Start2Finish: Fueling Discipline, Focus and the right mindset

My Solo Podcast Journey: Why Wait? Your Voice Deserves to Be Heard

• Kuda Munemo

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Ever dreamed of starting a podcast but felt overwhelmed by the seemingly complicated equipment, technical know-how, and costs involved? My journey proves that anyone with a smartphone and determination can launch a successful podcast without breaking the bank.

When I began my solo podcasting adventure exactly one year ago, I started with nothing more than my iPhone and natural lighting. No fancy microphones, no expensive cameras, no soundproofed studio—just a burning desire to share my voice and ideas with the world. What I discovered was liberating: listeners care far more about content than production quality, especially when you're starting out.

The secret to my podcast growth wasn't investing thousands in equipment upfront, but embracing what I call "skill stacking"—gradually learning videography, audio editing, and content creation while upgrading my setup incrementally. I started with a $25 plug-and-play microphone before eventually moving to a Samsung Q2U dynamic mic. My DIY studio began as a white-painted wall with a few inexpensive decorative elements before evolving into a dedicated space with proper lighting. For editing, free software like DaVinci Resolve and mobile apps like CapCut provided everything needed to create professional-looking content.

Looking back on this journey, the most valuable lesson wasn't about equipment or technical skills—it was about simply starting. In today's digital landscape, we have unprecedented access to tools and information that make content creation accessible to everyone. Your voice deserves to be heard, and there's never been a better time to start sharing your knowledge, experiences, or entertainment with an audience eager to connect. Ready to begin your own podcast journey? Remember: the most important step is the first one. Pick up your phone, hit record, and start creating today.

• Started with just my phone and good natural lighting, no expensive equipment needed
• Used free apps like CapCut, Captions, and Canva for editing and graphic design
• Content matters more than production quality - people care about information, not perfect visuals
• Gradually upgraded to better microphones (started with $25 plug-and-play, now use Samsung Q2U)
• Created a DIY home studio by painting a wall white and adding inexpensive decorative elements
• Added a small mixer (Zoom 24) for better audio control during interviews
• Now use both iPhone and Lumix GH4 camera for multiple camera angles
• Free editing software like DaVinci Resolve works great for beginners
• The "skill stacking" approach helps build capabilities over time
• The most important step is simply starting - everything else follows

If you have an idea you believe in, don't wait for perfect conditions. Pick up your phone, start recording, and share your voice with the world today.


Fueling Discipline , focus and the right mindset!

Speaker 1:

how I started my solo podcast. Yes, solo is the key word here. It's called do it yourself. When you don't have a budget, low income, you just want to get it done. You just want to start, and that's what I did. I started and here I am, a year later. I'm still going strong. So I just want to talk about my journey, my experiences, what I learned as I started this podcast, equipment that I'm using what I started off with.

Speaker 1:

There's no need to rob the bank at the beginning. There's no need to want to start with a studio at the beginning. You just want to start. You just want to start pushing out your content, start creating stuff that you like, that you you enjoy, that you believe is relevant for someone to listen and hear when you share with them. So there you go. All you need to do is just to kick start and no need to go crazy at the beginning. The most important thing is to kick start your ideas and sharing it with the world. You know, and the beauty of social platform is it's free to set up. All you need is internet, and another thing which makes it easy is learning has become very easy.

Speaker 1:

Information is out there, but the question is are you willing to learn new things? If you're watching this, I'm sure you're willing to learn. You want to know how this all starts, and then you kickstart and start sharing your journey, your ideas, your products, your service. You start teaching people on this platform. Whatever you have that we want to communicate. It's easy behind the camera and, uh, no need to look good. All you need to do is to record and just pushing out. People are not interested in how you look, but they're interested in the information that you're going to give them.

Speaker 1:

One thing I like about the period we are in is information is at our fingertips. Things have changed. Technology has come. It has become more personalized. Technology has come. It has become more personalized. When was the last time you went into the gardens just to and book a photographer to take your picture? It's been a long time. All now I can do is pick up my phone with a good camera 4k, hd and everything you name and I take my kids out and start taking pictures and some of them come beautiful, just like a pro. So that's how easy it has become.

