Pull a seat up at The Copy Table.
Join hosts Erin Pennings and Grace Fortune as they interview co-host Nicole Morton to unpack her business journey.
Nicole is a brand strategist, nerd advocate, copywriter, and the founder of the Nicole Morton Agency. Listen in and find out how she got where she is today (and why we call her the Human Decoder Ring).
The takeaway? There really is no one right way to build a copywriting business you love!
Whether you need actionable tips to market your copywriting business, a push to raise your rates, or the courage to plant your flag in a new niche, we’ve got you covered. Over the years, we’ve met some extraordinary people who’ve helped us, and we’re ready to help you avoid the pitfalls that so many copywriters find.
Get the links
If you missed our first episode or Grace Fortune‘s story, tune in now!
Want to read along as you listen to Nicole Morton’s story?
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Nicole Morton: Welcome to the Coffee Table, the podcast for copywriters who want to get new ideas and inspiration for building and scaling a business you love.
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Erin Pennings: In this podcast, hosts Grace Fortune, Nicole Morton, and Erin Pennings bring new topics and guests to the table every single episode.
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Grace Fortune: We’re spilling the beans on how you can use your interests and expertise to define what success means to you and take steps to achieve it.
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Erin Pennings: Welcome back to the coffee table. Today we’re introducing my friend, my colleague, the person who I refer to as the person that I wish would live in my brain forever. Nicole Morton, who is a copywriter, a marketing strategist, a product strategist. She’s good at all the things, so we think she’s awesome for so many reasons.
And I’m glad to have her as a co host on this podcast, as well as to introduce her today for an interview to put you in the hot seat and dive in. So, before I let you tell me how you’re feeling about all of this, more about Nicole. As she describes herself, she’s a brand strategist, nerd advocate, copywriter, and of course, the founder of the Nicole Morton Agency. You can find her lots of places online, including nicolemortonagency.com. She is the process, the secret decoder ring.
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Erin Pennings: But reality, the reality is that yourself are the secret decoder ring. If you could have Nicole and just adjust her to the right spaces, you can get some incredible answers about really anything personal or business wise, but specifically business wise to figure out where you need to be. She’s amazing at reflecting your problems back to you in a way that is intuitive, easy to follow, and it’s like, I know how to move forward. So with that said, hi Nicole.
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Nicole Morton: Thank you. I need you as my hype man at all times.
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Erin Pennings: It’s like, can all of us just follow each other around all day and just tell us?
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Nicole Morton: We’re in my pocket.
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Erin Pennings: So, Nicole, you’ve had a really interesting background. There are some really interesting paths that have led you to right here, right now. Can we kick things off by telling us more about you and how you got to this point?
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Grace Fortune: Sure.
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Nicole Morton: So my career started in the product development and branding side of marketing, which means that I was part of the team that would invent new things, and then people would build the things and then people would sell the things, which was super fun. So one thing that you’ll come to know about me is that I’m secretly twelve.
So working for a company that made dolls and ornaments and music boxes was just an absolute joy. But what I found that during that job, the idea of being able to develop a concept, bring it to fruition, teach people how to talk about it, and manage the process from soup to nuts was something that really fit well with my skill set. I stayed there for many years until I started a family.
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Nicole Morton: And the travel requirements for that type of position were not kind of jiving with how I wanted to have a family lifestyle. As another interesting facet, I had put myself through my second master’s degree on a teaching assistantship, and I enjoyed that so much. I loved being part of the AHA moment for students, and I told myself in my early twenty s that would be a career that I would love to get back to.
So when I started a family, that seemed a natural transition to be able to work and have summers free and be on my kids school schedule. And so I put myself through graduate school again and got all the way through teaching assistantship and a placement and found a school where the principal was a friend of my brother in law, and there were four upcoming retirements for the fall.
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Nicole Morton: And my then husband came back around Christmas time and said, yes, we’re moving out of state. So I never got a chance to kind of grow into that. But the experience of hearing what my learners had to say and the questions that they had and then be able to frame answers in a way that was easier for them to receive. So whether they needed it with a cultural nuance, or if they were neurodivergent or if they had learning challenges, that was something that I found easy to translate in a way that was easy for them to be received.
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Grace Fortune: Fast forward.
