Kayla Altenwerth

Why this persona fits the audience

Owns a 14-person performance marketing agency in London and leads the business development side herself. The agency uses LinkedIn posts, event roundups, and downloadable checklists to generate inbound leads for its own services, with replies tracked in HubSpot and a shared Google Sheet. She is the final approver on tooling because the team keeps tools lean.

• Age: 42
• Location: London, UK
• Occupation: Agency Founder
• Income: £120k-160k/year
• Education: Master's degree in marketing
• Company size: 14
• Years in role: 9

“I don't care how fancy your algorithm is if it costs me ten hours a week of my team's sanity to make it work.”

Kayla Altenwerth is the founder and driving force behind a twelve-year-old boutique performance marketing agency in London, currently employing fourteen specialists. With a Master's degree in Marketing from King's College London, she transitioned from a corporate strategist role to entrepreneurship nine years ago, driven by a desire to implement more agile, data-centric methodologies in the B2B space. Her agency specializes in generating high-quality inbound leads for niche SaaS and professional services firms through a unique blend of content strategy, event networking, and meticulous lead nurturing. Kayla operates with a philosophy of 'lean efficiency.' She personally oversees all business development activities, leveraging LinkedIn as her primary channel to connect with potential clients. Unlike larger agencies that rely on bloated teams, Kayla ensures her organization remains tight-knit and responsive. This hands-on approach extends to her technology stack; she serves as the final gatekeeper for all software purchases, meticulously auditing requests to prevent redundancy. Currently, her team generates leads through organic LinkedIn posts, curated event roundups, and downloadable industry checklists, tracking every interaction in a hybrid system of HubSpot and a complex, shared Google Sheet. While effective, this manual-heavy tracking system is becoming a bottleneck as the agency scales. Financially prudent, Kayla reinvests profits primarily into talent acquisition and infrastructure upgrades that directly impact client outcomes. She values reputation above all else, often turning away lucrative but misaligned opportunities to protect her brand's integrity. Her recent decision to reject a popular, expensive automation tool was based on its inability to integrate cleanly with their existing HubSpot setup, forcing the team to revert to manual data entry. She is constantly searching for solutions that offer genuine automation without adding complexity or cost. Outside of work, she is a devoted mother and wife who fiercely guards her family time, viewing work-life balance not as a perk but as a necessary condition for sustained high performance.

Background & daily life

A day in their life

Kayla wakes at 5:30 AM for an hour of quiet reflection and yoga before the house stirs. After dropping the kids at school, she heads to her Shoreditch office, stopping for a matcha latte. Her first block is reserved for reading industry news and drafting three LinkedIn posts, which she schedules for mid-morning engagement. At 10 AM, she joins a client strategy call, focusing on Q3 retention metrics. Lunch is a quick bowl of salad eaten at her desk while reviewing a new vendor contract for their CRM integration. Post-lunch involves a workshop with her content team, critiquing a checklist design for a potential client. By 4 PM, she tackles the inbox, manually responding to high-value LinkedIn DMs that the team hasn't qualified yet. The day ends with a review of the daily lead sheet in Google, noting discrepancies, followed by a walk home to pick up the kids, leaving evenings for family time.

Lifestyle

Kayla lives in a spacious Victorian terrace in Clapham, balancing a busy home life with her high-pressure career. Her mornings begin at 5:30 AM with yoga and a cold brew before the chaos of the school run kicks in. Evenings are a rigidly scheduled mix of family dinners, helping with homework, and winding down with fiction or true crime documentaries. Financially, she is disciplined; she treats household budgeting with the same spreadsheet rigor as the agency P&L, prioritizing savings over luxury assets. Socially, she curates a tight circle of other founders and creatives who understand the isolation of leadership, preferring deep one-on-one conversations over large networking mixers.

Work life

Her days are split between strategic oversight and tactical execution. As the final approver on all software spend, she audits every subscription request from her team of 14, ensuring no redundant tools clutter their workflow. Mornings are dedicated to client strategy calls and reviewing campaign analytics, while afternoons involve internal workshops on content strategy and lead generation mechanics. She personally manages the agency's inbound pipeline via LinkedIn, manually engaging with prospects when automation feels too sterile. The pressure to maintain margins while scaling headcount is constant, requiring her to be deeply involved in both high-level business development and granular operational details like CRM hygiene.

Relationships

Kayla relies heavily on her husband, a solicitor, for grounding and legal advice regarding contracts. Her closest confidants are three other female agency owners in London whom she meets bi-weekly for coffee; these relationships are built on mutual vulnerability rather than transactional networking. She has a strong relationship with her younger sister, who runs a non-profit, providing a counterbalance to her corporate focus. Professionally, she values her Head of Operations, who acts as a buffer between her and the daily grind, though she often overrides his suggestions if they conflict with her financial constraints.

How they decide

Methodical and evidence-based. Kayla rarely makes impulsive decisions, especially regarding financial outlays or technology stacks. She requires clear documentation of ROI, case studies, and peer validation before committing. Her process involves a 'lean test' phase where she evaluates tools against current free alternatives or manual processes. She is skeptical of vendor promises that lack concrete data and prefers solutions that integrate seamlessly with existing ecosystems like HubSpot rather than creating silos. Peer recommendations from trusted industry circles carry significant weight, but she ultimately demands to see the mechanics of how a solution works before signing.

How they sound

Direct, articulate, and efficient. She speaks in complete sentences with a measured pace, avoiding filler words like 'um' or 'like.' Her tone is professional but approachable, often using industry jargon correctly without being pretentious. She tends to use phrases like 'Let's look at the numbers,' 'Does this scale?' or 'What's the friction point?' She avoids overly emotional language in business contexts, preferring data-driven descriptors. When frustrated, she becomes terse and focused on solutions rather than venting.