October 4, 2025 • 13 mins
Warren Miles-Pickup, CEO of Pixel True, delves into the world of value-first marketing. Join us as we explore how consistently providing value can transform client relationships and lead to sustained business growth. Learn actionable strategies to position yourself as a trusted resource and witness the profound impact it can have on your client base.
Listen on Podbean:
https://brainworkframework.podbean.com/
Connect with Warren Miles Pickup:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/warren-miles-pickup-8a248113/
Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/pixeltruedesign
Connect with Chris Troka:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-troka-3a093058/
Website: https://focused-biz.com/
Website: https://christroka.com/ #brainwork #framework #business #marketing #value #connections #growth #strategies
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
If you can picture a single person as yourclient, utilize that as a way to determine
(00:05):
how you're gonna make your marketingefforts going forward, an individual
persona that you want to service.
And if you're passionate about servingthat person, you're gonna be significantly
more successful than the shotgun approachof just trying to serve everybody.
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Focused-biz.com.
(00:26):
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is Warren Miles Pickup.
He's the CMO of Pixel True.
They help businesses grow with highquality design, illustration and
branding, offering unlimited creativesupport at a fraction of in-house costs.
Warren, so excited to have you on.
How you doing today?
I'm doing great.
Thanks so much, Chris.
I appreciate being on.
Absolutely.
So tell us more about your journey.
What got you into this world ofthe marketing design illustration?
(00:50):
Tell us how that all started.
Well, I took a very different paththan the majority of people that
wind up in design and graphic design,website design, that sort of thing.
I actually started off infinance for nearly 17 years.
First as a high net worth financialadvisor and then training advisors.
Worked with a little over 3000financial advisors and helping them
with their businesses to identify howto work with clients how to present
(01:15):
information, how to utilize differentplanning topics, those sorts of things.
Wound up doing about $2 billionworth of business on that side.
And I was traveling a lot and wound up.
Needing a way to spend more time at home.
I got to the point where it waskind of a find a new job or find
a new wife sort of situation.
And I chose find a new job.
(01:36):
And a friend of mine who's now my businesspartner, came to me and said, Hey, there's
an opportunity to acquire a design agencythat's doing something really unique.
And this is in the early days ofunlimited design where you would
pay a subscription price and receivekind of fractional design work.
And what we decided was that wecould take some of the skillset
he was from finance as well.
(01:57):
Some of the skill sets we had workingin a very saturated market with where
there are billions of dollars of marketingand advertising dollars going into
the different products and services.
You have to have a uniqueperspective and a way to present
information that's differentfrom the rest of the marketplace.
We figured how do we take thatknowledge, that experience working
(02:17):
within that marketplace and takeit to improve digital assets.
And we really wanted to focus onthe human psychology decisions.
what are the shortcuts and the biasesthat we have in our brains that
determine how we're going to move forwardwith making a purchasing decision.
And we started utilizing heuristicsand cognitive biases and these sorts of
(02:39):
things in the design and built digitalassets, whether that's landing pages
or lead magnets websites, those sortsof things so that we can build trust
very quickly with a consumer and helpbusinesses to shorten the timeframe that
it takes to close somebody from awarenessto purchasing decision by utilizing
(03:00):
value first, marketing strategies solve,understanding those core problems of
the IO client profile and really diggingdown into what are the products and
services that that individual needs andhow does this match with what they need.
That is awesome.
I really love both how you kind of,as a necessity needed to get into
it and that propel propelled pastexperience with some opportunities and
(03:23):
you took a huge risk but it paid off.
Obviously using all that experienceand knowledge to go forward.
And just your general take on marketingkind of you getting into the brain of
consumers, how do we get them throughthe buyer's journey and focus on value?
I feel like it's really underratedfor brands to be able to connect with
consumers on a value driven level.
(03:44):
Can you tell me more about that process ofeither clients who come through or maybe
the industries that you work best with?
We work across a number of industries,whether it's SaaS companies or small
businesses, coaches and consultants.
