If my advice was to anyone, it would be work out kind of the things that are burning you out. Because for us, the Facebook grip was burning us out, and we suddenly had all this extra energy to pour into really productive forms of social media that could actually grow our business. And for so long we were just juggling so many things that we kind of couldn't We couldn't see that, we didn't have that clarity to say, we will have far more energy and kind of far better ideas if we delete this thing.
Yeah, and it gave us like a zest for the podcast back, I think because we had time to relax and time to switch off. And I know it sounds hyperbolic, but I truly don't think Zara and I had the ability to switch off for a year.
Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics used by the world's most successful people to get so much out of their day. I'm your host, Doctor Aman. I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work date. Now, before we get into today's episode, just a few things from me. Something I am playing around with for the mini Tuesday episode that I release is responding to listener questions.
So if you've got a question about how you approach work or about productivity, managing time, being happier and healthier at work, I would love to hear from you and maybe help you out with a hopefully intelligent answer to your question.
So, if you've got something on your mind, I'd love you to share it with me.
I am at Amantha at inventium dot com dot au and my email address is always in the show notes as well. Our second if you are enjoying How I Work, or maybe this is the first episode that you've listened to, and so if you get something out of this episode, I would love it if you can spread the word share it with someone else that.
You think could benefit from it.
And finally, I love getting feed back from listeners. It's super easy and quick to leave a review in Apple Podcasts. You can do a star rating and be amongst the four hundred. Also other people that have done that, or even write some words or even email me your feedback. That is also super lovely to receive. Okay, let's get on with this episode. My guests on today's show, Michelle Andrews and Zara McDonald. Michelle and Zara and Melbourne based
journalists and broadcasters. And they are only twenty six years old, which will blow your mind when you hear about what they have achieved. So they met when they were working as writers for Mumma Mia and in March twenty eighteen they launched Australia's top pop culture podcast, which is called Shameless, which they say is for smart women who like dumb stuff. They now run Shameless Media and are the producers of three other very popular podcasts. So Shameless has been downloaded
over ten million times. That is a lot in the world of podcasts, and Shameless was crowned Australia's most Popular Podcast of twenty nineteen 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 Murray Claire, among.
A whole bunch of other places.
So I was so excited to have Michelle and Zara on the show. I've followed their work for a while and what they have achieved.
Is just so impressive.
So in this episode we spend a lot of time going behind the scenes of making one of Australia's most
popular and downloaded podcasts, Shameless. So we talk about where they get their inspiration from, how they prepare for interviews, how they keep their band afresh, all sorts of things, and then we get into things like how they make decisions around the podcast and their business, and how they deal with negative feedback, because if your podcast has been downloaded over ten million times, you've probably gotten a lot of negative feedback as well as positive. So I just
I love this chat. So on that note, let's go to Michelle and Zara to hear about how they work.
Michelle Zara, welcome to How I Work.
Thank you for having us.
We're so flattered to be here.
I'm very excited to have you both on the show. And this is also quite novel for me. Like interviewing two people at the one time.
It can be tricky. Zara, We're gonna have to like figure out who speaks when. It'll be interesting. We're just going to jump in.
I know.
Oh awesome. I'm loving the challenge.
So where I want to start.
You guys produce and star in and create and pretty much do everything for one of the most downloaded podcasts in Australia, which is Shameless, And I just want to start by, particularly for listeners that are unfamiliar with Shame and all the content that you guys produce. Can you just kind of give an overview of, like what is all the content.
That you are putting out into the world every week? Okay?
So Shameless is a podcast for smart people who love dumb stuff. So it's a pop culture podcast and celebrity podcast basically covering the issues that women mostly care about but maybe haven't had an outlet to discuss or think about in a way that's intelligent and meaningful and thoughtful. So we do a Monday episode that is kind of a rap in the week that was in pop culture. We do a Thursday episode that is always an interview
with an influential person. Some Saturdays we do a book club episode, which is like a roundtable discussion about a book that we select for that month. So next month's book is The Yield by Tara June Winch. We have a newsletter that we drop every single Friday, and that is a weekly recommendations newsletter, So it has a column from someone in the show Shameless team or one of our listeners that we've collaborated with and it then has
a read, watch listen recommendation. It also has a shameless recipe that we've worked with a shameless chef on Jess Newan, Zora, am I'm missing anything. We also do live shows, We make other podcasts. We have a podcast series with Bumble called Love Etc. That we absolutely love creating. And yeah, we do stuff on social media, create video content. We do a video series every fortnight called Shamelessly Stupid, which is basically like a silly, frivolous game show with Australian
best friends that are well known. Zora, If I missed anything.
I don't think so. Maybe just the book that we've pushed out.
Oh, yes, we've written a book together.
Of course, we also read a book together that side project. Yeah, like you know books right themselves and all that, don't they? Oh wow, that is so much content. I want to know where are you getting your ideas from in terms of what to put out into the world every week.
