We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carolyn Taylor Bosco. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carolyn Taylor below.

Carolyn Taylor, appreciate you joining us today. Too often the media represents innovation as something magical that only high-flying tech billionaires and upstarts engage in – but the truth is almost every business owner has to regularly innovate in small and big ways in order for their businesses to survive and thrive. Can you share a story that highlights something innovative you’ve done over the course of your career?

Innovation is definitely required on all levels, whether it’s within smaller decisions that all add up to the big picture or with a bigger idea you’ve had and executed. The most innovative thing I’ve done so far is come up with, develop and execute OuiShopp App. I naturally noticed a huge missing piece to online shopping – the ability to shop together with friends online. Previously, we used to all go on shopping sprees with friends and family to go shopping at the mall or in boutiques. However, with the huge shift into ecommerce, in-person shopping is no longer a first choice and most people have friends and family spread out geographically. Yet, we still all reach out for the opinions of others before making our purchase decisions, whether that be by sending links via text or email. The shopping experience becomes broken when links get lost and you’re waiting for advice and then end up losing interest from waiting too long and ditching the purchase all together. “There should really be an app for this where we can shop together online”, I thought. So I searched, and there was nothing out there that served this purpose. So I got out my notebook and began mapping out how this would work. I reached out to some tech contacts and asked if certain things were possible. I reached out to as many friends and friends of friends as I could think of to see if they’d use it. The feedback was an excited yes from everyone I spoke with. Fast forward 8 months and I launched the first version of OuiShopp app – the app that enables you to shop online with friends LIVE on any online store or shop solo and mark items for advice from specific people right there while shopping. We won Product of the Day #2 on Product Hunt upon launch and have been featured in several publications such as InStyle. We are now introducing ecommerce store integrations, the first wave of OuiShopp influencers and personal stylists, and are about 1 month out from launching this new, exciting version of the app!

Carolyn Taylor, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have a bit of a diverse background with my career. I’ve done some acting and trained with Lee Strasberg and while I love the craft itself, I had to dive into other business ventures on my radar. I started My Body Taylor, an online fitness and travel retreat business when I was 22 and ran that for 6 years. From training celebrities to hosting retreats in Bali to throwing meditation events at Vice Media, My Body Taylor was such a huge learning experience and fulfilling venture for me. I then decided to move on and help other small businesses with their business, more on the side of tech. That then led me to working for a Shopify app company. Next was the idea for OuiShopp which I jumped into with full force!

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Developing OuiShopp has been and continues to be an incredibly intricate process. I do have a team of developers and they do excellent work, but I have to manage them and be sure every detail is taken care of properly. Now, I’ve never created an app before this so while I’m here leading the team I’m also trying to self-educate and pull from all my experiences as well as my intuition to cover every detail. Needless to say, it’s a huge undertaking. Managing a team on top of this takes a certain mentality because you need to ensure that the team feels uplifted, motivated, invested and excited. The world of developers is tough, you can get ripped off, you can lose employees easily as there is so much hiring competition, and if you don’t know what you’re doing tech wise you can get a bad product. So finding the right developers for you is tough in itself. Luckily through a personal contact I found a tech director who steps in to find me the right developer talent. We found gems! My full time developers feel like family at this point. We talk every single day and I make sure that I keep two things in mind for our work relationships. First, that they feel taken care of. Second, that they feel their work is valued. Even if something isn’t going as I wished, I keep an appreciative tone and try to understand what the blocker is. My best advice no matter which field you’re in is to make sure you show appreciation to your team and always come from a place of helping and supporting when trying to fix an issue.

How did you build your audience on social media?

While my audience isn’t massive, it’s a nice group of 20K+ who have been engaged for years. Initially, my audience was built from My Body Taylor as I gave people a purpose to follow me. My followers would get workouts, recipes, meditations, and encouragement from my posts. With changing course over to OuiShopp, I did less of this however health and wellness is still the foundation of my life so I still share on there my personal life with this. Most followers appreciate this and I continue to collab with health focused brands. Now, I’ll probably pivot a bit on how to keep in your best state while building a business. I definitely have a piece of advice for those trying to build a social presence – figure out the REASON people will follow you and let that be your North Star for creating content. Be authentic and connect with anyone who engages with your content. Big numbers are not what it’s about, it’s about true engagement!

Contact Info:

• Website: ouishopp.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolyntaylorbosco/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolyn-taylor-bosco-8b830223/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChgPUUAHYkdqPUN3U4of61Q
• OuiShopp App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ouishopp/id1620026265