308 - The Science of Style: Merging Biotech with Interior Design for Healthier Spaces with Moss Pure's Jamie Mitri

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational.

Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life.

Stick around to the end of the show, and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Jamie Mitri, welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm smiling because today is January 1st, 2025, and I don't think I've ever done a podcast on January 1st before.

So this is great.

And I know that you're in Delaware and I'm in California, but we make it work. You are the CEO and founder of a company called MossPure. You have two Bachelor of Science degrees, one in, if I'm right about this, chemical engineering? Yep. And the other one in biology. So you're a science nerd.

Yeah, I'm a scientist. I've had over 20 years experience on top of that working in biotech and working as an environmental engineer. So I've had my, I've had my experience in industry.

Tell us a little bit about your backstory and then we'll talk about MasPure.

Yeah, so I'm actually a graduate of University of Rhode Island. So I'm based out of Rhode Island here on the East Coast. And as I mentioned, I have a really strong science background. But when I was at school and during, during postgrad actually, I noticed we were creating point-of-care blood gas systems for hospitals to treat and diagnose those in the ICU with critical care. And I was showing some doctors from Mass General Hospital in Boston our prototype and what we had done, and they loved the science and accuracy behind it. But they mentioned one thing, that the machine and device wasn't aesthetically pleasing enough. We had another device next to us on the lab bench that wasn't as aesthetically pleasing. It was still great in science, still great in accuracy, allowed them to do their job. And that was their advice. We want something aesthetically pleasing as well. Now I went back to management, of course didn't go with it because I was just a first-time engineer. But you know, that whole aesthetically pleasing design stuck with me. And I have a really, not only am I passionate about science, but I have a really big passion with architecture, interior design, and fashion design. And I always just wanted to mix the two. So I actually got into a startup competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In June 2020, and I pitched Moss Pure. I developed Moss Pure over the 3-day, over the 3-day intensive competition, and it ended up winning first place startup. It was a worldwide competition. So I didn't know that I was going to use moss. I didn't know that I was going to create this business.

We got to stop.

And I won.

This is at the height of COVID You're up. Yes.

You're—

I take it this is up in Cambridge.

I'm not taking classes.

No, but it's at MIT at Cambridge, right?

It's at MIT Cambridge. But it was because of COVID it was virtual and it was a live competition on top of that. So I didn't sleep for 3 days because I was—

They gave you 3 days to come up with some product or device or something. You just had to come up with it out of the blue.

Out of the blue. They literally gave me minutes. I honestly cannot remember if it was 2 or 5 minutes, but everything was high pressure. That's how, like, how, how pressure—

That's crazy.

And that's why, and I just noticed that the moss wall living wall market was huge and it was in demand, but there was a massive gap.. And what I noticed that there was a massive gap, but there was an issue was that customers were complaining about these moss walls. And when I looked closely at it, most moss wall art, other moss wall art that you see out and about is actually made of fake moss. It's not made of living moss, and it has several disadvantages. It's very— it's highly chemically treated. I actually have some right here with me, and I always like to do a little bit of a science experiment because I like to show people what this is all about. So here's what most of this stuff is really made of. It's called something, it's something called reindeer moss.

Yeah, I've seen it.

What this is, it's not actually this soft in real life. I can't tell from my— So it's usually actually hard and cream-colored in real life in nature, and it's not even a plant in nature. It's actually a type of fungus or fungi or lichen.

We'll see that kind of moss. I'm going to say we'll see those moss at higher altitudes here in the Sierra Nevada. Yeah, but this is hanging off rocks.

Yeah, it's not a type of moss and it's actually hard and cream colored. So what they do is they have to add a bunch of chemicals to it to make it one softer, to make it no longer living, and then make it and then dye it different colors so that it's able to be used as an art piece. So these are really, it's art installations. They're not real moss. They have a high chemical smell. But worst of all, the biggest thing that I found was that they weren't even lasting for more than a few months and then people replacing them. So you have these massive moss walls that are really valuable art pieces that are investments, art pieces in big corporate offices. They, these companies are paying an investment to install these preserved moss walls where these companies are just coming in and slapping the moss on or, or gluing the moss on a wall in an art pattern. And within a year or a few months, they're paying to have it replaced. There, there was either that going on or there was just companies who were trying to just attach living moss to a wall or frame, and you can't do that because living moss won't survive for more than a few days. It'll need a lot of watering, and they're trying to make an air filter, and you can't do that. You just cannot do that. Live moss on its own is not an air filter. What I did was I developed the world's first and only company to use 100% living moss. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing wall art, but it's also a scientifically certified and patent-pending air filter. Stress relief device. And because of our science, we're not just adding moss to a frame because of our multi-layered living environment and air filter that we build, our biological air filter. It doesn't need to be watered. It doesn't need to be maintained or cut or anything like that. And it lasts forever within our product design, within our science. It lasts indefinitely.