That's really interesting you ask, because I think Michelle is much better at ideas than I am. But I think when it comes to both of us looking for ideas, we're looking in our group chats with our girlfriends. We're talking to our sisters, who are hugely influential with us when it comes to kind of knowing what people are interested in, particularly young women between the ages of about twenty and thirty. So we're looking around a lot, we're
looking sideways a lot. I think we found between us that the best ideas that we've created have come from conversations that we're just having with our girlfriends where we're realizing that, you know what, people aren't really having this conversation elsewhere, and maybe we've got a platform to be able to have it.
Yeah, for sure. And I think it's been massive for us to actually physically write down those ideas, right, Like Zara and I constantly trying to create content every week and constantly trying to hit the nail on the head with what we've talking about. So we are constantly flinging each other links to news articles or to tweets that we find interesting, or to memes on Instagram or to
screenshots with our best friends. So finding the ideas is probably the trickiest part of our job because we have to be so selective with what we're talking about, not just because we want the content to be really relevant to our audience, but also as the podcasting industry has grown pretty exponentially over the last twelve months. In particular, we want to be covering content that not everyone else is talking about as well, Like we want to be able to have a fresh edge that the podcasts who
might have similar audiences to ours. We don't want the listener to be fed the same kind of segment again and again. So that's presented a new challenge, but it's been one that we've really relished because it means we kind of get to sharpen our swords a bit and kind of think really deeply about what topics and what conversations we want to have on the podcast.
Yeah, I could imagine that would be very challenging to either find unique things to talk about or unique angles into something that everyone is talking about. Do you do you guys have I don't know, like go to websites or blogs or influencers and stuff like that that you do find that you're checking on a regular basis for inspiration.
I mean, before we go and record our week clean Monday episode over the Friday, Saturday Sunday, we will be scanning everything. And I think the interesting part about our podcast is that we cover really lowbrow things and we try to cover things that aren't especially stupid too, And to be honest, although the podcast is very Australian and we cover a lot of local news, we seek a lot of inspiration from stuff like the Atlantic, stuff like
Man Repeller publications. I guess that write really well on culture and kind of trends and the zeitgeist, because we find that that's what our audience are talking about too. And I think, harping back to what Misch was talking about before, when we're trying to separate ourselves out from what is a really saturated landscape, going overseas and looking at kind of getting in brain from overseas can help a lot.
And so on Thursdays you release an interview. And I mean, you've had some amazing guests on the show, like ex Prime Minister Julia Gillard, And what is your process for preparing for interviews?
And I partly ask so I can steal some of it.
We actually go away separately from each other and we do about two hours of independent research. So often that will be reading interviews that person has done with online publications or listening to podcast interviews they've done with other podcasts, or even to be honest, trolling through their social media or reading books that they may have put out, what
have you. But it's really important that Zara and I have that bit where we go away and we actually don't spend the entire time in each other's ears saying what we think is the most interesting part or what we really want to ask them about, because generally it means that we go away, we hear all the different things.
We make sure that we don't listen to the same interviews or read the same interviews as each other, so there's not a heap of overlapp and then we come together and we generally tend to have like a really eclectic mix of questions and ideas and thoughts that we want to bring to the chat. And I think that's so important because Zara and I, although we're very very similar in so many ways, I think sometimes the kind of content that we lean towards is quite different. Do you agree with that, Zara?
Yeah?
Completely.
I think for any kind of prep we do for any podcast, right, whether that is a Thursday episode which is our interview episode, or a Monday episode, which is kind of our weekly wrap in pop culture. We always prep separately and we don't kind of look at each
other's notes or anything. And it's kind of funny because Nish's right, often there are different angles we want to take, but very often it's kind of funny that we've both pulled out quotes from an article that we've both read that we really love, and so that's how we know straight away that's something we have to talk about. If we're both pulling out the same quote from the same article, then clearly we're on the same page here about this idea.
And do you go.
Into interviews with kind of like the angle, the angle that you're going to use to promote it with, or is it much more kind of exploratory and just being open to whatever. The most interesting thing that emerges is.
It's definitely more exploratory. We don't go in with an idea of what we're going to sell it on, or like the pull out quote that we're going to put at the very beginning of the episode to entice people in. I think generally we try to make our questions chronological as much as we can, like we want to explore a person's life, and we always begin our chats with childhood and kind of branch out from there. But we kind of let the interview, we take the chat wherever
they want to go. Like there have been interviews we've done where we've had our full list of questions, and Zara and I are meticulous preparers for interviews, like we never go in. It baffles me how some people can do interviews without writing questions down. We always go in with a full list and like the order of which we want to ask them. But there have been interviews where we've kind of scrapped the last half of the middle section of questions entirely because the interviewee has taken
the podcast episode in a completely new direction. And I really like, genuinely love when that happens because I think it shows that they're speaking authentically and they clearly want to get something off their chest. And I think those podcast interviews tend to be the best because you know that someone speaking with Canada and honesty.
It's interesting that you say that I can definitely relate. I'm quite meticulous in how I prepare for interviews. I have reduced the time it takes me from got like, you know, six or seven hours I was doing in the early days two years ago and now I kind of, you know, can prep in about an hour or two,
depending on how much I know about the guest. But I had I had this really interesting piece of advice from someone I had on the show a few months ago, this woman Harris Faulkner, who's a Fox News anchor over in America, and she said she'll only go into interviews with two or three questions. And she's really deliberate about that because she finds if she goes in with a whole stack of questions, then she's less open to what
emerges and she doesn't listen as well. I thought, oh gosh, I'm not about to do that, But I found that really interesting.