Working with Manulife, whichis a really large insurance
company, KPMG, really large town.
The organization.
(04:05):
It's quite varied in terms of theorganizations that we deal with but
the prints are the still the same.
It's really drilling down and saying,okay, who is it that you're trying to
serve and making sure that we understandwhat are the core problems within that
community or that avatar, an organizationor an individual is trying to serve.
As an example, I'm working recently with acoach that provides meditation for dealing
(04:30):
with traumatic stress disorder and wewanted to identify and create that avatar
for the individual that he wants to focuson working with, and then moving out from
who that avatar is to how do we then howdo we indicate and educate this person
on the solutions that they need in orderto solve the problem that they're facing.
It's very much based by on the conceptof education based sales by Chet
(04:53):
Holmes, who wrote an incredible bookcalled The Ultimate Sales Machine.
And we understand the avatar, weunderstand what their core problems are.
We now understand how oursolution fits into that.
How do we get this information to them?
Well, we need to educate them.
We need to show them that the problemexists, show them what the potential
solution is for that problem, andthen educate them on us being the
best provider of that solution.
(05:15):
And then creating the digital assetsis just taking that a step further
and saying, okay, where are theyalready getting their information?
Who are the authorities that thisavatar looks to for information and
for solutions so that we can get thatinformation in front of them in that
area then leading them to the nextstep, whether that's a webinar or a
website or landing page or virtualsales letter, those sorts of things
(05:37):
to take that education the next step.
And then building on from that.
You essentially plan to give awayas much information as you can,
knowing that individuals are gonnamove from DIY to done with you,
to done for you kind of process.
And it's about building this funnel orthe staircase to move people through
based on where it is that they areright now in terms of their willingness
(06:00):
to purchase the solution right now.
I feel like all of the tips and tricksand how you focus on the marketing funnel
and the avatar or the buyer's personais really the collective of all the
years of proven philosophy, business andmarketing psychology, all built into one.
Like your stuff.
This is the marketing that works.
Yes.
And it creates a commitment from theconsumer to continuing on with the process
(06:25):
because once you've got some value outof a higher ROI value for yourself than
what you're putting out, you're gonnacontinue to return back to that trough
to continue to get more and more value.
And everything that we build, theintention is to ensure that the consumer
is getting three times the valueof the person providing that value
that way you can ensure consistency.
You establish trust, youestablish transparency in what the
(06:49):
exchange of value is going to be.
And that creates a referable relationshipbecause they're gonna be much more
confident to provide referrals, tointroduce other people if they know
that the consumer is always gonna bereceiving greater value than it's gonna
be extracted through the service provider.
Absolutely.
I completely agree.
Now, there's a lot of business ownerswho are gonna be listening to this
(07:11):
and even though they're gonna beagreeing with much of this, they
may not have tried this yet before.
And I think their first worry isalways, why would I wanna give it away?
Why would I share this knowledge that'sin the program or that's in the service?
Like, I can't give that away.
How do we find that balance betweenshowcasing and educating that it works
between giving away the whole farm.
(07:32):
How do we determine that?
The fear of giving away your secret sauce.
For some industries I can understandthat IP is incredibly valuable
and you want to retain it.
When there's a low barrier to entry orit's a marketplace where that IP holds
more value than an individual sale.
I respect that people wanna retain thatIP but for the majority of business
(07:57):
is services product error that I peak.
Being a provider of knowledge andinformation, it's essentially eliminated
a lot of the barrier for barrier entryfor just about any type of service,
whether it's consulting or coaching.
I could turn my Chat GPT intoa coach like that, right?
And it would provide me with all ofthe information that anybody has.
(08:19):
It's a matter of delivering itin a methodology that causes
somebody to want to take action.
There's an incredible bookcalled Human are Underrated
by a guy named Geoff Colvin.
