The "How I Built This" For Side Projects

Hey, I'm Leo and I got to where I am today because of side projects.

My podcast is After Hour Projects, the "How I Built This" for side projects - I bring on guests to share stories around their projects, which can range from passion projects to what would eventually become businesses.

My listeners are primarily young professionals who are looking for ways to spend their free time in a structured manner.

I started this podcast as a journey for myself, tracing back my experiences with these projects to help me discover my skills and how to apply them to my interests.

Thus, most of the guests are people I've gotten to know along the way - it was a big step in getting guests to agree to come on.

Though I started this podcast in March of this year, the idea initially came to me late last year, when I bought the domain name afterhourprojects.com as an add-on to my hosting service renewal for my personal website, and that set everything in motion.

I spent one week to release my first episode - starting out defining the podcast, creating the intro, recording, editing, and publishing.

I do everything myself at minimal cost.

In fact, the only money I've spent so far is $30 on a shotgun mic for better audio recording.

I've been releasing one new episode per week, using the time after work to book guests, record, edit, and share the content on all social media channels.

Good thing is, you can find lots of free tools that are out there such as Anchor for publishing, Garageband for editing, and Figma for design.

I do not currently work with sponsorships.

This has been an incredible journey so far in learning - first from gaining the confidence to book guests to share their stories, and then from the community I've met and the skills I've learned in digital marketing, copywriting, and content creation.

Tools: Anchor (publishing), Zencastr (recording), Garageband (editing), Canva (graphics).

My guests for my initial run are almost always people I already know, so it's asking them to come on. I have had inbound requests, which I screen for fit first and have had some on.

To prepare for each episode, I research the guest and present him/her with some discussion topics - I emphasize that these are topics over specific questions to allow the conversation to flow more freely.

I've been doing my interviews remotely via Zencastr for audo and Google Hangouts to have video on at the same time.

I publish via Anchor so my show is on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, and many other platforms.

Most of my audience listens via Apple Podcasts, followed by Spotify.

I've had success marketing my podcast in different online groups related to my area of focus, gaining initial views and then building an audience via my newsletter.

Podcasting is a commitment.

Consistency is so important, so before you start, think about your release frequency.

Once you make the commitment, things will fall into place - you just have to put in the work.

I figured things out as I went, so didn't refer to many resources.

Website: afterhourprojects.com

Personal website: leolu.info

After Hour Projects Instagram: instagram.com/afterhourprojects