It's a real skill, isn't it.
I think interviewing everybody has their own way of doing it. I think for miss and I, we don't go in missions, right, We don't go in with an angle or how we know, you know, how we're going to sell it later.
But we do go in knowing the kind of story.
That this episode will tell, because we often organize each week or each month with a very different kind of set of stories that we can tell. So are making sure we're platforming as many different voices as we can. So that's why we go in with such meticulous prep. That said, so very often you will kind of scrap three questions in a row because you're like this just doesn't matter or they've already covered that, and you kind
of We're really flexible with how the chat flows. But I guess having a structure there that you can see kind of gives the interview bones, because I really think a lot of interviews need bones, and I think, to be honest, what we're seeing with podcasting at the moment, with a completely like we say, saturated market and podcasts everywhere, is that a lot of interviews kind of you can't see those bones and you kind of don't know where it's going. And as a listener, I don't like that experience.
I don't like not knowing where it's going, or thinking perhaps that the interviewer doesn't know where the interviews going. So because I'm that kind of listener, I want to be that kind of interviewer.
Yeah, I think one of the most important skills for us to hone has been kind of identifying where the knots are, and I mean the knots is in like you might ask someone a question, they might give you this knot of something and then completely move on. But being able to identify that and then tease that out for the next question, it can sometimes just lead you down a really great path of conversation that maybe they even didn't intend on having originally. But that's been huge
for us. I think when we were perhaps more immature or a little bit younger as journalists, we didn't have that skill so much. We did fall back on the questions we had pre prepped. But I think I'm happy with where we are now as interviewers and that we can identify those spots more and really tunnel down them.
I want to move on to the Monday episode, and for those that haven't listened to a Monday episode of Shameless, can you just, in a nutshell describe what is happening in that episode?
Absolutely?
So.
What we usually do is Mission now will kind of look, o, you know, at the week that kind of was, and we'll grab usually two big stories from the pop culture news cycle, and we can be a little bit flexible on what kind of constitutes a pop culture story. Sometimes it might be about you know, your big celebrity Beyonce, or so maybe Sometimes it might be a social media trend on Instagram this week. Gosh, I was just about to say, this is what we did this week, mes, but I've already forgotten.
That's how much stuff is going on.
It might be you know, a video clip we covered and what we what we intend to do with that episode is yes, talk about the top line points that are going on in the celebrity and pop culture new cycle, but also kind of tease it out to.
Be like, well, what what does this story say about us?
Like why are we so interested? What does it say about feminism? What does it say about culture? I think for so long and the reason that we started Shameless is that women have been shamed into thinking that their interests are dumb and stupid, that if they watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians, they must only have half a brain. And I just fundamentally reject that idea. I think we can learn so much from what people are interested in
when it comes to celebrity and pop culture. I think it says so much about who we are as people and what it says about the zeitgeist and mission. And I have always joked that, like, you know, stereotypically, men can watch other men tackling each other and running around at oval, you know, chasing a leather ball, and we don't consider that stupid, but we consider watching a reality TV show quite stupid, which can tell us a lot
more about the world in my opinion. So the Monday episode, I guess the intention of it is to talk about things in a way pop culture and celebrity in a way that's not stupid, and kind of in a way that allows and empowers our listeners to think really, really, really critically about the stuff they're consuming in the news.
I think that's great.
And for the record, I'm like, I'm a US Bachelor addict.
Weah, I know, I'm dying.
I mean, like, you know, really, isn't the worst thing about COVID that they've gone out of production.
It's devastating a joke, Yes, the black hole of reality TV content content, in fact, any entertainment content. We're going to really feel it next year. As you said, it's far from being the worst thing about this pandemic, but we're going to be like reality TV deprived in twenty twenty one.
Oh my god, we are. It's going to be as depressing a year as this one.
Something I'm curious about and this is I mean, I feel like like you'd have a lot of listeners that are so curious to see how the sausage is made. But I also asked this again canmpletely selfishly because I'm in pre production for a new podcast which is completely different to.
How I work.
So I'm like about one year out of my marriage and I'm dating again, and I'm in my early forties, and it's this whole other world where I.
Didn't think that I'd be dating again in my lifetime.
So together with my closest girlfriend Monique, where we're starting this podcast about dating, I got incredible, incredible I hope it will be. So just going quite kind of like deep in in doing interviews at the moment, and something that we're trying to figure out is what is our tone of voice? How much do we script when you know, essentially there's there's sections that are simply banter between Monique
and myself as distinct from guest interviews. And I want to know what would we see going on behind the scenes for you guys for the recording of the Monday episode, Like how much is scripted? How much do you discuss beforehand? You know, something I've become aware about is Monique and I talk every day anyway as girlfriends. But if we talk about something on the phone and then we sit down and record it, it's like it's not as funny as it was we talked about it on the phone.
So tell me how does that work for you guys?
