Check Out Anne-Fleur Andrle’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Anne-Fleur Andrle.

Hi Anne-Fleur, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I left France (where I am from) a few days after turning 21. Back then, I was an engineering student and I wanted to have an internship abroad in order to improve my (back then, pretty poor) English. This led me to Buffalo, NY. It was my first experience abroad on my own, far from my parents, a real taste of true independence. I was learning every day, discovering a new way of doing things, of thinking. Truly fascinating. A few months after my arrival, I met Mike, a Buffalo-born student who became my husband seven years later. But I also developed incredible and long-lasting friendships with people I would have probably never even talked to if I had stayed in France.

Fast forward, I move back to France at the end of said-internship. I finish my degree and while doing so, an opportunity comes along: becoming the host of a weekly one-hour show at the local radio station. An amazing experience, I learned so so much and could not get enough.

After doing this for three years, Mike and I decide to move back to the US to go to grad school. I am too ashamed of my French accent to even consider broadcasting on this side of the pond, so I keep that as a big dream but nothing more.

Until an assignment from my last corporate jobs in Boston came along: I was asked to create a podcast for our customers. I had so much fun doing that, and podcasting seemed so … “within reach”! At that same time, I was feeling pretty disconnected from my home country, I was missing it a bit. I had a hard time making friends within the “expat” community, I was looking for more genuine connections where we could share our wins but also the struggles of living away from home.

That’s how I started my first independent podcast, French Expat in the Fall of 2019. Through that podcast, I found a way to connect with people from all around the world who had at some point in their life moved away from France. That podcast gained a lot of traction really quickly and became the number one expat podcast in France and other French-speaking countries within a few weeks. Over time, it became clearer by the day that this was my calling. I started a few other podcasts and was doing some freelance production work. In retrospect, I am not sure how I survived that period of my life, I was working 5-8am on podcasts, working my job 8:30 to 4:30, having dinner with my family and working again on podcasts 7-11pm. That was a lot.

18 months later, as I was pitching an article idea to an editor, I shared with him I was uncertain of the future of French Expat. I was running out of ideas to make it evolve with the time I was able to dedicate to it while having a very low and ever-fluctuating revenue stream. He nodded. And reached back out a few days later offering to produce the podcast with me. This was an amazing and certainly unexpected opportunity for me and the podcast: I was going to be paid monthly which meant I could dedicate more time to it, I also had more means to pay for things like sound engineering and the podcast’s audience was growing really quickly thanks to that media (called French Morning) audience.

Today, I am living my American Dream. I am a freelance podcast producer and voice-over artist, a mom and a French person living in Colorado.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Starting from scratch brings its load of challenges! The lack of credibility for one: not being academically trained and not being a journalist by training is something I used to be ashamed of. I believe remaining open and humble was key for me: I know I can and will always be learning and that’s okay.

Being an independent podcaster for many years also means loneliness. Which is so paradoxal because I would talk to people from all around the globe about their life stories, but working three shifts, being home during the pandemic and meeting people mostly online can become painful. One of my big goals for 2022-2023 is to connect with my podcasting peers in the US where I am based. Denver seems to have a great community.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Today I am a freelance podcast producer. I produce podcasts for institutions (a lot of universities, museums in France) and corporate companies. I still host and produce French Expat, as well as Génération Podcast (a podcast about podcasts), and Mauvaises Langues (a podcast I co-host with Tuyen Bui-Lally, a fellow French-American mom living in the US where we dissect challenges of raising a multicultural family – a fun podcast). I also create “podcasts as a gift” for private customers, and I love doing these: people declare their love, celebrate family, friends or even couple milestones, collaborate to surprise one another. It’s very fulfilling.

I am really proud of the network I was able to develop while being so far from my audience (my podcasts are in French). In Génération Podcast, I recommend podcasts not to be missed from all over the world, and I present people from the podcast industry (from France and the US). Doing so has helped me grow in skills so much as I personally learn from each of my guests. This has also helped me get my name out there and brought me quite a few customers over the years.

I am also very proud of the work I did to revamp French Expat while staying true to the initial promise which was to help the French-speaking folks living around the world find inspiring stories and break clichés the GA has about expat life. My angles are so much more accurate, the sound design really special and the stories very impactful. I am so humbled that people contact me every week to tell me the podcast helped them when they prepared their move or when they were feeling so lonely during the worst of the pandemic for example. I never expected such impact!

Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
I would say: try sooner! Don’t wait for all the stars to be aligned. You don’t need to be perfect on day 1. Do it and talk to others, ask questions, don’t stay isolated. That’s how you’ll grow.

Contact Info:

• Website: annefleurandrle.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annefleurandrle
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/afandrle 

Image Credits
First one, credit: Ronan Stephan; second one, credit: Tony Luong; third one (family pic), credit: Alysia Zurlo