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Nicole Morton: After being home with my kiddos for over ten years, I needed to find a way back into the workforce. So I had to decide which path to take. So back into education. During pre pandemic times, teachers were undervalued at best or find my way back into marketing. And I had happened upon an online class that would teach you how to write blogs and build a business writing content for a living. And I thought, you know what? I’m a decent writer. I can work from home and have a flexible schedule and everything, but content writing, bless their hearts, that is a grind.
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Nicole Morton: And it was very difficult for me, but it provided me an avenue into learning more about content writing as a strategy and then copywriting as a strategy and a business model, and growing my network and meeting new people and understanding what opportunities were out there and how they kind of mesh with my natural ability to get under the skin of a person who’s now reading instead of listening, reading what I’m putting out there and being able to morph into what their needs and wants and hesitations and dreams and that kind of thing just really fit naturally with me.
And then further to that, finding through the course of masterminds and cohorts that my ability to kind of reframe challenges and unearth what people either need affirmation or don’t recognize as their strengths or their talents, I think, was something that I took for granted.
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Nicole Morton: And it took quite a long time and quite a few people to say, no, ma’am, that is not normal in a good way. That kind of got me to where I am. And so now I’m able to draw on my background in brand management, product development, education, and business administration to kind of. It’s all a nice, gooey, sticky ball.
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Erin Pennings: That is me, the gooey, sticky ball of Nicole. And you’re the warm, fuzzy person. Absolutely. People think of you and you put a smile on their face.
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Nicole Morton: Thank you.
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Grace Fortune: You are so warm and fuzzy. You are way better know. You’re even better than a chinchilla. You’re so warm and fuzzy.
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Nicole Morton: I functioned really well as Denmaum, so thank you.
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Erin Pennings: You know what?
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Grace Fortune: There’s actually one thing that you had mentioned that I would love to kind of highlight a bit more. We talked about this in previous episodes, but tell us about how you became a human.
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Nicole Morton: Oh, my gosh.
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Grace Fortune: I think that’s just such a cool name and such a unique gift to have. And you have it in spades. So tell me a little bit about not only how you got that nickname, but also how do you do the decoding of the humans?
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Nicole Morton: A. I don’t know. Literally, it happens without my knowledge or intervention. I’m a little bit older than you guys, so you probably don’t remember, but there used to be a cartoon. Sherman and Peabody.
And Mr. Peabody had the 3D BB, the three dimensional bulletin board. And that’s literally what happens inside my head. Like, I can feel, like, the whiteboard open up, and I can see all these things like pieces of a puzzle. And I understand intuitively how they fit together. What comes out at the end is just a new perspective, a new way to think about whatever challenge you’re having in your business or feeling that ends up being a core of your branding, messaging, or an experience that, again, that you take for granted that the rest of us are like, dang, how do you do that?
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Nicole Morton: And so it was during a workshop that I was part of with Jimmy Perritt and Justin Blackman. Where we had to go back in. So it was the back burner sessions where the idea was we, as copywriters, are constantly the cobbler’s children with no shoes.
We never take care of our own business because we’re so focused on client work. So this was a workshop specifically designed for us to work on our own stuff. So part of writing the about page was me putting words to what I do. And somehow I had mentioned that it comes out kind of like a decoder ring. That’s when everyone was like, that’s what you do. And that’s how it happened, and it stuck.
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Erin Pennings: And we’ve seen it in action. That. What’s the meme? It’s not Julia Roberts, but it looks kind of like Julia Roberts, where there’s this woman and she’s thinking, and all of the numbers are coming in together. Yes, but when she looks quizzical and confused, you do not. And it’s like you can almost see all of these things coalescing behind your eyes. I can’t describe it, Nicole.
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Nicole Morton: It’s like a giant whiteboard in my head. And I was like, no, here we go.
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Erin Pennings: And that’s exactly what you do. And you see it all come together in this 3d model, which is insane. You described it then, and I think, I didn’t know a lot of the educational history, your educational background. And that makes so much sense when you’re like, I break it down based on where people are in their brains.
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Nicole Morton: And it’s like that alone.
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Erin Pennings: Your ability to see what other people’s brains look like and how they can move forward with that and how from, if you say something, and again, I’m hyping up, I have so many more questions. But if you say something and people are like, wait, what? From the way that they ask the question, you are instantly able to break it down further.
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Nicole Morton: And I’m in complete awe of that.
