For Jim McDonner, standing out as a new real estate agent meant doing something different.
After retiring from the U.S. Navy and beginning a second career in real estate, Jim entered one of the country's most competitive housing markets. Northwest Arkansas is home to Walmart, Tyson Foods, and J.B. Hunt, with roughly 40 new residents moving to the region every day. At the same time, more than 4,000 licensed agents compete for their business.
"I started looking at ways to build a network through AI," Jim said.
Rather than producing the same listing videos and market updates as everyone else, Jim focused on education. Every week, he answers the questions buyers and sellers ask most often, creating videos that explain the market instead of simply advertising homes.
After discovering HeyGen, Jim built a workflow that allows him to consistently publish educational videos, reach relocation buyers before they arrive in Arkansas, and compete with agents who have spent decades building their businesses.
Replacing hours of editing with a repeatable workflow
Before HeyGen, creating a single video could consume most of a day. Jim researched topics, wrote scripts, collected B-roll, recorded narration, and manually assembled everything inside Canva.
"I would spend hours editing each video," he said. "I don't have that kind of time."
To improve quality, he hired a professional videographer to produce a series of 12 videos. While the results were good, the process remained expensive and time-consuming. Even then, he managed to publish only one or two videos each week and often skipped weeks altogether.
"It wasn't very consistent," he said. "It's no wonder my channel didn't get any traction."
Jim knew that consistency would determine whether video became a real business driver, but he needed a workflow that fit into a busy real estate schedule.
Building an AI-powered content system
After completing an AI certification course, Jim began testing dozens of AI tools to build the right technology stack for his business. Today, his process is almost entirely automated.
He uses Manus to research the latest market trends, ChatGPT to draft scripts, Gamma to build buyer and relocation guides, and HeyGen's Video Agent to produce polished videos using his brand assets.
Every Monday morning, he plans the week's content, writes his scripts, generates five videos, schedules each one, and moves on with his week.
"I can spend three, four hours max on a Monday morning and create a whole week's worth of videos and pre-schedule them," Jim said.
Instead of editing every transition manually, Video Agent automatically creates engaging visuals, captions, and local B-roll.
"The Video Agent is what I use almost exclusively now," he said.
The realism also surprised him. "I was very surprised that you could take basically a still picture and come up with the mannerisms," Jim said. “Most people don't know unless I tell them.”
Reaching more buyers through educational video
Since adopting HeyGen, Jim has shifted away from generic market updates and toward educational content designed around real buyer questions.
"If someone asks me a question that kind of resonates with me, I make a little note," he said. "Then I write a script and create a video on that."
The strategy has steadily grown his audience. His YouTube channel now has more than 1,000 subscribers, while his TikTok and LinkedIn audiences continue to expand. More importantly, he's seeing a noticeable shift in who watches his content.
When he first launched his channel, most viewers were other real estate agents.
"I'd say now probably 70% of my audience is in that key demographic," he said, referring to buyers between 25 and 45 years old.
His videos have also begun generating business. One educational listing campaign helped sell a $650,000 property after just seven days on the market. Another video attracted relocation buyers from Memphis.
He has also generated inquiries from California after running targeted educational video campaigns in areas where people frequently relocate to Northwest Arkansas.
One of his most successful videos explained why Zillow's Zestimate often differs from actual market value. The video became popular enough that a shopper recognized Jim by his voice while he was walking through Sam's Club.
"She came up to me and said, 'Hey, I just saw your video on Zillow,'" Jim said.
For Jim, that moment confirmed his educational approach was working.
Building a modern real estate business with AI
Jim believes AI has become one of the biggest competitive advantages available to newer real estate agents.
Without it, he says he would still be manually editing videos, publishing inconsistently, and struggling to reach relocation buyers outside Arkansas.
"I wouldn't have reached anywhere near the audience that I've reached," he said.
Today, he not only relies on HeyGen for his own marketing but also recommends it to other agents. He's preparing to teach a training session for the 24 agents in his brokerage, showing them how to build consistent video workflows using AI.
"It's probably the easiest way to create a professional video that I've found," Jim said.
As he continues growing his business, Jim sees video as the foundation of modern real estate marketing.
"To reach people, especially the younger group of buyers, you've got to do it through video," he said.
And for him, HeyGen has made that possible.