Speaker 1:

It's easy to record. It's easy to speak your voice. It's easy to share your voice out there. Just be willing to do it and you'll get an audience. Whether they like what you're saying or they will listen, they will still say I don't think you're saying the right thing. The question is that they are listening right. So what we just want is to get things out there.

Speaker 1:

So it all starts with an idea. If you have an idea that you truly believe in be it educational, be it comedy, be it entertainment, whatever idea you have that you want to communicate, this is the platform to to go to. You know you want to be out there on the socials and right now, content is king. What you would need to do is to record quality content at the level you are at and then continue to improve on it as you continue on the journey. So I've been enjoying this journey. That's why I'm recording this video, just to share how I started on my solo. Like I said, zero budget.

Speaker 1:

Uh, I acquired skills as I went on the journey. You know I came across the concept called skill stacking. Then I looked at stacking all these cues, videography, photography, uh, in front of the camera, behind the camera. I then have to learn a lot how to communicate, how to talk in front of the camera. Obviously, I still have a long way to go, but the beauty of it is the journey is exciting as I learn how to uh, you know, bring out my voice and how to be confident. Yeah, so there you go. So just start, just start.

Speaker 1:

And my idea is very simple. It's called start to finish, and I truly believe that everyone is on a journey. They want to accomplish something great, something amazing, and they want to share that journey as they go to accomplish it. So why not start? Today? Even the president of the free world used this platform to win the election. You know, he went on platforms on YouTube, on podcasts on YouTube, you name it and he was bringing out his message to the people. So it's exactly the same thing you can start, you can do it and if you are watching this, you are the person who wants to uh, to put out content out there.

Speaker 1:

And that's exactly what I did when I started, when I started enjoying making these videos and, uh, I felt that I have a voice. I started researching, I started learning, I started on YouTube Googling how to start a podcast, how to start a video podcast, and I knew exactly what I wanted to push out. So that's another thing you need to know whether you want to do video podcast, you want to do audio podcast, you want to just go on record video for socials. It has to be clear. So when I started again, I had to go and come up with a, you know, a few page document, a two page document, where I had to write my ethos. I had to write my vision, my goals, what I wanted to do, what I wanted to achieve with the podcast, where I want to take it in the years to come, and that's exactly what I'm doing.

Speaker 1:

So that's the first part of call. You know you need to come up with a clear plan, clear vision, have an idea that you truly believe. That is a conviction for you, and a lot of us have intellectual property anyway. You have something that you have learned somewhere, you know it over the years at the back of your mind, and it's something that you can communicate and start monetizing on there you go. So the most important thing is to start.

Speaker 1:

So where do you start? What you just need is your phone. So for me, this is my phone here. So I just pick up my phone and I start recording. I just start play and I record it, and once I record it, I develop the guts to post it out there. And sometimes you'll be expecting people to comment, people to say negative things, but I don't worry about that, people don't care. What they want is information. If you package it, they listen, they watch and they take away something they need and they start applying.

Speaker 1:

So you just need a phone, get a decent phone, or whatever you have, start there, start recording videos, just clean up the phone. You know you just need to make sure your phone, you know, the camera is clean enough and your audio is good enough, and you start recording and start developing your content. That's exactly how I did it. So I started recording, I started creating content shorts, started pushing them on my socials and I've gone, I've been on that journey doing the same thing. So, from there, once I started recording my content, I started listening to, to the sound, I said watching the video. Then I said, huh, I think there is some improvement that I can do.

Speaker 1:

So I went on to buy my first microphone, which is this one. This is a plug and play for my iPhone. So, yeah, I just plug it in. This is the, the, the receiver, this is the transmitter. Then I switch it on, it goes green. Then I start recording. That's all you need, and all I would do is I can be in my house. I just need to look for a place with good outside lighting, start recording. Or I can be outside, I can be at a restaurant. You can do this anywhere. All you need is a microphone, a phone and you start recording. Stop caring what people think, just start doing your thing and start get going, and that's all there is to it. No need to worry about, oh, the ambience of the room.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so with time, I had to set up my own studio. I wanted to do this and, like I said, everything is do-it-yourself. You look at the back here. I painted this room white and I went around. Okay, what type of image do I need? I started buying stuff and, yeah, I got, uh, toy cars and some flowers. This costed me something like five dollars each, and this flower, I think, about three bucks. And, yeah, everyone goes artificial, as we all know. And voila, now I've got a studio and I continue to record. But anyway, back to the equipment that I started off with.

