Hey everybody, I’m Tom Finley. There are all sorts of ways to describe me profesionally — a digital polymath, a T-shaped designer, a generalist or a multidisciplinary designer – I call myself a visual developer.

I’ve been evolving as a visual developer since college in the late 1990s, and my love for craft beer has been with me for about as long. I’ve held roles alternately as designer, developer, and marketer in educational institutions, small agencies, and on corporate in-house teams.

This is the best picture taken of me, ever, until the day I die.
Credit Emily Gude Photography.

Highlights

  • Husband, father, microagency owner
  • Motorcyclist, avid concertgoer, beer and t-shirt enthusiast
  • 20+ years web design/dev experience
  • 12+ years WordPress experience
  • Formerly a designer and developer who favored Genesis Framework
  • Currently a WordPress Full Site Editing advocate

On to Business

My main gig is running my micro-agency, PRÜF Creative, just outside of Washington, DC. My specialty is creating custom WordPress sites for clients in the craft beverage and hospitality industries. But beyond creating websites, I place a lot of importance on creating a full-fledged digital presence for the brands I work with, tying in the associated processes and systems that come with modern digital marketing, back to my client’s websites in ways that simplify what they have to do every day to market themselves.

The problem with digital marketing agencies tends to be that, when you come to them, you’re signing up to be placed into every box they prescribe and there’s no room for flexibility. Usually they’re handing your project off to a freelancer like me anyway. A hallmark of our times is that scaling for efficiency is everything… until you’re the one not being centered and heard.

The first step in my process is to learn about your brand and to determine where we best fit together. After we’ve taken that serious look inward and identified the best overlap between your needs and existing assets, and my skill-set, we get to producing deliverables.

That starts with developing a framework for messaging that resonates with the people you want to reach. It has to make sense for your business and it has be modular because you’re going to need to use it in a LOT of different digital places. Then we collaborate to create a website (a platform, really) that YOU control on your terms. From there we’ll bubble out additional digital and traditional marketing materials for the various channels that make sense for you.


We’re answering 2 questions:

1. How does [X] matter to your customers?

2. What is the deeper ‘why’ for your business?


And all of this really culminates toward one central goal: setting expectations and prioritizing the best experience for your customers. In turn, this motivates them to visit you for the first time or to keep coming back as your loyal advocates. After that, we’ll fine tune for elements of modern digital marketing, like SEO and optimizing for speed.


“As a one chair barbershop, in an alley with no foot traffic and as an owner with little knowledge of marketing, Tom has helped send more business my way than I could’ve imagined. They built my barbershop a great website that really helps current and potential customers get a good feel for who I am, as an individual and as a business owner. The reaction to my new web site has been overwhelmingly positive as my customers have noticed the small, personal details. If you are on the fence about your website needs, I can’t recommend PRÜF Creative enough.”



Georgette Watje – Owner, The Barber Collective

On a More Personal Level

Cat dad, dog dad, human dad, lifelong dad-joker. Empowerment is one of my core beliefs: that everyone has a right to access the tools they need to live and thrive. Simple acts of creation like designing t-shirts, curating killer playlists, and growing my own food are big passions of mine.

Tom Finley has provided us with amazing web space development and support for over 10 years. His talent is immeasurable and professional approach reassuring.  When you hit a bump in the road Tom is always there with a quick, complete, concise solutions. With Tom, there is reassurance the job will get done, timely, complete and on budget. He elevated our entire business online through innovative ideas while always listening to our crazy out of the box ideas bringing them to manifestation in the most amazing ways!



Kathy Reeder – Owner, Hempen Hill BBQ

Event, Guest, Speaker Bio

A multidisciplinary designer since the late 90s, Tom has had a passion for craft beer for about as long. He’s held roles alternately as designer, developer, and marketer in educational institutions, small agencies, and on corporate in-house teams. These days Tom’s a husband and busy toddler-dad, blending his love of craft beverages and pixels as a solopreneur, running his microagency, PRÜF Creative.

One-liner: Tom Finley is a husband, toddler-dad, and solopreneur — blending his love of craft beverages and pixels under the banner of his microagency, PRÜF Creative.