business is a farm, a store, an online business, or a service, I think the underlying challenges we face are very similar.
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat, Jessica!
Learn more about Jessica
You can learn more about Jessica’s wines at the Et Fille Wines website.
You can also follow @EtFilleWines on Instagram.
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Learn more about me at MarlynnSchotland.com.
