James Brett is the founder of Truly Finance, an Australian mortgage brokerage approaching its fifth year in business. With more than 40 lenders on its panel, Truly Finance helps first-time buyers, those remortgaging, investors and other borrowers find finance suited to their individual circumstances.

James wants the company to be more than simply somewhere Australians go when they need a home loan. He wants Truly Finance to become what he calls a ‘soft finance educator’, sharing useful information with people who have a mortgage, are preparing to buy a home or simply want to understand their finances better.

​Social media were already central to that strategy. Truly Finance published four to five times a week across Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

​But James wasn’t using one format: video.

​‘I never wanted to get in front of the camera,’ James said.

​That meant video, and the wider reach it could offer, was largely out of the question. HeyGen changed that.

Reaching audiences beyond Truly Finance's followers

Before HeyGen, Truly Finance's social media strategy relied mainly on static images and written posts.

​‘Before we started using video, all our content was only seen by followers,’ James said.

​James wanted to reach people beyond that existing audience. Video offered Truly Finance another way to share its financial education with Australians who might not already be familiar with the company.

​The challenge was finding a way to produce videos consistently.

​James wasn't interested in becoming an on-camera personality, and traditional filming wasn't a practical basis for an ongoing video strategy. With HeyGen, he could create videos without having to record himself for every post.

​That helped Truly Finance incorporate video into an established social media strategy, rather than completely overhauling the company’s content creation process.

Going from no regular videos to two or three a week

Today, James publishes two to three HeyGen videos each week alongside Truly Finance's existing content.

The company continue to publish four to five static posts across Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, but video has increased both the volume and range of content they can share.

Truly Finance have also added TikTok, bringing their social presence to four platforms.

For James, the most significant change is straightforward. Video has gone from something he avoided to something Truly Finance can publish each week.

He's using the format to share accessible financial guidance rather than turning every post into a mortgage sales pitch. The aim is to become familiar to consumers before they ever need to speak to a broker.

If someone eventually needs a home loan, James wants Truly Finance to be a company they already recognise and trust.

Reaching more people and encouraging conversation with video

James is still in the early stages of developing Truly Finance's video strategy. He's experimenting with topics, posting frequency, video length and the types of educational content that resonate most.

But he's already noticing a difference.

Since adding video, James says Truly Finance is getting ‘much greater reach and many more comments’.

That's particularly important because reaching new people was one of the main reasons he wanted to add video in the first place.

James isn't attributing a particular new loan or sale to HeyGen yet. Instead, he's assessing whether video is helping Truly Finance showcase its expertise to a wider audience and encourage more discussion around the brand.

The initial results are encouraging him to continue.

Making video possible for a camera-shy founder

For James, the greatest benefit of HeyGen isn't necessarily the time it saves compared with traditional video production.

​Without HeyGen, he wasn't regularly creating videos at all.

James already had the mortgage expertise and ideas he wanted to share. He simply needed a way to turn them into videos without having to get comfortable filming himself every week.

​Video now forms a regular part of Truly Finance's communications.

Some viewers recognise that the videos use AI, but James hasn't seen that stop people from engaging with the content. Instead, the videos have also sparked interest amongst friends and colleagues who are curious about how he's creating them.

His advice to other mortgage professionals facing the same barrier is straightforward.

'Go for it if, like me, you are shy in front of the camera!'​

Truly Finance have spent years developing their lending expertise and helping Australians understand their finance options. With HeyGen, James can share more of that expertise on social media in a format he had previously avoided.

Rather than trying to become an on-camera creator, he publishes two to three videos a week, reaches people across four social platforms and is seeing greater reach and more discussion around Truly Finance's content.

For a founder who never wanted to appear on camera, video is finally something he can produce consistently.