What do you get when you combine two powerhouse writers, a passion for women’s content and a love of pop culture?
You get Shameless Media, the podcast production company that millennials across the country can’t get enough of.
This week’s #womancrushwednesday features duo Zara McDonald and Michelle Andrews, who created their podcast Shameless a year and a half ago.
They have since founded Shameless Media, creating two new podcasts— Love Ect in collaboration with Bumble Australia, and She’s On The Money along the way.
Zara and Michelle are great at hearing what the women around them are saying, but today, we find out a little bit about them.
What inspired you to create Shameless?
We felt like there weren’t any Aussie podcasts speaking to women like us, about the things we care about.
While there were plenty of wellness and true-crime pods, there was NOTHING when it came to Instagram culture, reality television and celebrity news, so we thought, well… let’s create what we’d listen to.
What is something about you that surprises people?
As a company: Probably that it’s still just us!
As the podcast and business have grown, people have started to think that we work out of a fancy office, or have employees, but that’s just not the case yet. We’ve started getting emails where they address us in third person and we have to correct them and explain it’s actually us fielding all the enquiries and admin-y stuff!
Maybe that will change one day, but for now it’s a two-woman operation.
Mich: That I have an intense and irrational fear of Dr. Suess… lol.
Zara: I am chronically untidy and it is a big problem whenever I want to find my keys/runners/sunglasses/etc.
Your podcast seemed to grow so quickly. What was it like to gain as much traction as you have in just a year and a half?
Wild!
We often turn to each other and say we feel like the last six months have felt like a year and a half; so much has changed in such a short amount of time.
We try not to think too much about the number of downloads next to each episode otherwise we’d reaaaaally freak out. It’s scary and exhilarating all at once.
Besides that pretty amazing growth, you’ve both rubbed shoulders with some pretty inspiring women along the way. What has been the biggest ‘pinch me’ moment so far?
Hosting Meccaland for sure!
We got to meet so many incredible women - like Jo Horgan and Zoe Foster Blake - and steer some pretty crazy panel interviews up on the main stage.
It wasn’t all about the big names, though; we actually loved meeting people at every level who make that company the powerhouse it is. Mecca’s culture, from the bottom right to the top, is just infectious.