On Sat, 4 Jul 2020 at 12:32 PM,
Zara McDonald <zaramcdonald@shameless.com> wrote:
>>> Look, I don’t know where we should start with this, but I’ll try here:
If I were to ask you what career rejection hurt the most, what would you say? (I ask, but it’s a leading question because I already have a hunch about what you’ll say.)
On Sat, 4 Jul 2020 at 12:51 PM,
Michelle Andrews <michelleandrews@shameless.com> wrote:
>>> What a FUN QUESTION!
Ah rejection. I still remember the sting of being the only girl in my year not to be invited to Jess S.’s eighth birthday party. Also, being turned down by a boy at Mount Waverley train station because he ‘didn’t realise I had buck teeth’ from my MySpace photo.
But the career rejection that hurt the mooooost?
The one at Mamamia. Lol. You?
On Sat, 4 Jul 2020 at 1:16 PM,
Zara McDonald <zaramcdonald@shameless.com> wrote:
>>> Yeah, same. Obviously.
At the risk of being accused of burying the lead and being annoying, let me jump straight into recounting what actually happened before we go anywhere else.
So we had the idea for Shameless in mid to late 2017, I think? We had dipped our toes into the crazy world of podcasting here and there (we did a fifteen-minute Bachelor recap pod once that still lives on the internet, which is a fact that makes us both want to die. It was bad. Very bad). While we really enjoyed it, we felt a celebrity and pop culture podcast that spoke about more than just drunken rose ceremonies was bound to be even better. We knew we were green to the broadcasting and podcast space, but what we lacked in experience we made up for in enthusiasm, so we pitched it anyway. We met with sales experts within the company to make sure it would be commercially viable, we sat down together to record a thirty-minute pilot episode, we even brainstormed ideas for segments and jingles. We were committed. We were all in. Okay, you take it from here.
On Sat, 4 Jul 2020 at 1:25 PM,
Michelle Andrews <michelleandrews@shameless.com> wrote:
>>> I knew you’d make me do the dirty work.
I remember when we were brainstorming names for the podcast I put forward The Blue Tick – as in, the little blue symbol indicating someone is verified on Insta or Twitter – which, on reflection, sounds like a nasty STI you’d get from a dude you met in a London hostel. I’m pretty bloody glad you steered me far, far away from that name (and other total duds like The Fame Game) and onto Shameless instead. Looking back, I don’t even think Shameless was our idea – it was our friend Rachel Wagner’s. Kudos, Rach.
ANYWAY. Our pitch was accepted and we were told to prepare for a January launch date to coincide with the US awards-show season. All of our co-workers were told in an editorial meeting that we’d be hosting a shiny new celebrity podcast in 2018 and we received one-on-one training with the Head of Podcasts. I was positively BUBBLING with excitement to have our own proper podcast and be Proper Media People.
That is, until we got that email . . .
(Dun dun dunnnnnnnn. Do you like how I’m building suspense, here? No? It’s irritating? TOO BAD THESE ARE MY EMAILS.)
On Sat, 4 Jul 2020 at 1:42 PM,
Zara McDonald <zaramcdonald@shameless.com> wrote:
>>> Ah yes, that email. I remember *that* email well. It’s funny, the small things you retain from a big moment. I remember exactly where I was: I was travelling across the Bolte Bridge in Melbourne one evening after work. My best friend Sammy was driving, and our friend Jordan was in the back. Anyway, I looked down at my phone and saw I had like seven missed calls from you. I called you back, and you were kind of breathless on the phone. (I love when two people tell the same story because I wonder if you’ll go on to dispute that.)
That email had landed in our inbox.
The podcast, just weeks from launch, had been pulled. No detailed explanation was given (resources, maybe?), but one stood out to us more than anything: the idea was good. You guys as hosts, though? Eh, it may not work.
I have to be honest, I was pretty shattered. The thing about my relationship with rejection is that I don’t dwell on it, and that’s not some crazy, misguided humblebrag. It’s a self-defence mechanism. I don’t dwell on rejection because I know if I let it, it could eat me alive. I think my ego is so fragile that sometimes if I let certain things in, I would never shake them. It sounds dramatic (maybe/probably/definitely it is), but it’s all a processing thing.
The funny part about this rejection was that I did dwell on it. I dwelt on it spectacularly. I didn’t understand why exactly it had been pulled. I felt like we’d been strung along and I felt like we’d put our whole selves into a project that was tossed away without a second thought.
With hindsight, it’s interesting to me that we resented the eleventh-hour pull because of all the work we had put in, but we didn’t resent (as much, at least) the inference that we might not be good at this job. We didn’t resent it because we believed the higher-ups when they inferred we may not be ready. I think they hit us at our biggest insecurity: Why the fuck would anyone listen to us?