Okay, So we have some really strict rules. We prep completely separately, so we decide on the topics that we want to discuss. Obviously, it'll always be a phone call or a video chat where we pin down exactly what story we want to do for the first segment, the five really quick sugary stories we want to cover in the Quick and dirty, which is our middle segment, which is basically just a rundown of the top headlines that week,
and then the final segment as well. So we decide on the segments, but we have a really strict rule with each other that we're not allowed to say anything on them when we're on a call. We want all of our genuine opinions and our realizations and our i don't know, like the machinations of how we worked through
a certain topic to play out on the podcast. So the only things we script in an episode is the introduction to eat each section, and we'll just kind of put a name next to each one to be like, Okay, Mish, you're introing the episode this week, so I'll go and write the intro paragraph. But then we just have our own dot points for the first segment, and we don't look at each other's dot points. We don't see them.
We have like our Google docs, and then we just kind of jump on and flesh out what we think and hear each other's thoughts for the very first time. And I think that's been so important to us, not the entire time we've done the podcast. In fact, for the first month we did the podcast, we kind of scripted the whole thing, I think, Zarah, but very much
so from episode three or four onwards. We knew that for it to be good content, everything had to be authentic, which is such an annoying buzzword, but authentic and genuine, and our listeners I hope can pick that up that the conversation we're having is something we've never had before, and it's not manufactured and it's certainly not recycled from a previous phone call, which.
Means the most annoying thing of all is Mitch will be like the funniest thing happened to me this week, But I actually cannot tell you until we get onto microphone with kids again. If I rehash this story for the second time on Mike, it's gonna kind of lose its charm. And even still to this day, we'll find ourselves kind of wanting to have a conversation about one of the segments we've picked, and we'll start and someone we just won't stop, and the other person will have to be like, shut up.
Oh my gosh.
I was having that conversation with Monique the other day, like Monique stopped telling me the story. We need to keep it fresh. Oh yeah, it's very encouraging to hear that you guys do that. Do you sort of have I guess, almost like rules for how you communicate what's on the table, what's off the table, Like you know, even something like you know, you guys swear a bit on the podcast. Monique and I were talking, well do we swear?
Is that okay?
Is that you know appropriate for our audience? So do you guys have almost like a set of principles or guidelines around how you communicate with each other.
That is a really interesting question, because I don't think anybody has asked us that before. I think the thing about Miss and I entering podcasting is that we started the podcast Gosh two and a half years ago, and at that time we were kind of throwing stuff at a wall and seeing if it kind of stuck. If that's the same, I think, and there wasn't much kind
of process around it at all. So I think over the course of two and a half years, we've fallen into a rhythm where we know what's on the table and what's off the table, but not because we've had a formal conversation about that, but because we fell into that rhythm in doing it over two and a half years.
What do you reckon?
Miss, Yeah, I think so we've had conversations over the years about the swearing thing, and to be honest, it's probably more pragmatic than anything that we don't want. I don't know. We don't want a mother of three to put on the podcast and then have all these f
bombs drop around her kids, like that's not ideal. But we also know that the average mother of three is not the average listener of Shameless the average Shameless listener is in their twenties and they're either single or in a relationship, and the way we spear on the podcast is probably how that millennial or gen zea speaks around their friends. And for that reason we continue to swear. It was a concern in the early days that maybe advertisers wouldn't be keen on that, and that it would
be a struggle to turn this into a business. If a podcast is littered with F words, then maybe a big sponsor wouldn't want to come on board. Surprisingly, even to me, it has never been an issue. Even with some of the bigger, more professional brands. We have never had someone come to us and say, can you please stop saying the F word in every sentence?
That's encouraging.
I also was very curious around, you know, how deliberate you are around choosing what to share, because you guys have shared some really personal stuff, and also I imagine you know are also sharing some really personal stuff in your book that's coming out on September one. I think is the release the space between So Michelle, for example, you've spoken very openly about your issues and experiences around
anxiety and Ozari. You've spoken about your kind of journey with Endo and a few other things as well, and I want to know, like, how how do you guys decide what you share? But then what is getting too personal to share?
It's funny.
Mission and I are quite different in terms of maybe not that different anymore, but maybe initially when we started the show, we had pretty different personalities in terms of sharing, Like I just was naturally not a huge sharer.
And we got to a point with.
The podcast and particularly with this book, where if we're going to write a book about our twenties, then we're going to have to share parts of our.
Own experience and in the same vein.
And if you're going to do a podcast based on opinions about things, then people kind of have to know where those opinions are coming from. So there has to be some element of sharing there so they know who you are and where this opinion is coming from. So now it's a case of kind of I don't draw like a set line, but I would very rarely pull the people in my life into.
Stories, very very rarely.
It would have to be a very very good story and a really important story for Miss and I. I think we have these little things like these little special moments of our lives that we always kind of keep to ourselves.
But other than that, I actually don't.
Think there's that much we wouldn't eventually share. I just would very rarely share something while I'm in the thick of it. I think I always want to be able to make sense of a scenario before I'm sharing it with our audience, so that there's some sort of wisdom, and also that I'm kind of comfortable and at peace with what I'm sharing. So I think that would be the line that I'm not sharing something right in the thick of it.
