Gabriela Barrios Abrego

Why this persona fits the audience

Leads a 3-person e-commerce shop in Barcelona and uses a shared spreadsheet for weekly review, a habit tracker for morning focus, and occasional breathwork videos before launch days.

• Age: 39
• Location: Barcelona, Spain
• Occupation: Co-founder and growth lead
• Income: €62k
• Education: Bachelor's degree in marketing
• Company size: 3 employees (including herself)
• Years in role: 5 years

“'I don’t believe in ‘hustle culture,’ but I do believe in showing up—even when it’s just for 20 minutes, even when the spreadsheet is a disaster, even when the breathwork app crashes.'”

Gabriela Barrios Abrego co-founded *Catalan Cart* in 2018 after years in corporate marketing left her craving autonomy. She and her husband bootstrapped the agency from their tiny Gràcia apartment, where they still work today. Her bachelor’s degree in marketing taught her ‘all the wrong things’—how to optimize for shareholders, not humans. Now, she’s obsessed with helping indie brands grow without losing their soul. The agency runs on a tight budget: no fancy offices, no investor pressure, just three people and a shared Google Sheet that’s somehow still functional. Gabriela’s *real* MVP is her habit tracker. ‘It’s the only thing that keeps me from spiraling,’ she admits. Lately, she’s been questioning whether her spreadsheet system is holding her back. ‘I love the control, but I hate the manual work,’ she tells her best friend over glasses of *ribero del Duero*. She’s especially stressed about Black Friday—her team’s ‘make or break’ season. Between client calls and photography edits, she sneaks in breathwork (though she skips on launch days, ‘because panic breathing isn’t the same’). Her proudest moment? Helping a local ceramics brand 5x their revenue while keeping their ‘handmade’ ethos. Her guilty pleasure? Watching *The Property Brothers* with her daughter, though she’ll deny it’s ‘research’ for their own renovations. She’s at a crossroads: scale up or stay lean? The spreadsheet doesn’t have an answer for that.

Background & daily life

A day in their life

5:50 AM: Wakes to her phone’s red flashlight (less jarring than an alarm). 6:10 AM: 10-minute breathwork video (today’s is ‘Midday Recharge’ but she uses it mornings because ‘why not?’). 7:00 AM: Standup in her bedroom while packing lunches (husband yells from kitchen, ‘Gabriela, we have 30 seconds!’). 9:30 AM: Client call with a jewelry brand in Mallorca—she must explain why their pricing strategy is ‘cute but unscalable.’ 12:15 PM: Quick salad at her desk (leftover *escudella*) while scrolling through Shopify forums. 2:00 PM: Meets the team at a café for ‘strategy’—really just stress-eating *mel i mató* (she’s the only one who admits the dessert is the point). 6:30 PM: Last emails while her husband handles dinner. 8:00 PM: Tries a new breathwork video (this one’s 15 minutes—‘ambitious,’ she thinks). 10:30 PM: falls asleep while reading a *HBR* article (‘Marketing in the Attention Economy’—irony noted).

Lifestyle

Gabriela’s morning routines are sacred: 6:30 AM wake-up, 10 minutes of breathwork with a guided video, a black coffee with almond milk, and a quick review of her habit tracker while her daughter gets ready for school. She rents a sunny ground-floor apartment in Gràcia, where she grows basil and rosemary on the tiny balcony—her husband handles the larger pots because her thumbs are ‘more digital than green.’ Weekends revolve around family: Sunday paella with friends (she’s the designated garlic-chopping enforcer), bike rides along the beach, and helping her daughter with school projects (though she secretly hates the amount of glitter involved). Money is tight but intentional—she still uses a 2018 MacBook Air because ‘it works fine’ and negotiates all her tools down to freemium tiers. She swims at the local pool twice a week (always the 7:20 AM lane) to avoid crowds and her own tendency to overschedule.

Work life

Her agency, *Catalan Cart*, specializes in helping indie brands scale DTC without losing their ‘human’ touch. The team is lean: her husband handles ops (unpaid, ‘for now’), a part-time designer they barter with, and a freelance copywriter from Madrid. They all use a shared Google Sheet for weekly OKRs—Gabriela’s pet project to cut back on endless Slack threads. Right now, they’re prepping for Black Friday, which means all-hands-on-deck testing on product pages. She’s under pressure to onboard 3 new clients next quarter, but her spreadsheet reveals a troubling trend: acquisition costs are rising. Most workdays start with a 7:00 AM standup (her daughter often climbs into frame to say hello), followed by a deep work block before client calls. She hates ‘fluff’ in meetings and always asks, *‘So… what’s the ask?’* if someone rambles. Evenings are reserved for family, so she batches emails after 8 PM while pretending to watch TV.

Relationships

Her husband, a former graphic designer, is her ‘anchor’—he grounds her when she spirals into ‘what if’ scenarios. Their daughter is their reason for the 5:30 PM hard-stop rule (no work calls allowed). She’s close with a tight-knit group of other female founders who meet monthly for wine and ‘complaining about male investors.’ Her parents, retired teachers in Valencia, call every Sunday with updates on their *naranjos* (orange trees)—Gabriela humors their gardening tips but ignores 90% of them. She used to look up to a mentor from her marketing days, but they drifted after the mentor pivoted to crypto. Now, she secretly follows a few e-commerce coaches on LinkedIn but refuses to pay for their ‘exclusive communities.’

How they decide

Cautiously pragmatic. She researches exhaustively (once spent 3 hours comparing Notion templates) but ultimately trusts her gut. Once she’s made a decision, she sticks to it—even if it’s wrong (‘Sunk cost fallacy? I call it commitment.’). Hates being sold to, so she avoids salesy language. If someone says ‘revolutionary,’ she’ll close the tab out of spite.

How they sound

Speaks in measured, clipped sentences when focused but gets animated when excited (her ‘passionate rant voice’ involves hand gestures and ‘OK, hear me out’). Uses hyperbolic but dry humor (‘Our CRM is so old, it might be a fossil’). Avoids jargon unless she’s testing it out (e.g., ‘It’s a brand’s *value proposition*, but like, for people’). Her daughter corrects her Spanish slang (‘Mamá, *guay* is not okay to say at school’).