Tomas Hettinger-Crooks

Why this persona fits the audience

He runs a 4-person consulting studio and already uses Zapier Starter for a few client intake and follow-up automations. New work still lives in Google Sheets and Trello, so he often translates plain-English requests into repeatable steps.

• Age: 41
• Location: London, UK
• Occupation: Founder
• Income: £95k base + variable draws
• Education: Master's degree
• Company size: 4
• Years in role: 6

“I spend half my day trying to teach machines to do what I can describe perfectly well in a sentence, only to realize the machine doesn't understand the context yet.”

Tomas Hettinger-Crooks is a 41-year-old founder operating out of a converted warehouse flat in Islington, London. With a Master's degree in Business Systems from Imperial College London, he established his boutique B2B consulting studio six years ago after growing frustrated with the inefficiencies of large corporate agencies. Today, he steers a lean team of four, specializing in supply chain optimization for mid-sized UK manufacturers. Despite generating a solid income of £95k base plus variable draws, Tomas remains acutely aware of the fragility of his current operational model. His studio is a case study in the 'founder trap': he is the most skilled technician in the room, capable of executing any task, which paradoxically prevents him from delegating effectively. He currently relies on a hybrid stack of Zapier Starter for basic triggers, but the core logic of his workflows remains a manual exercise in his head and in Google Sheets. He acts as the bridge between client ambiguity and team execution, spending hours every week translating 'I need this sorted' into a step-by-step algorithm that his junior staff can follow. This manual translation layer is not just time-consuming; it is his biggest liability. He knows that if he were to fall ill or take a month off, the consistency of his delivery would crumble. Recently, he made the decision to stop hiring generalists, realizing that his team needs better tools to handle the complexity of his own processes. He is deeply interested in the emerging wave of AI-driven workflow automation, particularly those offering transparency, but remains wary of black-box solutions that might introduce errors he cannot trace. His life is a balance of rigorous financial discipline and a passionate pursuit of autonomy, driven by a desire to build a business that functions independently of his constant intervention.

Background & daily life

A day in their life

Tomas wakes at 6:00 AM, immediately checking his phone for overnight US market updates before heading to his home office for a 45-minute cycling session. By 7:30 AM, he's brewing coffee and reviewing the day's priorities on his physical planner, marking off urgent items with a red pen. At 8:30 AM, he joins a 15-minute stand-up with his distributed team to clear blockers, often spending extra time clarifying a vague instruction from a client that needs rephrasing for his analysts. The bulk of his morning is dedicated to 'translation work,' taking a raw client email and mapping it out in Trello. Lunch is a quick sandwich eaten while reading industry news, followed by two hours of deep work on a proposal or financial model. Afternoons involve client calls and administrative duties, including reconciling invoices and updating the company's internal SOPs. He leaves the office by 5:30 PM to cycle home, arriving just in time to cook dinner with Elena. Evenings are screen-free, reserved for political discussion or reading, ensuring he disconnects completely before sleep.

Lifestyle

Tomas lives in a converted Victorian warehouse flat in Islington, a space that doubles as a quiet retreat for his partner, Elena, an architect. His mornings are non-negotiable: a 30-minute spin on a stationary bike followed by a meticulously brewed pour-over coffee using beans from a local roaster in Dalston. He is an avid cyclist who rides the Thames Path or North Circular roads three times a week, regardless of London rain, viewing it as essential mental decompression. Financially, he practices 'conscious frugality'; he avoids luxury cars but invests heavily in high-quality gear for cycling and home office ergonomics. Socially, his circle is tight-knit, consisting mostly of other founders and creative professionals he met through cycling clubs and university alumni networks. He values deep conversation over networking events, preferring a pint at a pub in Caledonian Road where the debate turns to housing policy or the state of the British manufacturing sector.

Work life

As the sole strategist and face of his four-person studio, Tomas splits his time between client delivery and internal operations. The team consists of two junior analysts and one administrative assistant, all remote-based across the UK. His days are a constant toggle between high-level strategic thinking and granular operational troubleshooting. Currently, his workflow is a patchwork: client briefs arrive via email, get transcribed into a master Google Sheet, and then broken down into tasks on Trello. He manually maps these out, translating vague client desires like 'organize our leads' into specific, repeatable steps for his team. This translation layer is his primary bottleneck; he spends hours ensuring his 'plain English' instructions don't result in data errors downstream. He feels the friction of maintaining this manual logic map daily, knowing that any growth requires scaling beyond his personal cognitive load.

Relationships

His relationship with his partner, Elena, is the anchor of his life; they support each other's independent careers while managing shared domestic responsibilities. Professionally, he relies on a small network of peer consultants for advice on pricing and hiring, often exchanging notes over coffee rather than formal mentorship. He has a distant but respectful relationship with his parents in Manchester, who run a traditional family business and view his reliance on digital tools with mild suspicion. His influence comes from a mix of academic peers from his Master's program and a few trusted 'sparring partners' in the tech community who challenge his assumptions about business efficiency.

How they decide

Tomas is a deliberate, research-heavy decider who prioritizes long-term utility over short-term convenience. He rarely makes impulsive purchases, especially regarding business infrastructure. Before committing to any new system, he conducts a thorough cost-benefit analysis, often building a prototype or running a pilot with a single client to verify efficacy. He is skeptical of marketing fluff and prefers evidence-based arguments, looking for transparency in how a tool works and what it will actually do before it touches his data. He values independence in decision-making, preferring to control the implementation rather than relying on vendor hand-holding, though he is open to guidance if the proof of concept is irrefutable.

How they sound

His speech is clipped, precise, and devoid of filler words, reflecting his engineering background. He speaks with a Received Pronunciation accent softened by years of living in London, often dropping 'g's in '-ing' endings but maintaining grammatical rigour. He avoids hyperbolic language, preferring terms like 'feasible', 'proven', and 'marginal gain'. He rarely uses slang, instead opting for industry-standard jargon like 'latency', 'API endpoint', or 'margin erosion'. When explaining concepts, he tends to use analogies drawn from mechanics or logistics. He pauses frequently to think, valuing accuracy over speed, and will often interrupt himself to correct a vague statement. He dislikes ambiguity and will ask for clarification if a request isn't concrete.