Yeah, I think that's been hugely important for both of us. I think there's some stuff in this book that we each write about separately that took us years to actually process and seek therapy over raw confide in friends and family about. And I think that process of being able to look back on something with hindsight and being able to find lessons from it has been really important for
us before we then take it publicly. I think sharing something with our audience, we do it because we think that hopefully it will help someone, that it will make a woman feel seen or feel heard, and that's super important. But I think at the crux of it, we as individual humans need to work through that ourselves, and otherwise we can't really tell the story in a helpful way to anyone. So it's something that we're constantly evolving on
and learning more about it. I think when it comes to the line of what should and shouldn't be shared on the podcast, but as Zarah said, the main one for us is if it involves people in our lives and it's serious to them, like our siblings, our families, our partners, then we do tend to stay clear. If it's just about us, then we both feel pretty comfortable. And I think there's a lot of trust between ourselves and our audience now that we know that it's a
safe space. Whether it's our listener sharing something, or a podcast guest on a in conversation episode sharing something, or it's us sharing something, I think hopefully everyone feels safe to do so and knows that they'll be listened to and yeah, be treated with compassion.
That's nice, And I like that idea of not sharing something when you're in the thick of it, because I imagine that there would be an impulse to do that because it's so like it's so top of mind, but then you know, being able to sort of have that discipline about going okay, no, I need to reflect.
On this and draw my own insights. I like that.
I want to shift gears into social media because this is a huge part of how you guys have created such a huge community, like so so quickly, really just in a couple of years. My consultancy Inventium does a lot of work around helping people be more productive and manage digital distractions. And a question I will semi regularly get asked when we talk about helping people stay off social media. You sol ask, well, what if it's.
Part of my job, Like, how do I stay off it? So I want to know.
How do you manage your social media and do you have any boundaries or rules in place around how you do that?
Oh, this is a massive one for us. So yeah, we spend a whole bunch of time on social media and it has always been that way since we launched the podcast, because we know social media is the main way that we connect with our audience and our listeners, and so to have that relationship with them, which we value so much, we have to be present. It was a huge decision for Zara and I to actually delete our Facebook group to archive it in It might have been end of May, or it might have been beginning
of June this year. That was a group that was kind of like the heartland for a time of Shameless, that had more than forty thousand listeners in there.
It was.
Energized and chaotic and fun and a little bit mad sometimes, and we loved it, We really truly did love it. But it got to the point where we were two women trying to police forty thousand women and that was not doable. And of course we might be asleep for seven hours a night, but a Facebook group with people from all over the world never sleeps. And it got to the point where we were so burnt out and we were so at a loss as to how to
keep this Facebook group running that we just decided. We turned to each other and said, we're so burnt out, we're exhausted, and it's not doable. It's not doable to have this Facebook group anymore. And I think getting rid of that Facebook group, although it hurt at the time and it was upsetting for the community, it was the absolute best things are and I could have done for our sanity and for our mental health and our work life balance.
Yeah, we were really struggling, not just the Facebook group, but we were also struggling with the decision to close it. Like we just we also couldn't keep people safe anymore inside it. And I know that might sound like a strange thing to say, but when you've got really political conversations happening at all hours of the day, we don't have the power to moderate that at all hours of
the day to the level that we want to. And so giving up and kind of effectively deleting what is a huge arm of your business is like an incredibly difficult decision because it was, as Mitch said, it was the heartland of Shameless, and it was kind of our entire community coming together. But as she also said, it was the best thing that we did, and we kind of put all our energy into other forms of social media,
and we kind of channeled our energy. And I think if my advice was to any one, it would be work out kind of the things that are burning you out, Because for us, the Facebook group was burning us out, and we suddenly had all this extra energy to pour into really productive forms of social media that could actually grow our business, and for so long we were just juggling so many things that we kind of couldn't We couldn't see that we didn't have that clarity to say,
we will have far more energy and kind of far better ideas if we delete this thing.
Yeah, and it gave us like a zest for the podcast back. I think because we had time to relax and time to switch off. And I know it sounds hyperbolic, but I truly don't think Cazara and I had the ability to switch off for a year. Like the Facebook group was the busiest on a Sunday, particularly a Sunday night, so we had to be in there and watching it like hawks in case someone said something offensive or someone
upset someone else. And yeah, I think now that we've moved to a model where we focus a lot more on Instagram and other forms of social media to be really transparent about it. Yeah, we spent a lot of time on them, but we're also twenty six year olds who love social media anyway, So there is a part of it to us that does not feel like work. Like some of it's literally just finding funny memes or creating funny content that we can share with people and we get a lot of joy out of that.
That decision about the Facebook group I find fascinating. Do you remember what went into making such a huge and important decision?
Oh yeah, I mean I think it was something that we floated three months before we did it, And I remember I was talking to Mish on the phone and we had kind of come into some issues again. I mean, I just I have these vivid memories of being like of a Tuesday evening, sitting in front of Netflix, trying to watch a series and realizing that my phone wasn't next to me, and if my phone wasn't next to me, then I couldn't see what was happening in the Facebook group.
And if I couldn't see what was happening in the Facebook group, then things could be going wild. And we were having this conversation about how we were constantly very wired and very stressed, and I remember she said, have you ever thought about getting.
Rid of it?
