Michelle Schuberg is the Managing Director at Curiious, an events tech start-up delivering virtual and hybrid event solutions.
Looking for your dream start-up role? Check out the latest career opportunities with The Nudge Group!
1) To kick things off, could you tell us a little about your career background and current role?
I’ve had a varied career from theatre to marketing and advertising into technology where I am now the managing director of events tech start-up, Curiious.
I started my career in the creative world and now I apply creativity in commercial environments, so the one throughput has always been about context and content and how you take an audience on a journey from A to B.
Whether I’ve been working on a piece of physical theatre or a virtual reality training platform, it’s about deploying the contextual tools to make that journey efficient. The events industry worldwide is one of the most drastically impacted by COVID-19.
So the past two years have been a period when I’ve leaned on my passion for creativity to think of new opportunities for clients that they might never have considered before the pandemic made travel, group events and being together in public spaces impossible.
2) What does a day in your life look like for you? Can you take us through a recent workday?
Sure! I start the business day with a kick-off meeting with my team and then 1-1’s with department heads.
Then I go into back-to-back client meetings and work on new business. Some days we have a board meeting, or larger huddle as a team, but we stay in really close communication all the time anyway.
3) Does your current role allow for flexible or remote working? If so, how does that fit into your life and routine?
The clients we work with means that we are global and remote by default. While I’ve been working remotely and flexibly for years, watching the rest of the world become remote has been an interesting and joyous experience.
I now know the names of many more of our client’s children and pets than I did previously. It is a welcome shift to see how much more human everyone is willing to be with one another!
4) What does work-life balance mean to you and how do you work to achieve that goal?
My unusual work hours actually allow me to accommodate family life, I get up in the morning and address what has happened overnight first thing, then get the kids to school. I see through the work day and collect the kids back from school, settling them into their afternoons.
I work again in the evening and this rhythm allows me to work in three blocks of the day as well as across time zones, accommodating my clients and my children.
5) In the past 12 months, have you started or stopped any routines or habits to change your life?
During the pandemic, I felt the impact of the lost downtime in the car to catch-up with my closest friends who are also busy working parents.
To remedy that, my oldest friend and I bookend our week with a Monday and Friday sunrise swim at the beach to check in with each other and make sure we are connecting and on track.
6) Do you have any favourite books, podcasts or newsletters that you’d like to recommend?
I have a long held belief that we should look beyond our own industry for inspiration, which has led me to architecture, fashion and design sources. I fill my bucket with varied and diverse sources so that I can bring fresh thinking and ideas into the mix. The places I go for inspo are varied creatively, but this difference in perspective fuels in me new ideas and thinking.
Most recently, I am really enjoying this new book: Beyond Emotional Intelligence: A Guide to Accessing Your Full Potential, by S. Michele Nevarez.
A classic:
- Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull.
Some sites I frequent:
- Colossal
- Another Mag
- EST Living
7) Are there any products, gadgets or apps that you can’t live without?
- Insight Timer, free meditation app with a wealth of resource
- Frank Greene thermal cup, to keep my tea warm
- AirPods to help me multitask
8) If you could read an interview about work-life balance by anyone, who would that be?
Lorraine Twohill or any other woman that juggles work and family whilst not trying to pretend that the other doesn’t exist.
9) Do you have any last thoughts on work, life or balance that you’d like to share with our readers?
Work with people you feel have a shared mission and that have each other’s backs.
Live life with integrity and look for joy in the little things.
If you do those two things, the balance will feel natural but if either of these things are off you will feel you are always chasing your tail to attempt to achieve balance.
Before you go…
If you’d like to sponsor or advertise with Balance the Grind, let’s talk here.
Join our community and never miss a conversation about work, life & balance – subscribe to our newsletter.
