I Used to Think About Conversions. Now I Observe Pauses

For years at MailerLite, my work revolved around digital attention.

Interfaces.
Funnels.
Buttons.
Customer satisfaction.
Reducing friction.

Now, at Blue Fondue, I spend my days thinking about whispers, silence, blue light and how close two people should stand to each other in a room.

Last month, I came to London thinking my role would mostly be helping shape and market our immersive theatre piece JE L’AIME.

Instead, theatre completely changed how I pay attention to humans altogether.

Theatre feels strangely similar to learning a new language. Not just because of the vocabulary, though I genuinely had to google what a “dress rehearsal” meant, but because entering the theatre meant entering an entirely new emotional culture. New social codes. New sensitivities. New forms of attention.

You begin noticing tiny things most people overlook.

A pause that lasts slightly too long.
How blue light changes the feeling in a room.
How silence creates tension.
How physical proximity changes what people feel.
How believable characters depend on tiny details to feel emotionally true.

I’ve started observing people differently outside theatre too. On trains. In cafés. On the street. I notice gestures, rhythms, interruptions, nervous laughter, and how people move when they feel confident versus uncertain. I catch myself mentally bringing fragments of real life back into rehearsals.

For years, much of my professional world happened through screens. MailerLite was built remotely with a distributed team across countries and I rarely saw any customers.

Theatre removes that distance.

During rehearsals in my Airbnb, actors shouted, cried and kissed a few metres away from me. Even though my brain knew it was fiction, my nervous system still reacted. Sometimes I wanted to leave the room because we so rarely witness emotions this directly anymore.

What surprised me most is that theatre combines deep uncertainty and vulnerability with incredibly strong work ethic and deadlines. It reminded me of early startup days: long hours, intense collaboration, constant iteration, building something quickly together in one physical space.

But unlike startups, the goal here isn’t efficiency.

It’s emotional truth.

After exiting MailerLite, I could have followed a much more familiar path: advising, investing, consulting, staying close to the identity that already made sense to others. Instead, I somehow ended up sharing a bathroom with Smurf-looking actors in London while learning theatre vocabulary and trying to understand why a whisper changes an audience more than a speech.

And honestly?

“Go a little bit out of your depth… and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

P. S. Curious about Blue Fondue? Follow us on IG. The premiere of JE L’AIME will be this July in London.