And I thought, no, I didn't know that this was on the card.
I didn't I didn't think that this was an option.
And we said let's just sit with it, like, let's not do anything rash, Let's sit with it for about three months.
And see how we go.
And we spoke to a lot of people very close to us, and I spoke to kind of my sister, and I even mentioned it to my parents and my friends, and I.
Was like, what do you think of this?
And they were like the minute we even floated it as an idea, They're like, that's exactly what you need to do.
That is exactly what you need to do.
But we sat on it for such a long time to make sure it was the right call, because I think once you do something like that, you can't really go back.
Definitely. Do you remember what that felt like hitting the delete button?
It was quite freeing, to be honest, the day that we we archived the group, I actually got my head on that morning. I remember walking into the hairdresser and she looked at me and said, you just look like you're carrying the weight of your world, the weight of the world on your shoulders, And I'm like, it feels so ridiculous, Like we're talking about a Facebook group, and if you tell the average person that, they're like, oh
my god, get over it. But it truly was something we stressed about, like we would get messages about this group at two am in the morning on a Tuesday or eleven pm on a Friday night. So it was something that consumed us. By the end, it was just incredibly freeing, and I think my love of work came back almost instantaneously that I felt so much freer to, I guess, switch off but then also create again, because I create the best content when I'm not actively trying
to come up with ideas. Ideas come to me when I switch off and I spend time with my boyfriend or go for a walk or what have you. So it was the best decision we could have made, not just for our listeners and keeping them safe, but for ourselves in I guess, keeping that flame of passion for what we do lit.
I find that so inspiring.
Listening to what you guys did with the Facebook group, I think it takes like a lot of guts. I mean, that's a really significant size group to do and just hearing what happened as a result of that, it reminds me of one of my favorite books that I've.
Read around this area. I guess, of you.
Know, making decisions and how do you work out your priorities? Is this book called Essentialism by Greg mceuw and I think I've pronounced his surname correctly.
And it's all about, like, how do you work.
Out just what are the essential things that are going to create the most value and.
Bring you the most joy in what you're doing.
Yes, I think it's that idea of value.
I really really do, because your mind can get quite muddied when you're across a million different things all the time. And for a long time there it was just Michelle and I running a business, running social media, doing podcasts, making podcasts for other people. We were writing a book all at the same time. We were doing this, and we nearly ruined our physical and mental health at the same time, and we weren't giving people the best value. Like I remember certain days we'd sit in front of
the mics ready to record. It might be a Sunday morning, we were just like, how have we got to a point where the best and most kind of important part of our business, which is this record right now, is kind of the thing that's getting the least energy because we're so exhausted. And I think for us, just as what you said, it's about what value are we giving the listeners. We can't kind of reduce the quality of
this episode. This episode is the most important thing, so we're going to have to kind of get rid of some other stuff to make sure that this remains the priority and it gets the energy it deserves.
I think as well, when you get to the point that you have employees and you have people relying on you, and we work with a lot of freelancers and a lot of contractors, you have to have the difficult conversation with yourself that what is worth my time and what should I be investing my time into. Because people are relying on me. Like I rely on Zara, she relies on me. People rely on us. We can't continue to
have these illogical priorities anymore. And we had to kind of invest in ourselves and make sure that we were okay before anything else. Yeah, it was just it was a very clarifying month. Actually, once we decided that we were going to do it and we were working on the messaging of how to close the group, it was very clarifying. And to look back now, I can't believe the way we were living and the way we were working, because it wasn't good for anyone.
I'm curious as to how doing that has changed your approach to evaluating how many projects you are taking on at the one time. Like it reminds me of another one of my favorite books. My favorite book on decision making is this book called Decisive. Good name for a book on decision making. I like that it was a good Decision by Chip and Dan Heath, who are two
of my favorite writers. And one of the strategies they talk about in this book is the idea when you make a decision and you know you're not one hundred percent sure if it's the right decision, is to put in place what they call trip wires, so things that you put, like even in your diary, to go, look if this is happening at this point in time, then review the decision, for example. And has that changed how you review your priorities and review the projects that you're
deciding to commit to at any point in time. After that experience with the Facebook group.
I think we'd actually started reviewing our priorities before that, and that's probably why we kind of landed in that conversation to start with. At the start of last year, So at the start of twenty nineteen, when I had quit my job and Michelle and I were working on Shameless full time.
We had a lot.
Of opportunities come to us and we said yes to every single one, and by about June, we were producing four or five podcast episodes a week to one for podcast called Sches on the Money that we produced the first season for another was a bespoke podcast for Love, etc. We were writing our book and running our social media channels and we looked at each.
Other and we said, like, why did we do this to ourselves?
But I think if we went back eighteen months, we'd probably do the same thing again, because you just want to say yes to everything. Right now, I still feel like, and I'd love to say if Mischi Gras and me, I still feel like we have a tendency.
It's a tiny part of us.
We keep doing that, like the most natural instinct is for us to be like yes, yes, yes, yes yes,
and we have to actively pull ourselves back. But I think having deleted the Facebook group and understanding that the Shameless Monday Thursday episodes are our absolute priority has influenced now how we make decisions a little bit, because we always come back to that tea that is, is this going to impact the quality of Monday and Thursday, and if this is going to impact the quality and our energy levels and our time management, then we're not going to do it.
