Daily Inspiration: Meet Juana Esparanza Marshall

Today we’d like to introduce you to Juana Esparanza Marshall.

Hi Juana, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I moved to Austin from Tucson in 1985 at nine years old. My Dad was partially present but mostly absent in the Air Force and my Mother was mostly present but she suffered from addiction during my youth. By God’s Grace, she’s been fully recovered for a long time now. I spent years learning how to function in various levels of trauma. As a result, I’ve been fiercely independent from a very young age.

I graduated high school early. I registered myself for night classes and worked to gain extra credits so that I could finish early. By the end of the first semester of my senior year, I was 17, I had a baby and a diploma. I went to work immediately and went back to walk with the stage with my class in the summer of 1994.

I am a vocalist and Music is my first love. When I was 13, a friend invited me to sing with group and I became a member of one of Austin’s first female rap groups called the “Cooly Girls”. We performed and toured with throughout high school and into my early adulthood. We performed at SXSW and various other events in around Texas. In 2017, the Cooly Girls were inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame. Over the years, I have continued to perform music on stage and recording with other artists including my brother and son who are artists as well. I am currently working on my first solo EP which I hope to finish before the end of 2022.

I graduated from St. Edwards University in 2012 with a BA in Communication. Since high school, I have been very fortunate to remain gainfully employed in Austin within the tech industry. I have worked for companies like Motorola, Abbott Laboratories, AT&T & Dell Computers.

I have been with Apple for the last 21 years. During my course of my career at Apple, I have held multiple roles. I started as an account manager in the education & enterprise space. I was a corporate trainer for the better part of 12 years training operations and frontline sales support agents. For the past five or six years, I have been working in IT project management. I basically help large companies do business with Apple.

As of 2022, I’m a widowed mother of two grown sons with three grandchildren.

I started Esparanza’s Expressions as an opportunity for me to further express my creativity. My company motto is ‘Empowering women through individual expression’. I create unscented products and allow my customers to mix and match essential oils to create custom scents for their body butter. I also sell jewelry and lingerie. Back in 2015, a very good friend showed me how to make homemade body butter product. Over the course of a couple of years, I perfected my recipe and began exclusively using this product on myself and my children. Eventually, my family got on board and started using the product and I began to give the body butter as gifts to my friends for baby showers and holidays, etc. After a while, my hobby turned into a business opportunity because people were asking for more of my product than I was willing to give away for free. Another friend invited me to set up a table for a spa day they were hosting. That experience showed me that I could sell my products. After that, I begin vending all around Austin and Texas. I spent a lot of time at the Hope Farmers Market at Plaza Saltillo in Austin. I have also done multiple pop-up shops over the years at the BlckMarket in Houston, Texas. I spent several years learning how to be consistent in my packaging and labeling. I transitioned from bargain jars I found at discount stores to cute spice jars from IKEA. I eventually built a relationship with a distributor that has allowed me to streamline my process and bring down my manufacturing costs. Although I still manufacture my products at home, I have able to be able to get my cost down to under two dollars per jar and I am able to turn a good profit on my products.

Over the past few years, I have also used my business in a couple of ways;

1. Building my brand by participating in different pop-up shows and community events around the state. I also sell online and hope to be able to build a consistent stream with an online subscription type sales platform.

2. I use the summer breaks as an opportunity to teach customer service and sales skills to my sons, nieces and nephews. I usually book several events in the Summer specifically for them to work and gain experience. I will usually just coordinate and set up my booth and let them run it.

I don’t always turn a profit but I have been able to use my business as a vehicle to encourage entrepreneurship in the younger generations in my family. I was pretty busy pre-Covid doing 2 to 3 pop ups per month. Since Covid has introduced the inability to interact face-to-face, I have spent a lot of time re-evaluating how to position my business. I’m in the process of rebuilding my brand and adding a new ideas to my formula.
I am excited about the future.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My biggest struggle along the way has been lack of financial resources. I’ve had to fund 100% of my business endeavors using my own money and assets. As a result, I have been limited in my span and scope based on the funds that I have available. I have also struggled during the pandemic because most of my sales originally involved face-to-face interactions with customers. It has been a challenge maintaining the personal touch that I like to incorporate into my sales.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am an IT project manager and have been employed in tech for the last 25 to 30 years. I am a teacher by nature and I have been able to use my experiences and knowledge to impact many lives. I am the first person in my maternal family in the last 25 years to get a college degree and so my impact is not only that from a business perspective but I serve as a role model for many of the young women with in my family.

Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
I believe the most important characteristic that I possess is my ability to communicate with people from all different walks of life and I am able to serve as a “Translator or Doula” of sorts to bridge communication and knowledge gaps between people in my personal and professional lives.

Pricing:

• I offer products ranging $5 to $25

Contact Info: