Meet Amanda Strong and Melissa Beck

Today we’d like to introduce you to Amanda Strong and Melissa Beck.

Hi Amanda and Melissa, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
What is Imperfect Strangers? Imperfect Strangers is a podcast where the listener is invited each week into a private phone conversation between two women, my co-host Melissa and me. We are total and complete strangers. Each time we chat, we get to know one another a little better while the audience gets to know us both. It’s perfect for people who love to eavesdrop.

What is the inspiration behind it? I started a podcast in November 2019 called Your Mom Has a Podcast. To start, my guests were friends or friends of friends and Melissa was my first guest who I didn’t know and didn’t have a mutual connection to. I actually first “met” Melissa with the rest of the world in 2000 when she appeared on the cast of The Real World New Orleans. As the show was airing on MTV, I found Melissa’s blog online called Princess Melissa and began reading along with watching the show. Over the years I enjoyed Melissa’s sense of humor through reading her blog. Turns out, we were in the same seasons of life at the same times, serious boyfriends became husbands, wedding planning turned into trying to conceive, etc. Because I enjoyed Melissa’s transparency and humor about life, about her role as a wife and mother, I thought she’d be a great voice for YMHAP. We chatted late in November about her experiences in motherhood, specifically about making mom friends and how we deal with social anxiety. Melissa had expressed that her reality show experience, both during and after the height of the show’s massive popularity, drove her to retreat from a public life so she joked that social anxiety was and is her area of expertise. She has essentially been hunkered down for a good 15 years so I was shocked she agreed to be a guest on my first podcast.

We had some technical difficulties so we had to re-record but this time we ended up chatting longer until somehow we started talking every week. At the end of our final recording for YMHAP, we were finding that we enjoyed talking to one another. Out of that we floated around some ideas for creating a podcast together and started recording that December. Since December we have gotten to know one another week by week through these phone calls when in April, both navigating new roles as home schoolers, activity directors, camp counselors and short-order cooks due to COVID, we found our voice. The podcast wasn’t about motherhood. It was about total strangers creating a long-distance friendship and finding connection in the face of a pandemic. Each week we find ourselves marveling in our similarities but then also howling in laughter when we discover hilariously tragic differences of opinion.

Who’s behind it? I’m a graphic designer, wife and mother of three living in Cincinnati. Melissa is a stay-at home mom of three and wife as well who lives on Long Island. She also just so happens to have been on MTV’s Real World New Orleans.

What makes Imperfect Strangers unique? I am a podcast junkie. I listen to them while I clean my house, while I make my children meals, work in the yard— my ear buds are near constant fixtures in my ears most days. So, needless to say, I have listened to a ton of different shows from true crime to personal care and beauty podcasts and there is nothing else in the podcasting space that is like Imperfect Strangers. Melissa and I both appreciate candid and honest conversation. We like a well-placed profanity. And with Melissa, she basically presented herself to the world with her personality in her 20s and used that experience to go on to host other TV shows including one with Chelsea Handler and tons of public speaking. Talking, storytelling has sorta been her thing, through her writing and locked social media, even after she shied away from the spotlight. We are unafraid to talk about most anything and do so in a way that is a safe space for us each to share our different perspectives without judgment. Okay. Maybe there is some judgment. Like the time I told Melissa I don’t necessarily shower every day. Whatever.

In addition to our podcast, we have a visual aspect to our show that no other podcast does. On Friday at midnight, when our episodes release, Melissa stays up and posts to our Instagram Stories with a “live” interactive show that supplements what we talk about in the episode. This includes blast from the past photos, pop cultural references, parenting tips — anything referenced in the episode. So when you listen to an episode, you can plug into our Instagram account and catch the story live OR watch it in our archive at a later date while you listen. Upon launching, Melissa and I also created a Live Instagram Show where we invite our listeners, whom we have lovingly dubbed “Strangers” to jump on and join the conversation! We talk about the episode or answer their other questions. Sometimes we just become background noise for them while they carry on together in the chat. We’ve built this awesome community of new “friends” and we’re all getting to know one another through the show. Melissa and I create and produce the show top to bottom together. So it’s been interesting to not only be getting to know someone on a personal level but also to be working with them too.

I think, through continued conversations, we both found that this, the process of becoming friends and subsequently coworkers with someone is interesting. That we’ve even found time to sit down and talk while managing all these kids in a pandemic has been a welcome creative outlet.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We were complete strangers with very little experience in podcast production who randomly decided to go all in on a creative endeavor and business. So at the same time that we are learning about each other, what each likes, doesn’t like, we are also learning how to communicate effectively and work together to meet our shared goal. We are learning how to run a business together. How to consistently produce quality content both for our podcast but for our social media and our Patreon subscribers. And we are doing it totally remote. On paper is sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Sometimes we have had disagreements or have had misunderstandings as a result of miscommunication. We realized very quickly that we needed to first be open and honest through the process and talk things through when they come up. We have very different ways in which we communicate and talk about our feelings, so we have had to learn that about each other and how to navigate those situations. We also recognized that we needed to find a way to mindfully work through and be open about it when it does happen so that we can keep things moving forward.

We keep a very detailed Slack where we organize all of the different aspects of what it entails to run a show – one of those Slack threads is called “Feelings” so that, if one of us is having a moment, we have a place to safely place those feelings and give the other person and opportunity to unpack it, talk about it, whatever. Good and complicated – it all goes in the feelings Slack.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Imperfect Strangers is a weekly podcast born in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, about two women, who are also complete strangers, getting to know one another each week over the phone.

When we started this, we stepped into it blindly but fully committed to producing content that was honest, candid and entertaining. What we didn’t expect was the community of listeners (aka: Stranger Friends) who have grown up around the show.

From day 1 we have prioritized getting to know our listeners through interactions on social media, weekly Instagram Live shows, live Zoom events as well as through Patreon. The podcast’s whole premise is about making a new friend as an adult and the process of learning about them, laughing with them and growing together in a relationship. Our listeners have found friendship in one another as well. The recognize their friends handles in the Instagram Live, the send care packages to other Stranger Friends in need, the share advice and encouragement and pop culture gossip in the Discord thread.

Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
As mentioned previously, we LOVE Slack. We started using it pretty much from the start and everything goes in there and is the main tool to keep us organized.

Discord and Zoom have been huge for us as well when it comes to creating community. Our private Discord chat server is a Patreon (paid subscription service) benefit that allows us to connect with our Patrons as well as allows them to create community with each other. Zoom has given us the opportunity to host live events for our listeners (we do about 3 paid events a year) to celebrate the holidays, birthdays and the show’s anniversary.

Contact Info:

• Email: askimperfectstrangers@gmail.com
• Website: www.imperfectstrangerspodcast.com
• Instagram: @ImperfectStrangers_podcast
• Twitter: @ImperfStrangers
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCnPEBHKbQZ12y-zRuweiGw
• Other: imperfectstrangers.merchdirect.com 

Image Credits
Amanda Strong
Melissa Beck