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Erin Pennings: That’s not a skill that I possess. It’s like, well, what do you mean? This is the reason I’m teacher. What do you mean? You don’t get it. But I think that’s really an important skill. So, I mean, you’ve already kind of talked about how you develop that skill, but I want to know, now that you’ve defined yourself as a human decoder ring, and now that we all agree that this is essentially quintessentially who you.
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Nicole Morton: Are, how do you plan to. This is going to sound really weird.
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Erin Pennings: Saying it out loud. How do you plan to use that secret decoder ring tool? That is you to grow your business and to grow into this role.
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Nicole Morton: What do you think? And this goes back to something Grace had said in the last episode, is that I don’t consider it, unfortunately. But unfortunately, it does mean a lot of one to one work.
It does mean a lot of intentional listening and intuitive processing. And I find that it kind of ends up being like a coaching situation where there are particular problems that I’m pretty good at identifying. So things like trying to straighten out your messaging, trying to find a hook for your messaging, or trying to identify a framework, because at the end of the day, what we do, and, Aaron, you had touched on this in the very first episode, is writing is a commodity.
Anybody can write. You can google these skills.
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Nicole Morton: You can find people that can write emails and web copy on fiver or upwork or whatever, and it’s the infusion of your personality and your background and your experience and your expertise into all of that messaging and finding building frameworks helps you stand out from the noise. So things like that’s how I kind of distill this ability to digest and reframe your skill set or your focus or your particular talent.
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Erin Pennings: There’s so much impact in what you just said. I’m sitting here going, but here’s my brain. Like, okay, now how do I apply this? That’s insanely cool that’s what you do. And you say it does require more one one work.
But I think that also opens you up to one to many work, too, because even though you can’t teach people how to be in your brain and to use your brain, you’re really amazing on the fly. And then you help people see the different kinds of connections for how, if you put me in a hot seat, grace would be able to pick up some of the things that we have in common.
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Nicole Morton: That’s right.
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Erin Pennings: There’s so much potential for this. I’m excited.
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Nicole Morton: There’s a lot of learning by proximity that goes on in an audience like that. So when we recently did some hot seats in the spring, even though I was only able to work one, you can’t see my air course one with four people, with 30 people in the audience, I can guarantee that someone took at least something new that they hadn’t thought of from their business and is able to implement or at least use it as a jumping off point for a new direction.
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Erin Pennings: Well, and I think what’s also interesting is that there’s a lot of parallels in all of us, and so a lot of the time, I’ll say, I didn’t even know you could ask that question. And then all of a sudden I can take back and it’s like you’re speaking to me. This is my exact situation. So I think your ability to do that is really unique.
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Grace Fortune: I totally agree, and I do have just a quick kind of follow up question to that, and feel free to kibosh this question. You’ve worked for some really cool brands, pretty big names, and I know I think you’re way too modest, but I would love to hear more about how you worked with them and the kinds of people that you want to work with now.
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Nicole Morton: So when I was working at the doll company, I’m going to date myself now, but it was the mid to late 90s when the branding boom, there was a huge branding boom right before the big ip bubble.
And so I had the opportunity to work on projects that were licensed by Fortune 500 companies and major names in entertainment and learning to work within the parameters that say, a Disney or an Eminem Mars or major league baseball had with their branding, because they’re very strict, rightfully so, about their intellectual property.
So learning to work within those parameters actually gave me more freedom in creativity than just turning me loose. And I find that it serves me really well in my business because I can only, and push is the wrong word, but I can’t think of anything more elegant right now.
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Nicole Morton: I can only push someone so far out of their comfort zone to be effective.
So if I know that someone I’m working with, their particular audience is sensitive to a topic, or if their experience doesn’t allow for this particular type of messaging, it allows me to be that much more effective and gives me more freedom to be creative than had we just gone in.
And I just give them a brain dump of things that I think are interesting or evocative or of their experience or their branding. So that really taught me a lot about positioning the power of intellectual property, the power of showing up as the one thing that you’re well known as. And I think that has served me very well as I grow and build my business. I agree with that.
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Erin Pennings: To follow on to that, what else from their processes has kind of informed your approach?
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Nicole Morton: Consistency? Absolutely. Knowing that you can forge your own path, that different is not scary. That different is not going to hold you back. It’s actually what draws the right people to you. And the more that you can put yourself into your business and your branding and your messaging and your offers and play to your strengths and understand your people, the better off your business is going to be, the more productive your work is going to be, the more your messaging resonates with your audience, the more the right people find you.
