Members of our first programme cohort, Morton Waters, speak to us about their business journey so far
Morton Waters is a digital marketing agency for the built environment. In both their approach to work, as well as their approach to marketing, this incredible duo of business women lead with compassion at the heart of their business.
We sat down with co-founders Michelle Morton and Charlotte Waters to discuss how their business came to be, and their attraction to the Create South East programme.
Who are you and how did you come to form Morton Waters as a business?
Charlotte:
So bit of background.
Michelle and I have worked together at a couple of different agencies before we set up this one.
We obviously really enjoy working with each other. We’ve got the same ethos. We approach things in a different way sometimes, but you know, that’s really beneficial.
In the last agency in particular, we kind of came to a point where Michelle was on maternity leave facing coming back to the agency. And we were questioning how do you work so that you’re not just working to pay childcare? And it coincided with the kind of general sense that we were like actually, you know, maybe it’s time to think about doing something ourselves
I think we uttered the fabulously immortal words of ‘how hard can it be?’, which, you know, we’ve really enjoyed revisiting over the years.
Michelle:
I think what’s interesting, Charlotte has picked up on already. You know, we are incredibly, incredibly aligned in the way we like to work. So the way that we prioritize customer service, that’s absolutely crucial for us looking after the clients, always trying to do that little bit extra.
Having different working styles brings real benefits to the clients because Charlotte’s very visionary in her thinking and comes up with amazing ideas, is really great at looking ahead. And then I sort of step in and say okay, so how are we going to make that happen then?
We’re always focusing on how we can be nice human beings and run a business that we actually are proud to be part of, but also make it a viable option.
What attracted you to the Create South East programme and how have you found it so far?
Charlotte: I think as women of a certain age, there was certainly no expectation that you could run a business or should run a business that you could take that control for yourself.
You know, it was always very much you’d go and work for somebody else and you do things.
I think that’s quite a limiting factor to try to overcome without support is that you just can very easily think to yourself, well, actually, we don’t really know what we’re doing.
Then you spend more time around other businesses and you realise that actually, as I mentioned, there isn’t really that support and so a lot of people don’t really know what they’re doing.
So you can either just shoot along with that or you can think to yourself actually there are programmes out there that can support you and can help you to understand so that you can then make that choice in a proactive fashion.
So I think that was the real attraction of the programme you know, we like to try and learn as much as we can with the business that we run.
Then you look around and you think, well, what could we achieve?
Having access to people who’ve got just different skills and different experiences, that’s a really great opportunity we think.
Reb: It sounds like you guys are very people driven and like having people around you, so it’s nice that you’ve also got that with the rest of the cohort.
Charlotte: Well already, we’ve spoken to a couple of the members of the cohort directly and there’s a big feeling of asking, what do you know, what have you done, how do you feel in this kind of, you know, what’s your experience of this?
And it goes kind of beyond then the investment part of it because you realise that even though you’re in different sub sectors, you know, like we spoke to one of the animation studios, completely different skill service to us. And yet as a business, so many similarities.
Michelle: People like being around people and actually to have that partnership is really important, I think for us.
I know it doesn’t work for everybody, but for us it’s really important being able to just back those ideas around between us and also seek that outside validation or reassurance from other people with particular areas of expertise is really, really helpful.