And he wrote that the future of theworkplace is one that machines or
robotics or artificial intelligenceessentially replaces the dominant majority
of what we do, whether they be simpleor complex tasks, but what it cannot
(08:43):
replace is empathy and the ability toelicit emotion and decision making out
of the individuals that we deal withand the vast majority of value that we
can deliver to other people is to movethem forward in a process that they
may not necessarily feel at the moment.
We know what is wrongthat we need to solve.
That problem stuck on the fence, wewill sit there because the pain of
(09:06):
change is more evident than the painof staying where we are right now.
And we know that make the change,whether it's quitting smoking or
stopping gambling or going to the gymor whatever it may be, all of these
services that people get paid tens ofthousands of dollars a year to deal with.
We don't take that step because we'recomfortable where we are even though
we know where we are is painful.
(09:27):
And these individuals that are successfulare able to drive and by convincing
people, showing them that the pain ofchange is actually less than the pain
of staying where they are right now.
And that's where the majority ofthe value is derived is in actually
getting people to take the stepsand the actions that are required to
(09:49):
make a change, whether it be in theirbusiness, whether it be in their personal
life or anything like that and youestablishing trust and educating somebody.
The majority of people are gonna comein with the concept that they're going
to be able to do this themselves.
They're DIY individuals and a portion ofthose are never gonna move forward in any
other part of the process and that's fine.
They can go into that becausethey're committed to that process.
(10:12):
But a lot of people are gonna say, thisis too much work for me to do it myself.
I want to do it with them.
I want the coach that is going to bethere with me to drive through taking
these action, and then a number ofthose still find this is too much work.
I'm just gonna pay somebody.
Like, I could teach somebody how tobuild a website utilizing heuristics
(10:33):
the different biases that we have inour decide decision making psychology.
But the vast majority ofpeople are never gonna do it.
They're gonna just say, okay, Iget it but I'm really good at this.
I just want you to do it for me.
And their high value clients lie.
And the concept that business ownerswhere they have to get everybody
do this one thing is unrealistic.
(10:54):
You need to build our businessstructure so that you can service
all three of those different buckets.
You wanna ensure that you're solvingthe three different problems or three
different sites purchasing population.
Absolutely.
And now for those who are interestedin connecting with you and finding
out more about you, where can theyfind you and connect with you online?
(11:16):
LinkedIn is a great place.
My name's Warren Miles pickup.
There's only one WarrenMiles pickup in the world.
There's only eight milespickups in the entire world.
If you look up the name, MilesPickup, you will find me.
Our website, pixel true.com isa great place to find out more.
Pixel True is also on all thedifferent social media platforms.
If you look me up you'll beable to find me really easily
(11:38):
and be able to connect with me.
LinkedIn is probably the best place.
Excellent.
Now you've already shared a lot ofgreat resources, like some of the
great books that have influenced you,but I want to ask more about 2025.
We're about halfway through.
Are there new products you're launching,new trends that you're seeing?
What are you most excited for in 2025?
Actually, we're launching a new productfor small businesses that don't have
(12:03):
the capital to put a large investmentinto their website landing page.
We're going to be launching a websiterental sort of structure where it's
only $69 a month for a website.
You can get all of the services anddesign and all of this that a small
business needs in order to create theirdigital presence without that large
(12:24):
sticker shock that you get with tryingto do a $5,000, $10,000 website that it's
obviously gonna be utilizing artificialintelligence in the way that we're
doing it and and some templates so thatwe can turn them around very quickly.
What we're trying to do is getto the point where we can commit
to having a full web build outwithin 48 hours for a client.
(12:44):
That is exciting.
You've definitely found a huge painpoint and problem within the market.
Figured out how to solve it,and then utilize a lot of tools,
resources, and AI in order toexecute and make that a reality.
Warren, that's fantastic.
I love it.
Is there anything else we haven'ttalked about that you wanna share or
willing to share with the audience?
No.
I would just say as a reminder, makesure that you understand who we are.
(13:08):
If you can picture a single personas your client, utilize that as a way
to determine how you're gonna makeyour marketing efforts going forward.
An individual personathat you want to service.
