Sammy Lowdermilk
Interim president and CEO at The Enterprise Center; Co-Founder of Chattanooga Hip-Hop Week & Chattanooga Hip-Hop Summit
Everyone’s career starts somewhere, and for Sammy Lowdermilk, it was among the flowers.
During high school, Lowdermilk worked at his family’s flower shop, Prescott Flowers & Gifts in Prescott, Arkansas, where he would pick up landscaping gigs during the summertime for extra money. He stayed with the family business until graduation.
Today, Lowdermilk is the CEO of The Enterprise Center, a nonprofit that provides resources and training to help small business owners and entrepreneurs start, grow and sustain their businesses.
Though his position at the flower shop was an entry-level job, Lowdermilk says those years taught him valuable lessons he’s carried throughout his career — learning how to interact with the public, as well as how to network and navigate challenges.
“Any sort of retail job, when it’s front-facing to the public, sometimes you make people happy. Sometimes people have certain problems, and you have to navigate those,” he says. “I feel like I do a lot of that to this day.”
You have to know how to be likeable and have those soft skills to interact with people and achieve your goal, Lowdermilk says — whether that goal is selling flowers or signing a person up for a digital literacy class.
Learn more about The Enterprise Center at theenterprisectr.org.