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Grace Fortune: I love that. I mean, marketing 101 says you want to attract the right people and repel the wrong ones, right? So be very intentional about that. So I 100% agree with that statement. It’s so true. And it really is kind of fascinating to see you in action.
I was at that workshop that you were talking about a little bit earlier, just kind of watching you do your thing. It’s like Aaron said previously, I want you to live inside my brain forever just because you’re so great at what you. Thank you. You’re welcome.
Is there any other ways that working for all of these big brand like you had mentioned, consistency. Is there any other ways that past experience has come through in the way that you work now?
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Nicole Morton: I think understanding that there is a path for everyone.
So one of the things that I learned early on was trying to either emulate or follow in the footsteps of colleagues that I admired was only going to make me a carbon copy and not a very good one, of a business that already exists at a time where they’re probably 510, 15 years into their business.
And that’s not a, who I am, b what my experience allows me for, and c, tapping into my own expertise and my talents and my experience. Finding your zone of genius, staking your claim in a very noisy and very crowded industry, it’s invaluable to your growth and your development.
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Grace Fortune: I love that. And what is your vision now for the Nicole Morton agency? I want to know what’s next for you. What are you trying to build out in 2023?
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Nicole Morton: So I think trying to lean a little bit more into what we’re calling the clarity catalyst coaching. So finding a very specific point that you’re struggling in. So I can’t be all things to all people, and there are a couple of things that I do pretty well.
Things like trying to find the core of your messaging, or trying to create pillar content that you can show up in public as an authority about, or finding your wow factor.
How do you articulate what you do better than anybody else in the industry or your framework?
How do you show up that’s different than everybody else in the industry?
So a couple of things that I do really well. So that’s what I would like to really focus on as 2023 rolls out is helping people find the things that they themselves take for granted.
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Nicole Morton: That may just be exactly what your community needs for you to do and show up in.
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Erin Pennings: So would you say, I’m paraphrasing here. Would you say you help people find them sized holes.
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Nicole Morton: That’s right.
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Erin Pennings: And living up to it. I love that.
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Nicole Morton: Exactly right.
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Erin Pennings: You may notice that I’m pulling that from something you’ve written.
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Grace Fortune: I love that way of phrasing it. Like where is the u shaped hole that you can fill? That’s all about, you hear people like Todd Brown, for example, talk about, I think he calls it the unique. Yeah.
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Erin Pennings: I think it’s unique mechanism. Yeah.
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Grace Fortune: Thank you. It’s all about finding what sets you apart from everybody else that’s doing the same thing as you are. There’s not another Aaron Pennings. There’s not another great. And there’s not another Morton. Right. So how can we, as copywriters, as strategists, how can we articulate that to the people that we want to serve? I think one of the key questions to answer in order to be able to have a business that makes you stand out as much as some of those big names that we secretly envy.
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Erin Pennings: Right?
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Nicole Morton: Admire, admire.
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Grace Fortune: It’s full blown envy for me.
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Erin Pennings: We could keep going and talking about Nicole and with Nicole for hours. However, we also want to respect the time that it takes to have a cup of coffee or two, depending on.
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Grace Fortune: How fast you drink it.
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Erin Pennings: So with that in mind, where can people go to find out more about you and get updates as the clarity catalyst 2023 comes to life?
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Nicole Morton: Thanks. I am@nicolemortonagency.com. And I’m pretty easy to find because I’m 99% sure I’m at Nicolmorton agency on all the socials. So Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. I’ve recently decided not to pursue Twitter until the dust settles. So, yeah, I’m pretty easy to find. You can always email me, nicole@nicolemortonagency.com. Awesome.
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Erin Pennings: Well, thanks for coming on today, Nicole. I mean, I realize that you’re on with us every time that we’re on because this is the Nicole, Grace and Erin Coffee table show. But thank you for being in the hot seat today. It is sometimes uncomfortable to have the light shown on you, but that’s really the best place to show off what you can do and why we think you’re awesome.
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Nicole Morton: Thanks. It was fun.
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Erin Pennings: Yeah. And thanks to everyone else who is joining us, listening in on this episode, we are Grace Fortune, Nicole Morton, Aaron Pennings, and we’ll see you next time.