And if you're passionate about servingthat person, you're gonna be significantly
more successful than the shotgun approachof just trying to serve everybody.
I love it.
(13:28):
Focus on the audience andspecifically the in individual person
that you're trying to speak to.
Warren, some great advice here.
Congratulations on everythingyou've done and looking forward
to your future success as well.
We appreciate it.
Thanks, Chris.
If you can picture a single person as yourclient, utilize that as a way to determine
(00:05):
how you're gonna make your marketingefforts going forward, an individual
persona that you want to service.
And if you're passionate about servingthat person, you're gonna be significantly
more successful than the shotgun approachof just trying to serve everybody.
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Focused-biz.com.
(00:26):
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is Warren Miles Pickup.
He's the CMO of Pixel True.
They help businesses grow with highquality design, illustration and
branding, offering unlimited creativesupport at a fraction of in-house costs.
Warren, so excited to have you on.
How you doing today?
I'm doing great.
Thanks so much, Chris.
I appreciate being on.
Absolutely.
So tell us more about your journey.
What got you into this world ofthe marketing design illustration?
(00:50):
Tell us how that all started.
Well, I took a very different paththan the majority of people that
wind up in design and graphic design,website design, that sort of thing.
I actually started off infinance for nearly 17 years.
First as a high net worth financialadvisor and then training advisors.
Worked with a little over 3000financial advisors and helping them
with their businesses to identify howto work with clients how to present
(01:15):
information, how to utilize differentplanning topics, those sorts of things.
Wound up doing about $2 billionworth of business on that side.
And I was traveling a lot and wound up.
Needing a way to spend more time at home.
I got to the point where it waskind of a find a new job or find
a new wife sort of situation.
And I chose find a new job.
(01:36):
And a friend of mine who's now my businesspartner, came to me and said, Hey, there's
an opportunity to acquire a design agencythat's doing something really unique.
And this is in the early days ofunlimited design where you would
pay a subscription price and receivekind of fractional design work.
And what we decided was that wecould take some of the skillset
he was from finance as well.
(01:57):
Some of the skill sets we had workingin a very saturated market with where
there are billions of dollars of marketingand advertising dollars going into
the different products and services.
You have to have a uniqueperspective and a way to present
information that's differentfrom the rest of the marketplace.
We figured how do we take thatknowledge, that experience working
(02:17):
within that marketplace and takeit to improve digital assets.
And we really wanted to focus onthe human psychology decisions.
what are the shortcuts and the biasesthat we have in our brains that
determine how we're going to move forwardwith making a purchasing decision.
And we started utilizing heuristicsand cognitive biases and these sorts of
(02:39):
things in the design and built digitalassets, whether that's landing pages
or lead magnets websites, those sortsof things so that we can build trust
very quickly with a consumer and helpbusinesses to shorten the timeframe that
it takes to close somebody from awarenessto purchasing decision by utilizing
(03:00):
value first, marketing strategies solve,understanding those core problems of
the IO client profile and really diggingdown into what are the products and
services that that individual needs andhow does this match with what they need.
That is awesome.
I really love both how you kind of,as a necessity needed to get into
it and that propel propelled pastexperience with some opportunities and
(03:23):
you took a huge risk but it paid off.
Obviously using all that experienceand knowledge to go forward.
And just your general take on marketingkind of you getting into the brain of
consumers, how do we get them throughthe buyer's journey and focus on value?
I feel like it's really underratedfor brands to be able to connect with
consumers on a value driven level.
(03:44):
Can you tell me more about that process ofeither clients who come through or maybe
the industries that you work best with?
We work across a number of industries,whether it's SaaS companies or small
businesses, coaches and consultants.
Working with Manulife, whichis a really large insurance
company, KPMG, really large town.
The organization.
(04:05):
It's quite varied in terms of theorganizations that we deal with but
the prints are the still the same.
It's really drilling down and saying,okay, who is it that you're trying to
serve and making sure that we understandwhat are the core problems within that
community or that avatar, an organizationor an individual is trying to serve.
