How I started the CaptainFI Podcast

I started the CaptainFI Financial Independence podcast to spread the powerful message of Financial Independence. I wanted to connect with the best and brightest in the Personal Finance and Financial Independence space, as well as reach an audience who might not necessarily want to sit on their computer or device and read for hours on end. I want to share with you exactly how I did this, as well as give you all of the tools I used.

Introduction to starting a podcast

I started the CaptainFI Financial Independence podcast because I love sharing the message of Financial Independence. I was learning and taking in so much information about FI and FIRE, and applying these lessons I learnt to my life and personal finances and having great success. I still had so many friends and family who continued to struggle with money, and to be honest, only a very few of them would entertain the topic of talking about money or how to improve their finances. I decided I was going to be there if they needed me, but I wanted to share these lessons I had learned and share the powerful message of financial independence and how it can improve your life.

I first started blogging about Personal Finance and Financial Independence and this was an awesome outlet, I never expected many people to tune in but the site steadily grew to the point where I actually needed to upgrade my hosting server because there was so much traffic coming in – my entry level ‘shared’ hosting could not cope with the tens of thousands of visitors logging on to the site every month!

Recording equipment

You will need a microphone to record as well as a good internet connection. Personally, I have an old ‘CAD’ Audio microphone (which I got second hand for $20) that is set up on my desktop PC, as well as a Rode external iPhone microphone that I use with my laptop or iPhone for creating recordings away from home. The Rode microphone is epic! They are expensive though, and I picked mine up second hand for $70.

Other things you might consider are a Microphone Stand, a ‘Dead Cat’ Fluffy microphone cover, a ‘Pop Filter’ screen and some sound proofing for your studio

Recording software: Zencastr

I use Zencastr to record interviews because it is super simple and easy to use. I literally just email my guests a link and they open it to bring up our private chat room. We can speak as well as instant message, and when ready to record we simply click ‘record’. After the recording is done, Zencastr provides two high quality audio files for download which I can then post process. A Hobbyist subscription is free, and to record more than 8 hours per month a professional subscription is currently $20 per month.

Post processing and edit: Audacity

After I finish a recording in Zencastr, I individually post process each track (myself and the guest) separately so I can normalise and remove background audio. Normalising the track just means making the ‘peaks’ or ‘volume’ all roughly line up so it is a constant loudness – otherwise this is bloody annoying to listen to. Background audio depends on where you are recording, but it is fairly easy to remove the background ‘hums’ that occur with individual microphones and connections.

Once each track is ‘buffed’, I then combine them for editing. This is the pain in the ass process of removing all the ‘umms, uhhs and awkward pauses’ as well as trying to concentrate the episode on just the good stuff. Overall, I am getting better but post processing still takes me way longer than doing the recording – somewhere between 3-5 hours per recording.

Podcast Host

Once the episode is processed and edited, I simply uploaded them to the podcast host. When I first started, I used a podcast host called Whooshkaa which was really simple and easy to use. Whooshka was super easy to use, and integrate with all of the major podcast streaming services like Spotify and Apple podcasts, but unfortunately it got bought out by Spotify, which wanted to acquire the customers. Spotify for podcasters isn’t anywhere near as good as Whoshkaa used to be, but its still a decent choice for podcast hosting and it is free.

Podcast Audio Transcriber: Otter ai

Because there are some people that love reading on the Captain FI blog, I signed up to a paid transcription service with Otter ai. Otter ai is pretty amazing, and it transcribes my podcasts with pretty much 100% accuracy, as well as recognising and automatically tagging each individual speaker which makes reading the transcript super easy.

Summary

This explains how I started the CaptainFI Financial Independence podcast, and I hope this helps you in starting your own podcast.

Check out all the Captain Fi Podcast episodes HERE.

Some of my most recent interviews feature:

Canna Campbell – Sugar Mamma TV

Mr Nomad Numbers

JL Collins

Corwin from Engineering your FI

JMoney from Budgets are Sexy