This is something that you devised in 3 days in this competition?

Yeah. Call me crazy. This is what I do on my mind is just really innovative. And I just saw the opportunity that someone was giving me an open door to be innovative and to go with my ideas. And I went for it. It really just interlocked and combined my passion for both fashion design, interior design, and, and chemical engineering and biology. And I was really able to grasp and use everything that I had a skill set in and just create my own device that was unlike anything else out there.

Wow. So how do you keep the moss alive?

So it's actually— I have a piece right here. I don't know if you can see it right now. So it's right here. So this is living moss. Okay, so we're not just attaching living moss. Like, if you're looking at the other moss installations that you see out and about, they're actually just taking the preserved moss or the fake moss, and they're just gluing it on. You can't do that with living moss. I had to develop and formulate our own binding agents. This whole frame in here, even though it's aesthetically pleasing, it looks like a wall frame, and it is. You can put it as wall art, or you can even put it on your table as a tabletop decor. Within this design is a multi-layered living environment. First, to keep the moss alive within our design, but on top of that, there's a biological air filter. And what it's doing is it's working with the living moss and allowing the living moss to take water molecules and harmful pollutants from the air as its food and nutrient source, keeping it alive. So while it's doing that, it's actually becoming an air filter. And Like I said, live moss on its own is not an air filter. There was a bunch of studies done in the '50s with NASA where they saw these, these plants that are quote unquote natural air purifiers. But what most folks don't realize and don't know is that these plants that are quote unquote natural air purifiers take about, for example, 20 years to only purify 0.2% of your space. So I wouldn't wanna take moss, throw it on a frame and say, oh my God, it's a natural air filter. One, it's not gonna work. But two, here in the United States, from a compliance standpoint, you You actually can't say that, right? Regulatory agencies will come after you. You cannot say your product is an air filter or improves air quality without certified third-party lab testing to prove that. And MossPure is the only moss-based and only plant-based company in the world to not only have passing results from a third-party US laboratory here in the United States, but it shows that only every square foot of our product captures 30% of carbon dioxide daily. And 1.5 million pollutant particles daily. So that's anything that causes, or anything that's dust allergens, causes respiratory illnesses, allergies, asthma, anything like volatile organic compounds, smoke, odors, toxic gases, heavy and toxic metals, bacteria, viruses, and molds. We are certified and we do have a patent pending for our design as well. And we actually did win several other awards after MIT. I got invited by the United Nations to participate in their competition, their worldwide competition called the United Nations Development Program for Social Innovation. And I represented not only Rhode Island, but the United States, and we won top 10 startup worldwide.

Wow.

It was in August 2020. So both the United Nations and MIT collectively helped me launch Moss Peer into a business.

And at the same time, I think if I look at your timeline on your LinkedIn profile, it looks like you were still working full-time with a day job. Doing this as a side gig.

Oh yeah. I was definitely bootstrapping. I didn't have any outside investments. I got lucky that both MIT and the United Nations accepted me into their accelerator programs. So I was working with these entrepreneurs and with their MBA programs, and they were actually helping me launch Mosspeer, but it was definitely difficult. It was definitely trial and error. There's no other company like this. You don't know how to market this. You don't know how to sell this. I have to explain this because Most people, when they see moss, they just think it's the moss that they see out and about. What they don't realize is that stuff is fake. And my stuff is actual real stuff and it lasts. The other stuff, people go out of their way, they buy it, and then they get frustrated because within a few months they have to replace it and it smells, it gets moldy, it's just fake. And I have to keep telling people that because these other moss companies are saying that their products are real and it's just not true. So I have to be disruptive in my marketing almost because my product is disruptive.

Obviously you have a lot of passion about this. What gets you up in the morning and gets you excited to, to go to work on this?

You know what? I'm just really passionate. It's just mine. And like before, as I was mentioning, I was always just told that my ideas are too innovative. So I just like to have the freedom.

Yeah.

Like no one can tell me that I'm too innovative. No one can stop me. There's no door. There's no person stopping me and telling me that, no, I can't do this. This is something that I can do and people are liking it. And people want it. So I get really excited that I'm actually get the freedom to do what I want to do.

Are you able to make some— are you generating revenues now and manufacturing and selling product?