As an example, I'm working recently with acoach that provides meditation for dealing
(04:30):
with traumatic stress disorder and wewanted to identify and create that avatar
for the individual that he wants to focuson working with, and then moving out from
who that avatar is to how do we then howdo we indicate and educate this person
on the solutions that they need in orderto solve the problem that they're facing.
It's very much based by on the conceptof education based sales by Chet
(04:53):
Holmes, who wrote an incredible bookcalled The Ultimate Sales Machine.
And we understand the avatar, weunderstand what their core problems are.
We now understand how oursolution fits into that.
How do we get this information to them?
Well, we need to educate them.
We need to show them that the problemexists, show them what the potential
solution is for that problem, andthen educate them on us being the
best provider of that solution.
(05:15):
And then creating the digital assetsis just taking that a step further
and saying, okay, where are theyalready getting their information?
Who are the authorities that thisavatar looks to for information and
for solutions so that we can get thatinformation in front of them in that
area then leading them to the nextstep, whether that's a webinar or a
website or landing page or virtualsales letter, those sorts of things
(05:37):
to take that education the next step.
And then building on from that.
You essentially plan to give awayas much information as you can,
knowing that individuals are gonnamove from DIY to done with you,
to done for you kind of process.
And it's about building this funnel orthe staircase to move people through
based on where it is that they areright now in terms of their willingness
(06:00):
to purchase the solution right now.
I feel like all of the tips and tricksand how you focus on the marketing funnel
and the avatar or the buyer's personais really the collective of all the
years of proven philosophy, business andmarketing psychology, all built into one.
Like your stuff.
This is the marketing that works.
Yes.
And it creates a commitment from theconsumer to continuing on with the process
(06:25):
because once you've got some value outof a higher ROI value for yourself than
what you're putting out, you're gonnacontinue to return back to that trough
to continue to get more and more value.
And everything that we build, theintention is to ensure that the consumer
is getting three times the valueof the person providing that value
that way you can ensure consistency.
You establish trust, youestablish transparency in what the
(06:49):
exchange of value is going to be.
And that creates a referable relationshipbecause they're gonna be much more
confident to provide referrals, tointroduce other people if they know
that the consumer is always gonna bereceiving greater value than it's gonna
be extracted through the service provider.
Absolutely.
I completely agree.
Now, there's a lot of business ownerswho are gonna be listening to this
(07:11):
and even though they're gonna beagreeing with much of this, they
may not have tried this yet before.
And I think their first worry isalways, why would I wanna give it away?
Why would I share this knowledge that'sin the program or that's in the service?
Like, I can't give that away.
How do we find that balance betweenshowcasing and educating that it works
between giving away the whole farm.
(07:32):
How do we determine that?
The fear of giving away your secret sauce.
For some industries I can understandthat IP is incredibly valuable
and you want to retain it.
When there's a low barrier to entry orit's a marketplace where that IP holds
more value than an individual sale.
I respect that people wanna retain thatIP but for the majority of business
(07:57):
is services product error that I peak.
Being a provider of knowledge andinformation, it's essentially eliminated
a lot of the barrier for barrier entryfor just about any type of service,
whether it's consulting or coaching.
I could turn my Chat GPT intoa coach like that, right?
And it would provide me with all ofthe information that anybody has.
(08:19):
It's a matter of delivering itin a methodology that causes
somebody to want to take action.
There's an incredible bookcalled Human are Underrated
by a guy named Geoff Colvin.
And he wrote that the future of theworkplace is one that machines or
robotics or artificial intelligenceessentially replaces the dominant majority
of what we do, whether they be simpleor complex tasks, but what it cannot
(08:43):
replace is empathy and the ability toelicit emotion and decision making out
of the individuals that we deal withand the vast majority of value that we
can deliver to other people is to movethem forward in a process that they
may not necessarily feel at the moment.
We know what is wrongthat we need to solve.
That problem stuck on the fence, wewill sit there because the pain of
(09:06):
change is more evident than the painof staying where we are right now.
