How Do You Price Your Consulting?

On the 294th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Nicole Morton joins the show to talk about her experience in product development and how it’s helped her build her copywriting career. From creating products to qualifying them in the current market to writing copy for them, Nicole laid out the whole process. Here’s how the conversation went: How Dollies helped Nicole get her start in the product development industry. From idea to store shelf – How to qualify a product to get into the market. How product development can translate to building a copywriting business. The current trends in the copywriting and marketing industry. How to look for trends in your industry. Creating ideas for a product – How do we actually start coming up with ideas? The practical application for brainstorming names for your products. How to uplevel and refine your current skills as you build new ones. Identifying which of your skills are transferable and how you can leverage your background. Client acquisition – How to create a referral system. How to package “ideas” and “strategy” for clients. When it’s a good idea to go back to working a full-time job – Is it a setback? How to reframe “failure” and turn it into a positive. The benefits of going back into the workforce and how it can help you become a better writer and business owner. How to balance working a full-time job, a business, and personal life. Gamification – Can we add it into our business and personal life? What Disney does well and how we can add it to our businesses. Why we shouldn’t underestimate the skills that comes naturally to us. Tune into the episode by hitting the play button or check out the transcript below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Copywriting Income Survey Kira’s website Rob’s website Nicole's website  The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 124 Episode 201   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  I'm pretty sure it was Eugene Schwartz, who first suggested that copy isn't written, it's assembled. And a lot of copywriters have jumped on that statement, believing that the work that we do really isn't all that creative. It's like playing with an erector set or a LEGO kit. You're just putting together a bunch of preexisting pieces to get the end product that will resonate with your customers. But that's just not true. Yeah, we need to draw on research and connect with the conversation already going on in our customer's heads, but creativity plays a really big part in creating the magic that makes that connection happen. Our guest for today's episode for The Copywriter Club Podcast is Copywriter Think Tank alumni member and master of ideas, Nicole Morton. And what she shares about brainstorming, product development, having better ideas will help any copywriter improve the work they do. Kira Hug:  A quick announcement. This episode is sponsored by The Copywriter Think Tank that- Rob Marsh:  Surprise. Kira Hug:  So surprising. That is our mastermind-slash-coaching program, where you could have access not only to the two of us, but also to our team of coaches so that you have all the support you need as you build your business and create new revenue streams, create new products, create new offers with our mindset coach, our systems and growth coach, me and Rob. We don't really have a name as far as the coaching that we do. But what would you say that the two of us specialize in? Rob Marsh:  Well, I think we are really good at helping people see the potential in their business and coming up with new ideas of how to grow in new ways. So whether it's building your authority and getting yourself in front of different, better ideal clients, or whether it's adding some new product or service to your business. We're just really good at helping people identify the parts of their business where they could start to make really big strides. And I think as well, we're good at helping them set goals, keeping them accountable and moving in a new direction or expanding the direction that they're moving in. Kira Hug:  Yeah. And I think I'm good at pushing people. I don't know Rob if you agree or disagree, maybe I'm actually not, but I think I'm good at it. I just like to push people out of their comfort zone and that's what we also do in the Think Tank. We will push you out of your comfort zone. Rob Marsh:  Yeah. There's no doubt about that because when people are saying, well, I'm thinking about doing this in a couple months or what if I do this next year? And you're always the one like, what's stopping you from doing it now? Let's put the plan into place so that you can actually do it. What resources do you need? What team members do you need? What support can we offer? How do we do it? And you are really good at that. Kira Hug:  And if you have any interest in the Think Tank, now is the best time to join, like right now, because we have an upcoming retreat that's about to happen. And also the investment for the Think Tank, it's about to jump up. So the price tag's going up in June. So if you are listening to this and you have any interest, reach out to us right away, and we can talk to you about whether or not it's a good fit for you. You can head over to copywriterthinktank.com to learn more. Rob Marsh:  All right, let's get to our interview with Nicole. Nicole Morton:  My story starts similar to just about everybody else. I just fell backwards into this industry. But I neglect to mention that I have a 20-year running start in product development and brand management through consumer packaged goods and branded collectibles and things like that. So I started out in a company making collectible dollies. So you used to be able to get the Sunday paper and you'd open up to the circular and you'd see the Elvis plates and the porcelain dolly. So that's the company that I worked for. And I started out as an intern and I never left. They just kept finding spaces to put me. Originally it was in quality assurance and logistics. So I would be helping the team do sample checks and do quality assurance before we get all of our presale samples and communicating with vendors and setting standards for manufacturing and production. And so it gave me a good insight into the manufacturing and distribution side of the product life cycle. But I always had an eye to move back toward product development because that was where the creativity was. So after about a year and a half in QA and logistics, I was able to move back over. And so my job there was to qualify concepts for development and then shepherd them all the way through the development process. Interfacing with vendors who would create porcelain and seamstresses, and wig makers, and prop developers, and get the samples done, and all the way through the manufacturing process, and then do all the sales support. We had a separate sales team and we had a separate copywriting team, which I at the time didn't understand what the difference was, but I was always placed onto the teams that needed the most boost. And they always happened to be sort of the black sheep product. So I ended up teaching myself Illustrator and Quark and being able to get assets for printing and packaging. And so I was kind of a Jack of all trades. And so it was such a great experience to learn all the facets of product development. I love conceptual development. We would do focus group testing. I would help all of the sales teams be able to market their product to gift stores and trade shows. And so I was able to have, I was able to touch the product development all along the cycle from the time that was an idea till the time it was installed on a store shelf in the toys or us down the street from us. So it was a lot of fun. Rob Marsh:  Yeah. This is really interesting to me because we haven't really talked about the product development process a lot on the podcast. So I'm curious, you were mentioning that you were doing part of the qualification. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Like how did you figure out yes, there is a market for this. Yes, this is something that somebody's going to buy or our version of this, it has potential, what did that process look like? And maybe how do we apply that in copywriting either with our clients or our own products that we're trying to develop? Nicole Morton:  That's such a great question. I had a little bit of a cheat code because this, just to kind of orient you in time, this is the late 90s, early aughts where branding just the IP boom was huge. And so you had parameters within which you had to stay. You couldn't get too crazy with IP from Disney or Warner Brothers or MNRs, or whatever project I was working on. But we would do team brainstorming and we would have opportunities to do some trend watching. We would have subscriptions to industry magazines and kind of keep an ear out for, this is pre-social media, so you kind of had to keep an ear out for things that were happening in the entertainment sphere, trends in home decor, trends in fashion, trends in things like automotive and electronics. And so we would come for these huge brainstorming sessions and we had a general idea of what we were trying to develop. So if it was for a particular artist, it was say, Robin Miller that she would have a certain parameter within which she could work. Her specialty was developing porcelain baby dolls from this age to this age, mostly Caucasian. So we would have to find themes that would fit the existing data. But then there were always opportunities to come up with really radically different concepts. For example, there was one time when we got a lead on a licensing opportunity for worldwide wrestling before they changed to whatever they are, WWE right now. So the opportunity to,