Yeah. Look, I think I must be the least woo
woo person in the world. And yet I think the universe has had our back on a couple of occasions, because even after that horrific June period where we were so burnt out and so overworked last year, we then in the following months proceeded to say yes to a whole bunch of opportunities that at the time we're like, Okay, well this will be great, like let's do this, And if they had eventuated, we would have been in such a heap, like we would have been at our absolute
lowest EBB if that at all eventuated, because we would have just been run off our feet. I don't know what's happened. We've been very, very lucky, and that things we've kind of leapt towards and be like, oh my god, what an incredible opportunity, let's do it. They fell through, And now that I look back, I'm like, thank god those things didn't happen. Otherwise I don't even know how
I'd be able to function right now. And I think having those near misses has been very important for us because now Zara and I are very clear on what we think is worth our energy and what we want to align with. And I think the Shameless brand is something that is trusted by young women. That's something that we take incredibly seriously, and we also know that media
brands can lose that trust so quickly. I think it's been something that has kind of torched part of the media industry here in Australia that there's not a huge amount of trust in journalists or in particular publications. So Zara and I now are very particular about what we want to do, and we already have a lot of work on our plate and we have an incredible team around us getting that work done. But to kind of
bite off anything more, it has to make sense. And I think we've kind of come up with this vernacular to be like is it us? Like is it shameless? Because if it's not shameless and it doesn't make sense, then we're not going to touch it.
So I would imagine with that, like with the discipline and not saying yes to everything means that you're saying no to things every single day, I would imagine, Yeah, what are your strategies for saying no and making it easier to say no?
Because I think it's something that a lot of people struggle with.
And I mean I've heard people say the best productivity tip in the world just say no to lots of things.
I mean, I don't think we're perfect at it yet, but I think we're getting better. And I think it's having those examples of being like, is this that's another example of that project that we said yes to that we were so grateful that we that fell through? Because if it's another example of that, then then we're good. Let's just say no. We are saying not to stuff
every single day. And I think the best part about the way we work, particularly at the moment, is we make decisions very very quickly, because the minute I think we're on the same page about something, it's almost always the right call for us.
We make decisions really quickly, and we don't dwell. We will never dwell.
I don't think we've ever looked back on anything we've said no to and thought, damn, we should have done that. And I think that's probably the biggest tip in productivity too, because dwelling can take up so much energy, Miish, what do you think?
Well, one of our mentors, we had a coffee meeting last year and one of our mentors said to us, you need to write down your company values. You need to have very clearly defined values that you both agree on. And we went away from that meeting and this mentor has been so great to us and so generous, and we thought, okay, we have to do that, Like we have to get these framed and put them up all around our office and shamelessly, core value is content over money.
That the content has to be there, the idea has to be there before any discussion of money comes into play. And I think that's where some people tend to get themselves into trouble that they see a figure and they go, that's really great, Like maybe that could get me a new car, or maybe I would feel a little bit more comfortable financially right now if I had this paycheck
come through. But Fizara and I what we've learned, hopefully, I think, is that if the idea isn't great, even if the money is amazing, it will burn you in the long run. And anything that we put our names to it has to be something that we see longevity in something that we think will work and entertain and empower and educate our listeners. And if we don't think it's going to do that, there is not a figure big enough to make us leap at it. Because building
trust is the absolute most important thing to us. So that content over money principle is something that we come back to again and again and again, and then, to be blunt, the value after that is just to work with people that we genuinely like, Like when we come across people who present us with ideas, we want to be working with good people that we trust and that
we value. And I think that has also led us in a really brilliant direction, and that I think we're now surrounded by a team and by contractors and by people at other companies like Bumble who we absolutely adore, and we think we're all very much on the same page.
Yeah.
I think that's really interesting what you're saying around your content over money and also making quick decisions. I've got to say that really resonates something I think about a lot for how I work is that every day I'll get pitched to you by someone to get a guest on the show, and often I can make a quick decision, and I find that the quick decisions are the best decisions. But sometimes I'll find that I'll sit on something and if I end up going in the.
Yes direction, I often regret it.
Yeah yeah, And then I also think, for me, what's been quite a good rule of when I'm making decisions about who to have on the show is do I care? Like, am I interested in how this person or how these people work? And I think I've got myself into trouble where on a couple of occasions I've.
Gone, oh, yeah, I think I'll do it, and then I'm in.
The research process for the episode and I'm like, I just don't really care. So I can completely relate to that.
It's like that feeling of excitement, right, you need to be excited by something. I think Zara and I very heavily lean on that. If we're not excited by a prospect or an opportunity, then it's probably just not right for us.
Now. On the topic of research, when I was researching for this interview Zarah, I read that you said in response to a question that was something like, what have you had to be honest with yourself about? And you said that people will genuinely dislike what we do, and I found that really interesting.
Could you expand on that.
I mean, very easily, mat No.
I mean we started this when we were twenty three, right, and your ego is still very much in flux.
At twenty three.