And we know that make the change,whether it's quitting smoking or
stopping gambling or going to the gymor whatever it may be, all of these
services that people get paid tens ofthousands of dollars a year to deal with.
We don't take that step because we'recomfortable where we are even though
we know where we are is painful.
(09:27):
And these individuals that are successfulare able to drive and by convincing
people, showing them that the pain ofchange is actually less than the pain
of staying where they are right now.
And that's where the majority ofthe value is derived is in actually
getting people to take the stepsand the actions that are required to
(09:49):
make a change, whether it be in theirbusiness, whether it be in their personal
life or anything like that and youestablishing trust and educating somebody.
The majority of people are gonna comein with the concept that they're going
to be able to do this themselves.
They're DIY individuals and a portion ofthose are never gonna move forward in any
other part of the process and that's fine.
They can go into that becausethey're committed to that process.
(10:12):
But a lot of people are gonna say, thisis too much work for me to do it myself.
I want to do it with them.
I want the coach that is going to bethere with me to drive through taking
these action, and then a number ofthose still find this is too much work.
I'm just gonna pay somebody.
Like, I could teach somebody how tobuild a website utilizing heuristics
(10:33):
the different biases that we have inour decide decision making psychology.
But the vast majority ofpeople are never gonna do it.
They're gonna just say, okay, Iget it but I'm really good at this.
I just want you to do it for me.
And their high value clients lie.
And the concept that business ownerswhere they have to get everybody
do this one thing is unrealistic.
(10:54):
You need to build our businessstructure so that you can service
all three of those different buckets.
You wanna ensure that you're solvingthe three different problems or three
different sites purchasing population.
Absolutely.
And now for those who are interestedin connecting with you and finding
out more about you, where can theyfind you and connect with you online?
(11:16):
LinkedIn is a great place.
My name's Warren Miles pickup.
There's only one WarrenMiles pickup in the world.
There's only eight milespickups in the entire world.
If you look up the name, MilesPickup, you will find me.
Our website, pixel true.com isa great place to find out more.
Pixel True is also on all thedifferent social media platforms.
If you look me up you'll beable to find me really easily
(11:38):
and be able to connect with me.
LinkedIn is probably the best place.
Excellent.
Now you've already shared a lot ofgreat resources, like some of the
great books that have influenced you,but I want to ask more about 2025.
We're about halfway through.
Are there new products you're launching,new trends that you're seeing?
What are you most excited for in 2025?
Actually, we're launching a new productfor small businesses that don't have
(12:03):
the capital to put a large investmentinto their website landing page.
We're going to be launching a websiterental sort of structure where it's
only $69 a month for a website.
You can get all of the services anddesign and all of this that a small
business needs in order to create theirdigital presence without that large
(12:24):
sticker shock that you get with tryingto do a $5,000, $10,000 website that it's
obviously gonna be utilizing artificialintelligence in the way that we're
doing it and and some templates so thatwe can turn them around very quickly.
What we're trying to do is getto the point where we can commit
to having a full web build outwithin 48 hours for a client.
(12:44):
That is exciting.
You've definitely found a huge painpoint and problem within the market.
Figured out how to solve it,and then utilize a lot of tools,
resources, and AI in order toexecute and make that a reality.
Warren, that's fantastic.
I love it.
Is there anything else we haven'ttalked about that you wanna share or
willing to share with the audience?
No.
I would just say as a reminder, makesure that you understand who we are.
(13:08):
If you can picture a single personas your client, utilize that as a way
to determine how you're gonna makeyour marketing efforts going forward.
An individual personathat you want to service.
And if you're passionate about servingthat person, you're gonna be significantly
more successful than the shotgun approachof just trying to serve everybody.
I love it.
(13:28):
Focus on the audience andspecifically the in individual person
that you're trying to speak to.
Warren, some great advice here.
Congratulations on everythingyou've done and looking forward
to your future success as well.
We appreciate it.
Thanks, Chris.
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