Yes, we are. And we work primarily with architectural firms, with commercial developers, with biotech and life sciences companies, corporate offices, luxury hotels, luxury restaurants, doctors and dentists offices. So these are primarily used as high-end functional pieces of art that really elevate and transform spaces, especially like business lobbies. Um, I was just in New York City with a high-end client. I'm not allowed— they're a confidential client, but they're a life sciences and biotech company. They're, uh, the first and only biotech, uh, and life sciences company right in the middle of Manhattan. And the facility itself houses over 50 tenants, including Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, um, and several other, you know, Eli Lilly, and several other biotech and life sciences companies. And we installed 43 different pieces within an incredible installation that went throughout the entrance to the lab and production area and throughout the entrance of a major break room on the 14th floor of the building. So I'm out there, they're doing construction, and I'm inserting. And we actually created all the 43 air filters right in Moss Pier's facility and workspace in Rhode Island. And then we drove everything over and within a day or two, um, installed the 43. Realtors within the installation.

You have full-time employees now?

I do have full-time employees. We have a full-time staff. We do get a number of different— we sell all over the country. We sell all over the world. Like I said, we work with architectural firms. We work with several corporate offices and buildings and developers, and we're always adding something and always doing something. I also created a huge logo art piece at a beverage company called Stir Drinks.

Oh, I saw that on your website.

Yeah, and in New Jersey, and we did it for their new corporate office. We actually create— I use my engineering. We actually create company logos from scratch using a really high-end, eco-friendly material. It's really high-lasting, and we are a wholesale sign manufacturer. So you're getting that wholesale price. And what we do is we do a unique process where we build our living environment and our science and the living moss within your logo. So you're pretty much in within a 3D terrain within your logo, and it just really elevates your brand and your space, whereas the other companies, when they do this sort of thing, they'll put them on standoffs or they'll go on, they'll put the logo right on top of the moss wall and it just doesn't look aesthetically pleasing. What also happens is the moss pushes against the logo and it actually can look slanted a little bit after time. It pushes against, there's a mechanical force that will push against the logo with the moss.

So you're a scientist with two bachelor's degrees in biology and chemistry, right?

Chemical engineering.

Chemical engineering. How did you learn to become a CEO?

I've always had an entrepreneurship, like, background. Both of my parents are entrepreneurs. They have been for the past 40 years, and I've actually helped them build several businesses from the ground up. We are immigrants. We immigrated from Lebanon, and then we actually went into Canada before we settled in the United States about 35 years ago. So I've been here, I'm an American citizen. We've been here for 35 years. My parents have had a number of different businesses throughout our community, and I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I was really intelligent. I really loved science from an early age. I was, I was always at the top of my class. So my parents were just like, you need to take advantage of it. Do not go into business like we do. It's tough. It's hard. But I always had that, that, that drive, that motivation that I didn't get in the corporate world. And I just knew that I just needed a chance. And I was actually applying for the MIT MBA program when I came about this competition. I got into the competition and I literally just won out of nowhere, and my journey began out of nowhere from winning these awards.

What are some of the lessons you've learned as you've moved from being an employee and a scientist to now being a CEO of a— and founder of a startup that sounds like it's seeing significant success?

Where do I start? Um, no, I always was an innovative person. I never understood— I was always stubborn about it. I never understood why The companies that I worked for weren't innovative. They always stuck with and being complacent and doing what sold. Now I know why, because being innovative is, is, is incredibly difficult. Most innovative companies don't make it. It's incredibly difficult. I'm constantly educating folks. I'm constantly having to come up with unique sales pitches to get people's attention. And it's difficult. It's difficult being the only company to do this. It's difficult being growing a company from the ground up. It's easier to go into something because I had no one to help me. When I helped my parents, uh, with their car dealership, their used car dealership, for example, we had several people in the community that could help us out. Okay, here's this vendor for this. Oh, you gotta do this. Oh, here's the tricks. I had no one to help me with the world's only living moss air filter and stress relief device. You know what I mean? And you know, you can only guess, it's only trial and error, but it was, and I was doing this all on my own as well. I was bootstrapping. I didn't have any investors. I was still doing my full-time job. It was incredibly difficult, but I just had to keep going and keep pushing through. And every time a door closed, 5 doors opened for me.

Wow.

There was some really big setbacks where I failed, but I just kept going. And then something else came up, came about, and I just was like, that wasn't meant to be. How? Opportunity wasn't meant to be because it didn't happen.

How are, how are you scaling the business?

