How I Work Shameless' Michelle and Zara on their process for making one of the most popular podcasts in Australia
My guests on today’s show are Michelle Andrews and Zara McDonald. Michelle and Zara are Melbourne-based journalists and broadcasters, aged 26. They met working as writers for Mama Mia, and in March 2018 launched Australia’s top pop-culture podcast Shameless, ‘for smart women who like dumb stuff.’ They now run Shameless Media and are the producers of three other highly popular podcasts.
Shameless has been downloaded over 10 million times and was crowned Australia’s Most Popular Podcast of 2019 at the Australian Podcast Awards. Michelle and Zara and their podcast have been written about in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Age and Marie Claire.
In this chat, we cover:
- What goes on behind the scenes of making the Shameless podcast
- Where they get their inspiration for content from
- Their process for preparing for interviews
- How they keep their podcast banter feeling fresh
- How Michelle and Zara decide how much personal information to share with listeners - and what not to disclose
- How they manage their time on social media
- Why they deleted their 40,000+ member Facebook group
- How they decide which projects to say Yes versus No to
- Michelle and Zara’s guiding principle for key business decisions
- How they deal with negative feedback
- Their favourite podcasts
- And much more.
Grab your copy of Michelle and Zara’s book The Space Between, follow Shameless on Instagram, join the Shameless Book Club, and listen to the Shameless podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work, I write a short monthly newsletter that contains three cool things that I have discovered that help me work better, which range from interesting research findings through to gadgets I am loving. You can sign up for that at http://howiwork.co
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