We need great food entrepreneurs, and they need great marketing and promotion. Enter Jyssica Leilani, marketing guru. She and our host Sarah Marshall met when Sarah was taking a business course through RAIN – Regional Accelerator and Innovation Network – where Jyssica was speaking on social media and all the available marketing channels for budding entrepreneurs. What Sarah particularly enjoyed was how Jyssica empowered her audience to find their own voice for their companies and to express it in a way to make it exciting, individual and interesting. Female entrepreneurs often “stand in our own way” as Sarah puts it, and Jyssica does a great job of coaching people through that. Sarah Masoni adds that women are often reluctant to do something unless they are 100% certain and it’s hard to be brave and take risks for many of them, which Jyssica tackles. She does all these wonderful things through her company, Style Opal, a social media and online agency for brands and entrepreneurs. That list of services covers social media management, email marketing, photo shoot and video content creation and influencer marketing. Jyssica’s background has helped her approach to her business. She grew up loving acting and singing, and having fun is part of her success and her client’s success. And singing is a natural foundation for finding a client’s voice as well. Acting also adds to her power to dig in and really understand the brand, the audience and get the feel of a product. Sarah Marshall makes the point that finding the voice means the voice of the product and what it says to the audience, not necessarily the voice of the entrepreneur. What counts is that the audience “gets it” and makes an informed decision to buy or not based on how it fills their needs. Jyssica says you do that by seeing your marketing as going to one person. Ask how that one person is receiving that Instagram or FB post. Analyze how they process the visuals, sound and words. Ask if you are conveying the benefits that make your product incredibly special and seemed to be custom made for that one person. Jyssica keeps close contact with clients with monthly touch-base calls; what’s new?, what’s exciting?, what’s changed? that help keep messaging fresh. And she asks the offbeat questions such as, “if you WERE a beverage, which one would you be?” to get more insight into the personalities behind the company. Jyssica also urges her clients to video themselves every time they make a product, to demonstrate the hands on craftsmanship of their product and then send it to her to create a reel or a story. Which goes to Sarah Marshall’s point that hiring a social media agency doesn’t mean they are taking that function away at all, they are making it more consistent and more meaningful. Visit Jyssica’s website for this freebee: A worksheet page from the Instagram Bootcamp workbook, her Ideal Follower Avatar Mad-Lib worksheet. The link to download that is bit.ly/followeravatar. Website: www.styleopal.com. Listeners: You can save 20% on Jyssica’s self-paced, virtual Instagram Bootcamp course at www.styleopal.com/instagram-bootcamp, using the special code MARKET. @StyleOpalMedia, @UpperLeftLadies, @Jyssica.Leilani (her personal), Facebook Group: Upper Left Ladies for soul-led entrepreneurs and leaders, Pinterest @StyleOpalMedia. Our hosts: Twitter - @sarahmasoni and @spicymarshall, Instagram - @masoniandmarshall

Thank you for listening to The Meaningful Marketplace Podcast with your hosts, Sarah Masoni of Oregon State University's Food Innovation Center and Sarah Marshall, owner of Marshall's Haute Sauce. Connect with us on Instagram @meaningfulmarketplacepodcast. 

Call our hotline with questions for Sarah and Sarah at 503-395-8858. If you want to support our show, write us a review, share episodes with friends, or subscribe to our Patreon.

Producer: Sarah Marshall of The Joy of Creation Production House
Audio engineer, mixer, and podcast editor: Haley Bowers 
Show logo design: Anton Kimball of Kimball Design 
Production Coordinators: Dave Drusky