On Sat, 4 Jul 2020 at 2:01 PM,
Michelle Andrews <michelleandrews@shameless.com> wrote:
>>> Oh, absolutely. It knocked me around for sure. I remember I was sitting on my dad’s couch and looking out onto the summer skyline with this sense of perplexity. I had been so, so excited to try something new. Knowing that they liked our idea but not necessarily us was what worried me the most; I was convinced that they would take our pitch and give it to two other willing employees.
I think I felt embarrassment, too. I have the world’s biggest mouth, so had told everyone from my sisters to my schoolfriends to my pet dog Peanut about our upcoming podcast, and having to inform them all that it wasn’t going ahead because, in part, we weren’t adequate hosts was slightly yuck. I suffer from imposter syndrome at the best of times and this experience sent my paranoia that I’m just not good enough into overdrive. I couldn’t stop thinking, Well, the people making these decisions are older and have far more experience in the industry than us – if they don’t think we’re good enough, they’re probably right.
I kept replaying in my head all the times I’d stumbled over my words or didn’t perform well in recordings, as if making mistakes in the past was confirmation that I’d never be ‘up to it’ in the future. I kept looking to other hosts within the network – our co-workers and friends – and wondering what the people in charge saw in them that they didn’t see in us. Was there a quality that you and I lacked so deeply that it simply couldn’t be trained or taught?
But even then, I couldn’t shake one core belief: there is literally only one way to get better and that’s to keep practising. We weren’t going to become great broadcasters by sitting behind laptops all day; we needed to hop behind microphones. And if the idea was good and we were given time to improve, who knew what could come of it? I couldn’t bear the thought of our idea being given to other hosts. I think there was a fire within me that wanted to prove people wrong – not in a ‘you’re stupid’ way, but in a ‘you really underestimated us’ way.
That was the driving force behind us replying to Mamamia’s rejection email with a request to pursue the podcast on our own, outside of work hours. We had no bloody idea how to record, edit or produce audio, of course, but that was a speed bump we were willing to navigate later with the not-always-very-helpful aid of YouTube tutorials.
I wanted, desperately, to show the people who told us ‘no’ that they had made a mistake. Maybe that’s immature, or maybe it’s just human, but I had a healthy thirst for revenge. Even now, with all this time and space since, I want to prove those people wrong. It’s like my fuel. I know you craved similar things – do you still?
On Sat, 4 Jul 2020 at 2:14 PM,
Zara McDonald <zaramcdonald@shameless.com> wrote:
>>> A little bit, yeah. I’d be lying if I said us doggedly pursuing the podcast alone wasn’t part revenge, part fear. Like you, I was scared that if we didn’t fill this gap in the market, someone else would, and I was a tiny bit desperate to prove that we were capable of something.
Rejection does funny things to you. Because, for all of our relentless work on the podcast, we weren’t necessarily confident about it. We weren’t even sure it would work. All we knew was we had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Without sounding preachy – or truthfully, like I have any idea what I am talking about – I think there is benefit in looking at rejection from that perspective. (PS: This doesn’t extend to that kid who rejected you at the train station because of your teeth. More than definitely leave that one alone.)
It’s funny though, Mich, because the difficulties didn’t necessarily stop after that. There was the time we forgot to push ‘record’ on an episode, another episode we sent live with a glaring editing error we couldn’t fix for twenty-four hours because we didn’t know how, countless wasted hours spent setting up podcasting equipment because we had no idea which cord went where and other days – multiple, in fact – when we recorded an entire segment only to realise it was too weak and we’d have to re-record. I remember, too, charging sponsors ridiculously low rates for ad spots, and wondering how we were ever going to make Shameless An Actual Thing that we could leave our jobs for. None of this touches on the many, many weeks our downloads would drop or plateau and we would rack our brains about how to grow them again.
With all this in mind, we wanted, so badly, for the podcast to be picked up by a network so we could have help (!!!) on the production side, but no one wanted it. Did that make you doubt what we had? That nobody else seemed to consider it worthy or legitimate?
On Sat, 4 Jul 2020 at 2:36 PM,
Michelle Andrews <michelleandrews@shameless.com> wrote:
>>> Is it arrogant if I say no? Once we got going, I kind of stopped caring about what the ‘industry professionals’ working for big networks thought of us. I just figured we knew how to speak to people our age better than a fifty-year-old ever could. We were creating content for people like us, and pretty quickly I realised that’s the magic ingredient. It’s something that can’t be replicated by a bunch of people in a boardroom, no matter how intently they scroll through @TheFatJewish’s Instagram feed or study what entertainment stories are trending on Twitter that day. The greenness of not even knowing that microphone stands are extendable (yes, really) was actually on our side in every possible way. There were dozens of Aussie podcasts that screamed out to women over thirty, but for those of us who were trudging through university or squirming in their first graduate job? There was zilch. Nada. I respect experience, of course, but at this point in time – where new media was eclipsing the old – that was the difference. It turned out we weren’t the only ones with no goddamn idea what we were doing: everyone else was utterly clueless, too.