Speaker 1:

Then, from there, like I said, the most important thing is research. Learn as much as you can. You know you can use your. If you have a laptop with a good camera, you can use that camera, you know, to start recording your phone, do the job very well. So every equipment that is around us, you can start recording. You can start on your zoom, you can.

Speaker 1:

There are many platforms out there which are free, where you can start recording your, your videos and start chopping and cutting them off and putting them online. And when I started, I think I I looked for free platforms. Obviously we're always looking for freebies, right to get going, so I look for free, free, uh, free platforms. Uh, I think. For me, I think I downloaded what is called captions, uh, because I wanted my video to have, like, uh, written words on the video. It's a cool app. You just need to load your video, give it a few seconds. Ai will do its thing and produce you with some captions on your video.

Speaker 1:

And I went on to download canva. Canva is very good. You design your intro banners, you design your thumbnails and things like that, so it's a very good platform. You can even do graphic design on it. So it come with pre-designed templates. All you need to do is to pick a template that you want. Is it a thumbnail? Is it an A4 design? It gives you all these beautiful templates. So it is a paid and an unpaid. So there you go. That's a place to kickstart.

Speaker 1:

Then I also went to CapCut. Capcut is another platform. You can load a full video on CapCut on your phone and start editing. There's no better and easier place to start editing your videos except on your phone, because you know it doesn't have too many. Yeah, it's always a trial and error. Let me try this. It's not working. Let me go backwards and try this one, and voila, you start learning, you start developing yourself. You go online again, you start learning about how to use kept card and things like that, and you realize that the convert kept card even captions. You can even transfer it to a bigger desktop instead still working on those platforms as well from that, uh, from that place. But the beauty of the phone is that you've got your phone wherever you are. So you are in a bus, you're editing, you are in a, you know, you're in your office. A few minutes you have, you start editing and you start producing your content.

Speaker 1:

So that's how I I kick-started the journey and from there, what I ended up doing is that, uh, I started investing in my audio because I like crisp audio. You want to make sure the more you record, the more people like your stuff and enjoy what you're you're talking about. You want to make sure the sound you record, the more people like your stuff and enjoy what you're talking about. You want to make sure the sound is very good. So I invested in the microphones. So I started off like I said. This is like a $25 microphone which I started off with and my goal is okay, fine, my program. I want to be able to bring people who have been on their journey. I don't want it to be just a solo where I'm just talking to the camera. So I had to look at building my studio with microphones and everything else that allows me to do that interview.

Speaker 1:

So I invested in a lot of things. This is one of them. This can be on the go if I want to do interviews on the road. I just plug it into my phone. This is a jack or my camera, and, yeah, yeah, I give the other person one uh receiver and I have mine and we start recording, uh, off-site. I also and this is a boya unit, not very expensive I'll put the a Boya unit, not very expensive. I'll put the links below where you can find the stuff.

Speaker 1:

I also invested in this wireless unit Just to make it more cleaner and professional. Again, this is something like about $200, I think for the whole set. So you have two transmitters for interviewing and you have one receiver which you just plug on your computer or your phone or your laptop and you start recording. It comes very handy. So everything has been simplified. You don't need to be a professional videographer or audiographer to be able to do those things. It has been made easy. All you need to do is your willingness to learn and once you learn, you start applying, which is basically what I've done. So I've learned to build my setup and I was like I said I was do. I was just using clean sunlight and it was working perfectly fine. But as you go on, I use the black cloth behind me.

Speaker 1:

I you know it would take a lot of time to to set it up, and yeah, it is. It's ups and downs, um, and now we are here. Uh, we have just set up my studio. I just walk into my studio, the camera is always set up, voila. Then I record. It just takes me a few minutes to just do a quick checks and balance and we start recording. So that's how we roll and it's beautiful, it's exciting as we do this.