There's a number of different ways that I'm scaling the business. I'm looking at things from a different business strategy. I'm also a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, by the way. That has nothing to do with environmental compliance or environmental certifications, even though I have that as well. But this is what manufacturing companies and what chemical engineers are really hired for. I was hired to scale businesses and scale manufacturing processes. And what I did was I came in and I made this process that was an art process an installation process that took much longer. And I scaled it not only to be more efficient, but to be faster, quicker, and to be, and to have a higher output. So I knew going into this that I wanted to scale this and I want to scale it all over the world. I developed a manufacturing process of where we do a batch process, but it's, it's a manufacturing process. And we make our air filters, whether you make a small piece or whether you want a custom piece, we build them out and we spec them out. And it's literally done like a manufacturing plant and we can actually automate each, each and every one of the processes. The way that I scale it too is that our business too, a lot of the preserved moss companies will actually just hire hundreds of people, installs, installers and assemblers that will go on site and take a week to assemble a design. Whereas we do everything in-house within our facility, within our workshop here in Rhode Island. We build out the actual scientific device and what it is, it becomes a scientific device that is a really easy installation piece that anyone can get. I can ship these over to California on a daily basis and just have the customer put it up very easily within 15 minutes.

Wow.

Like a, like a, like a picture frame. And they're very lightweight despite all the science put into them. That was really important. I developed the science from scratch. It took me over a year. And not only did I test it myself and did experimentation myself, but I also tested it out with 2 groups of customers all over the country and all over the world. I tested out each prototype, alpha and beta, and then I tested everything with lab testing to confirm all the science even before I launched. So I made this into a scalable product, but only, but not only that, a strategic business strategy that is unlike anything else out there where we can actually send these out anywhere on a daily basis and a How do you go about finding people to work with you in the company that are aligned with your goals and your vision and your innovation and help you grow? Yeah, you know what, that was, I gotta tell you, that is the hardest thing I've ever, that I did, that I've had to do. It's extremely difficult because you obviously want people to help you. People want to help me and I really appreciate that. But Moss Pier has a certain customer base. Moss Pier has a certain way in which our customers, like I said, I started right off the bat, our customers, there was a pain point. They have this preserved moss, this fake stuff, and they want the real stuff. That was a pain point. So that's what you gotta go after. Our customers are these B2B clientele, these corporate offices like Fidelity, like Microsoft, like Google, like Facebook that really value high functional art that is, is really timeless and has this really cool ability to be an air filter. A company like Facebook is our number one customer. A company like Sturr, for example, architectural firms are our biggest customers. Commercial developers are our biggest customers. So I basically look for people who are aligned with these companies or who work with these companies and just know how to pitch the products. But I actually do a lot of training with, with the people in my, on my team. I'm always there to support them. We do a lot of training, a lot of onboarding even before we start, and they actually watch me even before, and I always send them samples as well of the product. And it takes a little bit of time because Mosphere has so much to it. There's a lot of science to it. So I don't expect people to get this the first time. I have to keep repeating myself and I expect the salesperson and the people that work with me to do that too. And it's hard. It's, it's not an easy thing to grasp, but it works. Our team loves what they do. And it's just, it's great when you see someone who understands a passion, understands my product, understands our customers. But it's hard. It's not easy. It has not been easy finding people who are in alignment and who really can help us grow. Because at the end of the day, I am the only person for— and I was the only person for a while who was able to communicate on our product the correct way and get our customers and do the marketing. And I had to just show my way to someone else, but I had to have that person get it. And I swear, the way that it works is people get it within 5 minutes or they don't. And it's hard because I'm really adamant about it and I try to capture, I'm really disruptive about it. I'm like, and I'm really disruptive about, I literally say, why are you gonna go with the fake stuff when the real stuff is right here, right in front of you? Right. The other stuff is fake. This is real. And I see how the other person reacts and they're like, I knew, I know that. And then, so it's like, all right, you get it. That's how you gotta pitch it. Because if I just pitch that this is a live moss air filter, every other moss company has also seen that their products are living and they're not. They're the fake stuff.

Right.

I have to go in from an educational standpoint. And literally bring out my samples and my gloves and showing you this and being, acting like Bill Nye the Science Guy, but I'm Jamie, the chemical engineer who also likes fashion interior design. I'm making these into really aesthetically pleasing pieces of art that really elevate spaces. It's, it's just an interesting way of going about things.

So Jamie, how important is— this show's called Listening with Leaders. How important is listening in what you're doing now?

1,000%. This is the number one thing that I will say that anyone that either I work with as a customer, that's my biggest thing. Is that I listen to the customer. That's how I got myself here. That's how I got successful. If I didn't listen to my customer, I wouldn't be here. And not only that, the biggest problem that I have with anyone that I'm working with, if I'm trying to work with a vendor myself or a sales company or a marketing firm, the number one problem that I have is that the other company isn't work— isn't listening to me. That's been my number one thing.