I will always be surprised that Mamamia didn’t want the podcast, even after it launched and had carved out its own little space in the podcasting world. I think that, when we went into meetings with HR to discuss our places at the company in those final days, I always expected them to turn around and offer to bring Shameless under the Mamamia Podcast Network banner. I know that we both desperately wanted that, and would have replied with a big fat yes before they’d even finished asking the question. And yet, that was never the case. If anything, it was kind of the opposite, and the podcast was merely a few months old when we decided the only real option was to walk away from our jobs.
What we didn’t realise then was that each rejection was actually a radiant blessing. You and I are lucky that we got ‘no’ after ‘no’, because every single one led us to where we are today.
If we had pulled Shameless under our employer, our roles as podcast hosts would have been collapsed into our existing roles, and we likely wouldn’t have seen a cent of the profits. Signing with one of the many networks we reached out to wouldn’t have been much better, either; it would have meant giving away fifty per cent of our commercial revenue – something that makes me royally pissed off as a creator who knows how much work goes into getting an episode into the feeds every week. Being told no or, as was most often the case, having our emails completely ignored, was a sign from a Podcasting God (probably, like, the anonymous dude who hosts Casefile or something) that doing this independently was the only way forward. I wish I could tell the Michelle of 2018 to back herself. To keep doing what she was doing because it was going to work: hanging those amateurish posters up on the back of university bathroom stalls, posting Kim Kardashian memes into an Instagram void, looking for tiny windows of opportunity to push the podcast through, every single day. I wish I could tell her that everything would pan out just fine. Actually, much, much better than fine. It would pan out like this: she’s co-authoring a book. Co-directing a media company. Co-parenting a podcast that is kind of like her first baby.
Two years later, I look at what you and I have done together, Zara, and I feel proud. I’m glad we didn’t let the many ‘no’s defeat us. I think having you by my side gave me the courage and strength to keep going, even when I felt like a child playing make-believe. Without you, I’d probably be stuck in a vicious cycle of self-doubt and worry, consumed by the omnipresent question marks from the people around me.
Because here’s the thing: nobody really knows what ideas will work and what won’t. Sure, we can have our hunches. We can have our instincts. But none of us know. Even the world’s most successful entrepreneurs have failed and faltered. Their ideas have bombed and sunk. But that’s what makes them successful – they’ve got lots of ideas, and they’re willing to give each decent one a go regardless of the outcome. Those successful people have, in their time, probably also rejected ideas that have gone on to be brilliant – ideas that passed them by because they didn’t sense the pulse of the moment.
I have no doubt that you and I will reject some great ideas simply because we are busy pressing our index fingers to other things, wondering if the pulse is somewhere up here, or down there. Someone might come to us and present her shiny jewel of insight and creativity, and we will shrug when we should be jumping at the chance to help her make it into a ring. If that does happen one day, I’d want the young woman holding the precious gem to just make the goddamn thing herself. I’d want her to pull out her toolkit and get to work, because if she sees something in it, the chances are someone else will too. We’re all feeling for hard stones in the ground, trying to figure out what’s a rock and what’s a diamond. Do you love your idea? Well, say yes to yourself and polish that stone until it shines. Say ‘yes’ to yourself again and again, especially when everyone else is telling you ‘no’.
If you could go back to the Zara and Michelle of January 2018 and tell them anything, what would you say?
On Sat, 4 Jul 2020 at 2:47 PM,
Zara McDonald <zaramcdonald@shameless.com> wrote:
>>> That’s an interesting question. What would I actually say to the twenty-three-year-old versions of us if I were given the chance? Truthfully, my first thoughts are buried in clichés and I’m betting you know exactly the ones. ‘When one door closes . . .’ or ‘Everything happens for a reason’ or ‘This will be the making of you.’
The (annoying but) bottom line is they are all absolutely true. Those numerous rejections did happen for a reason, a million doors did open when one slammed in our face and I think building this alone did make us into stronger, better, more thoughtful people. Beyond that, though, I’d tell us to harness naivety and blind belief. That successful people don’t have a blueprint or much of a path, or even a better idea than the next person. I would tell us what Business Chicks founder Emma Isaacs once told us when we interviewed her: that the only thing that’s common to the people who find success is their unwavering ability to back themselves.
Of course, you’re totally right: it’s a little easier to back yourself when there’s two of you backing each other. The fact that I had you and you had me meant whenever we did start to waver, or whenever self-doubt or confusion crept into our thoughts and conversations, we had someone to catch us. We had our arms at the ready to catch each other.
Above all, I would sit us down and tell us that just because big media players saw no value in what we wanted to create and just because established brands couldn’t jump on board with our vision and enthusiasm, doesn’t mean the ideas were any less worthy.
After all, that’s the reason the idea could work in the first place: their blind spots are creating the holes you are just about to fill.
So hurry up and fill the damn things.