Hey Guys, Nana here!

Welcome to the first newsletter - I am no expert but I’m starting this to expose all the things I’m learning as I attempt to do the the following things..

• 📈 Grow a following on social media

• 👩🏻‍💻 Build a business helping brands & creators create better content more efficiently

• 🎙️ Launch a Podcast - @thebasicbroz

• 📝 Start a Newsletter - the one you’re reading right now!

You 100% know me from my socials where I make inspirational videos on my journey, but I don’t do massive deep dives on how I’m actually implementing what I’m learning & doing - that’s what this is for.

This newsletter is the Daily Schedule I post daily on my Instagram stories but on crack. 

You can expect this weekly letter to be broken down by day, highlighting the most notable thing I learned with a short explanation. Here’s the Bytedown from what last week that you will get answers too below:

• 🤖 BEST AI Headshot Generator & quality enhancer for Videos & Pictures..

• 🐝 EASIEST way to start a newsletter..

• 🎥 AI for Editing Videos - My favorite new editing software that isn’t Adobe, DaVinci or Final Cut Pro..

• 🎞 Adobe Primere Pro’s AI features I’m LOVING..

• 📸 What Camera Did I Buy as a Beginner for my Podcast & Small Video Projects..

Some weeks I’ll include a spotlight where I’ll share a page of an up-and-coming or established creator. I already enjoy making videos about people’s entrepreneurial stories as it relates to social media, so there will be an essence of that here too.

Below is what you can expect in your inbox every Monday morning. 🙂 

THE WEEKLY BYTEDOWN

MONDAY

🤖 BEST AI Headshot Generator & quality enhancer for Videos & Pictures - Remini

If you’re wondering how my videos & photos are so crisp in clarity it’s usually because I run them through this app

• Remini is not free; I have the Pro Plan, which costs $9.99/week or a one-time fee of $80/year. I run almost all my clients' posts, my personal videos, and photos through this app before posting anywhere. I get DMs all the time asking about the clarity of my videos, and 90% of the time I run them through here - it’s my best-kept secret, truly.

• For video enhancer only: this can only enhance videos that are less than 60 MB (mostly videos under 10-20 seconds)

• My current profile picture was generated from here - not every AI avatar generated was usable, but after multiple iterations, I found one I liked.

  • TIP: Make sure you give really basic/current selfies of yourself. For example, I chose pictures where I was facing the camera straight on and looked very natural (no filters or heavy makeup) so it could generate the most accurate depiction of me

• There is a free version for enhancing pictures only (you must watch ads), and I used that for a while before committing to paying the fee.

TUESDAY

🐝 EASIEST way to start a newsletter - beehiiv

This newsletter is brought to you by Beehiiv, a platform that makes creating a newsletter super freaking easy. If you like the way this looks, it only took me a couple days to get comfortable, and I’ve never used any newsletter platform before.

• This platform was founded by former employees of Morning Brew (the first-ever newsletter I subscribed to in 2018), which now has over 4 million subscribers. Beehiiv basically wants to help people like you & me launch and monetize our own newsletters.

• I plan to update every week on my newsletter's subscriber growth and loss, tell you how I’m marketing my newsletter on other platforms, and the journey of creating a newsletter and seeing if I can be successful at monetizing it. Stay tuned!

WEDNESDAY

🎥 AI for Editing Videos - My favorite new editing software that isn’t Adobe, DaVinci or Final Cut..

What I’ve learned so far is that when it comes to video editing sh*t is time consuming and AI is trying to make that easier. It’s not perfect yet but certain softwares are better for different use cases obvi..

Descript 

All-in-one editing tool, making it super user-friendly, because software like Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci has a STEEP learning curve. I have my editor (Karina) still learning how to use Premiere Pro/Final Cut Pro/Apple Motion, but for now, this will do for what we need.

Favorite features:

• It transcribes your audio into text. You edit the script like it's a word doc, making trimming out what you don’t want super easy.

• You can turn your long-form YouTube videos into 9:16 TikToks/Reels.

• AI features: removing filler words for you, fixing eye contact in the video, enhancing your audio so you get studio-quality sound without having to leave the platform and dubbing your voice - if you want to add things you forgot to say or change it, it does it using your voice.

• It’s free for your first 1 hour of video, but I’m upgrading to the Pro Plan, which is $24/month, and I get every feature at an unlimited capacity.

THURSDAY

🎞 Adobe Primere Pro’s AI features I’m LOVING..

I hate, and I mean seriously hate, how difficult it is to edit on this damn platform. It takes people years to get good at this, which is not practical for 99% of people just starting. Here are the AI features of Adobe Premiere Pro that I’m liking/testing, which are keeping me from canceling my plan.

Adobe Podcast

• If you don’t have a mic, it doesn’t matter anymore. Run your audio file through this, and it makes it sound like you’re in a studio. No matter how shitty your quality is, it works so well every time.

• I tried their text-to-speech editor in Premiere Pro, but I hate the interface, which is why I ended up finding Descript and will be using that software for Podcast & advanced TikTok videos.

Adobe’s AutoPod

If this works like they say it does, this will be a game-changer for Podcast editing.

• Run your Podcast videos through AutoPod so that it will make the jump cuts for you as people speak. I have two cameras to focus on me and Karina, so manually we would have to cut the videos to focus on whoever is talking... but apparently, this will do it for you.

• I’m trialing it as I am writing this right now. The first couple of pod episodes for @thebasicbroz might be out by the time you read this, and I’ll have an update on if AutoPod next week.

• This works as an extension to Adobe Premiere Pro, unfortunately, and costs $29/month on top of the $31/month I pay for Premiere Pro 🙄

• Stay tuned to see if AutoPod cuts down the time on editing because if not, I will cancel my plan.

FRIDAY

📸 What Camera Did I Buy as a Beginner for my Podcast & Small Video Projects - Canon R50

I am releasing a more in-depth video this week about what I purchased for the entire set up. It was around $3,000 total but look out for the video on my new business TikTok page @NDBagency detailing everything I bought - Mics, Camera accessories, Lighting, etc.

Canon R50

• Beginner-friendly - I am no videographer/photographer, so this was key for me

• It was only $800, which, to me, is a great price for a starter camera & I needed 2.

• It only records up to one hour, which I didn’t know until after purchasing, so for longer podcasts, this will not work, but I am not doing 2HR+ videos... yet

• It comes with an 18-45MM lens, but I wanted additional zoom capabilities, so I bought the 55MM-250MM for an extra $300 - I intend on reaching out to LA Beauty/Medical spas since I currently service a MedSpa client back in Virginia. Thinking I can outreach to LA spas for social media content on a small project basis. Stay tuned for updates on how I pitch and close clients!