Frustrating, isn't it?

It's— oh my God, it's— thank you for understanding that because I, I don't know if I found someone, another entrepreneur that understands.

It's extremely frustrating. And you feel when people aren't listening to you, feel very disrespected.

Exactly.

And you don't feel heard and you don't feel understood and you're—

And I just feel like I'm a sales number.

That's right.

I'm a sales gimmick and I'm just a number and I'm just— my product and my company doesn't matter. And that's not what Moss Peer is about. I don't have to do this. This isn't just a transaction to me. I don't have to do this. And I will actually work really closely with the customer, with the client. You'll see me, I'll talk to you, I'll work with you. We do design reviews. I make sure that you approve everything as a customer. I, we don't send anything out to you until you approve, especially on these custom designs. This product is your product. I'm developing the product as you want it. So I'm your personal stylist. I'm your personal engineer. I'm your personal designer. That's how I think about it. And I listen. And that's where I think we've excelled and where I really using these everyday common sense skills. I'm a scientist, but this stuff isn't Science. It's just common sense as a business owner. And I really think I took this from my family, just seeing my parents be entrepreneurs for so long. And I've noticed that they just listen to the customer and these little things that they do with customer service really go a long way.

How do you teach your team to listen?

You can't, you're at a point now where you can't, this is not something you can teach. Fortunately, there's some things you cannot teach.

You might be surprised about that.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I am wrong there, but that's what I do.

I teach people how to listen.

Yeah. Yeah. I, there's, listen, it took me a long time. It took me over a year to develop our training modules and our onboarding, but I really walk through and I take the time and I literally walk through. I give pitch decks. I give, I give very clear instructions and sometimes I'm in my engineering brain and I don't put my Jamie, you're a manager and you're a leader hat on. Sometimes I gotta switch and you don't think about that sometimes. Scientists. You gotta— and I was a supervisor, I was a manager when I was out in the field. And sometimes I'm like, oh my God, Jamie, like, you gotta stop thinking like an engineer sometimes. You gotta start putting your leadership hat on. And I just gotta keep taking my hat off and putting— switching off and really giving my team the skills that they need. Because if I don't teach them things, that's on me.

That's right.

They could fail because it's on me. I could be wrong in what I'm doing. And it could just take time. I gotta be patient too. That's another thing is that I thought that I would, I thought as an engineer, I'd be like, all right, this is what I have. I'll just hire a marketing agency and boom, that's it. That is not what happened. The science was the easy part of this, which most people can't even, can't get behind either. So I not only had to go through the science, but I had to go through these different layers of becoming a leader. And I thought I was a good leader and a good supervisor and a good manager before. But this will put you in your trenches, especially when you're under pressure and really test your patience as a leader and your passion. And I really just am a passionate person. I stand behind my team, behind my customers, and you'll see that I'm just like a really passionate person just about Moss Pure, about our product, about our employees. Obviously.

And that comes across.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have one more question for you before we end our conversation, Jamie. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

Ooh, okay. Um, there's a lot, honestly. I'm a very, I'm a very anxious person. I'm very, yeah, I'm a very anxious person. It takes a lot. It's not even that. I think that because I'm so passionate about Moss Pier, it just makes it easier for me, um, to talk about it because I, I literally love what I do. I genuinely love what I do, and I think it just comes across. But not only that, thank you to the MIT Lebanon Challenge and to the United Nations Youth Leadership Program for Social Innovation. I'm doing a big shout out to them because I was not like this when I first started. They worked tireless hours with me. I was not this good of a speaker. I don't even know if I'm great right now. I fumbled, I stumbled, I was nervous, I was anxious, and they worked with me and did it with no— they weren't being compensated on my end for it. They just generally worked with me and really wanted me to grow. I just think that because I'm, I'm like that, I tend to just work on where my weaknesses are and I just tend to, you know, be a perfectionist and be almost obsessive about overcoming that weakness and making it my strength.

That's, I mean, your, first of all, your passion shines like a bright beacon and you are quite eloquent in your—

Oh, thank you.

So you have no worries. You've been well trained. Our time has come to an end, Jamie. This has been a really fascinating conversation. Thank you for actually brightening what was already a very happy New Year's Day for me. I really appreciate it. My audience will love it too.

Yeah, I appreciate you having me. This has been a great New Year's Day for me as well. I had a great time. You're welcome.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media. To let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Facebook and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.