You're sort of working out who you are, what you believe, how confident you feel in yourself and your own abilities. And for your job to accidentally become kind of public and to build this audience as you're kind of building your skills is a really intimidating thing. And suddenly some of the feedback is going to be hard, absolutely, some of it's going to be great, and some of it's going to be hard, and some of it will be
personal too. And so for us, it's been an absolute process of getting to a point where we cannot possibly put out a show two times a week that every single person in the country will like, because if we pulled out a show that every single person liked, then it would be boring and it wouldn't say anything.
It wouldn't exist, exactly, it wouldn't exist.
And it's such a sort of it's such an obvious thing to reconcile and to reckon with. But it's the idea that a good show will still be hated by a lot of people, because if you're not putting out a really I guess, passionate, decisive, opinionated show, then everybody will like it or not even then actually true.
So it's just been a.
Time of process because we're still on the twenty six now, and I think you are still coming into your own and then for other opinions or external opinions to create noise around your work can be really, really intimidating. But I think we're at a point now where we're much stronger for having done this job and much more sure of ourselves in the content we want to put out.
Yeah, and we I think the way we measure successes changed it a little bit as the podcast has gotten bigger, in that we know that the types of things we talk about and the political leaning we take, which is left leaning, won't appeal to everyone. And that's okay. I'm not trying to appeal to every single person who come
across an episode. I'm trying to appeal to the women who are like my sisters and my friends and me, And so as long as we feel like we're doing a good job by young women, then that's what we care the most about, and they're the people we really look to when the feedback does come. If we're kind of veering off our team, we're not doing our job by young women, then we will absolutely listen to it. But as far as what I don't know, maybe an older man in his fifties thinks of Shameless, I'm not
particularly concerned. Like he can have his opinions. I probably don't enjoy the radio shows or the podcast that he loves. So it's been a big lesson that you're not going to be liked by everyone, particularly when you say political divisive things. And that's more than okay.
I remember calling a mentor when miss and I were kind of like in the middle of a bit of a crisis about what Shameless was, and you know, how do we deal with all this feedback? And we called him and we said, we're struggling with feedback. Some people don't like the show. And he had said, yeah, like, is that it? And I was like, yeah, that's it. And I was like, he was like, of course this is going to happen. That's the most obvious thing to
me in the world. And He's like, keep doing what you're doing, put your head down and do the work, and some people won't like it, and I don't care about that. And his kind of complete confusion as to why we thought this was a big deal was kind of very clarifying for us because we were like, oh, he's worked with some of the biggest duos and some of the biggest shows in the country, and if he's surprised that we're feeling like this, then maybe it's an actual thing that everybody has to deal with.
I love that piece of advice. I'm going to take that on board for myself as well. Now I have a couple of final questions, because we're nearly at a time. I want to know, podcasts, what are you guys both consuming and loving at the moment?
Oh my goodness, I mean it changes every week. The standout podcast for me in twenty twenty is Dying for Sex, which is a story between two best friends, one of them is dying with terminal cancer and kind of it explores abuse, but it also explores female sexual expression and it's incredibly life affirming and it's probably one of the best podcast series I've ever listened to. It's one that I've continually come back to throughout the year that I
think is just so brilliant. Zara, on the other hand, is more high brow than I am and absolutely loves The Daily.
No, I mean, I'm not more high ro than you at all, but I love I think for me when I consue my news, I'm starting to consume it more and more through podcasts, so I am a religious listener of The Daily and this American life.
I love Desert Island Discs.
I find a lot of comfort in that podcast, I think because I've listen.
To it for such a long time.
If I'm feeling a bit lost or stressed or overwhelmed, I always find myself gravitating to an old episode of Desert Island Discs. I love long Form, I think because miss and I long Form's brilliant writers at heart. I love hearing how other writers write and what their process is and their careers. And another good one, I get How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, I really love, I really love that podcast.
Awesome, that's a great list. I think we have some crossover in our taste there.
Now.
My final question is how can people consume more of what you're doing and get their hands on a copy of the space between as well.
Well, it depends where you live. If you're in Melbourne, I'm guessing the best way to go about it is online, probably through Pootopia or I know that we're going to be on audible. We're doing an audiobook ebook the whole thing, So online bookstores. What else is area? On social media?
I guess yeah, we're at Shameless Podcast on social media, and I guess that's the centerpiece of kind of where everything is. So if you want to come to there, I can say, Hi, that's where we usually are. But yeah, as you say, if you're in Melbourne, don't go out to a book store.
I don't think they'll be open at the moment.
Yeah, And if you like book in general, join our book club. We have a Facebook group. I mean, we spoke so much about deleting our Facebook group we had two. We failed to mention that we've got another Facebook group that has twenty six thousand people in it. That's our book club. But it's a much easier, more gentle place to moderate than the original Shameless Facebook group. So Shameless Podcast book Club on Facebook.
If you love reading, Michelle Zara, I've loved having you guys on the show. Fascinating to hear about how one of the most popular podcasts in Australia is made and just about how you guys do it all. It's just so impressive. I can't believe you're twenty six. Surely you're lying.
I mean, I don't think I am Zara. You're still the juries out on you.
I'm going to say, I can I expect for myself here.
Thanks so much, guys, Thank you. That is it for today's show.
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