Speaker 1:

So from there then I went on to look for microphones. So, on mics, you have what is called condenser mic and you have dynamic mics. So a condenser mic, you know, basically you would want to use it in a full pro soundproof room, so that, you know, because it produces a lot of echo and it picks a lot of sound, uh, from different places. But with a dynamic mic, which the one that I'm using, this is a samsung q2u microphone. It's a beautiful mic, uh, the sound is crisp, and, uh, this mic, uh, in this room I don't even have soundproof, I just record direct into and it doesn't, you know, taking a lot of vibrating sound from all over the place, or my kids are in the dining right now, but I'm still recording good quality sound you hear. Once it's done.

Speaker 1:

Then from there I decided no, you know, I want to mix it up. So if I'm to go to do my recording, I need to do it properly, because sometimes plugging it into the camera direct, you don't have a way of controlling, you know other bed sounds coming in. So in this case you need a mixer. So I invested into this small baby here. It's called the Zoom 24 mixer, so it's a two channel for me. It's it's perfectly fine. It takes in the alexa uh and uh. Yeah, as you can see it, I can just plug it in, like right now I'm recording my audio through this, uh, this baby here. I just need to. It can take in a battery for phantom power, or I can just plug a cable direct to my laptop and start recording, and one of the cables goes to either my phone In this case I'm doing my audio recording with my phone here yeah, so I just plug it in there and I'm good to go. So that's how I record my audio.

Speaker 1:

And I also invested in a GH4 Lumix camera. Yes, it's a bit down camera, but obviously you don't see it. What you see is the quality that it's producing. Now, because I'm doing interviews, I want to have at least two cameras running at the same time. I invested in the GH4. So far I have a single camera and I'm also using my iphone. So my iphone also capture 4k. So because it captured 4k, just for capture 4k, you know, this then becomes maybe my wide camera short, then the camera behind becomes the, the one that zoom in on an individual as they are making the conversation. So, yeah, so it has been my journey.

Speaker 1:

So I I did not break the bank. I started the journey slow and started building on it, and this is where I am, and I also invested in lights. You need good lighting because now you have a studio, you need to make sure the lighting is good and you look good as you are recording. So I invested in some ring lights nothing expensive. These are like $60 lights and that's all I need. Nothing expensive with my setup. So, as you can see, you can start. You can start developing your studio. You can start developing your recording your content. So, whilst you are building on your studio, you can start developing your recording your content. So, whilst you are building on your equipment, just start doing the thing that matters and that is important first, that is, pushing out the idea. The more people enjoy this, you start monetizing, you start, most probably, building resources to improve the quality of your content and you continue on like that.

Speaker 1:

And it has never been easy for anyone to communicate products, to communicate uh, ideas, to communicate anything you know, and I to communicate anything that comes to mind. So we are in a great season, we're in a great period where anyone can share information easily. So why not start on your podcast? Your phone is there. That's a good starting point. And yeah, another thing Once I recorded and I was editing with my phone okay, now the size of my videos became bigger and I wanted another platform to better edit it.

Speaker 1:

And, yeah, checked around, what can I find cheap? What can I find free? And remember I did not know how to edit when I downloaded these applications, but my willingness to learn, I started learning how to edit the videos. So once I record, then I need to do the editing chops, chops and cuts off and things like that. So I used DaVinci Resolve. It is a paid and a licensed platform and it is a free platform. All you need to do is to go to DaVinci and you download and you start using the platform. Then I also introduced CapCut, adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut. So these are other platforms you can use for editing. There are many others out there, free ones, but these are the good ones that I use. Try the DaVinci Resolve. It gets the work done and all you need to do is to continue learning. Go on social, go on YouTube, google these things, and start learning and start knowing how they work, how they operate.

Speaker 1:

No one has told me to record this video or to talk about these brands, but it's what I'm using for my recording. So for someone who wants to start their podcast, this is where to start. And now I'm migrating to have an assistant who will help me with editing and other stuff. But when I kick started, it's solo. I'm doing it because it's expensive now to get someone who edit your videos regularly or to get a videographer to come to your home to do the recording. So, because I'm doing it on my own, now that I have a studio, I've got decent lighting, I can do it in the middle of the night. You won't even notice that I recorded this in the middle of the night, you know. So, yeah, there you go. So start your journey and keep on going, keep on enjoying. The most important thing is doing what you love and sharing that information with the world. For someone to learn, for someone to get on their journey, you know.