Heather Gansel created Ask Doctor Heather around a simple idea: athletes should understand why their bodies hurt, rather than merely how to relieve the pain temporarily.

As a movement specialist and performance educator, Heather helps athletes and active adults identify movement imbalances, address recurring pain, and build more resilient bodies through virtual coaching, corrective programming, and education.

That education-first approach extends well beyond her client sessions. Heather shares content on movement, injury prevention and performance across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook, helping people understand their bodies while building trust with prospective clients.

The challenge is producing enough content.

"If I'm trying to publish nearly 42 pieces of content every week, there's no way I can set aside time to record videos in bulk while managing my full-time job, meeting clients, and handling everything else," Heather said.

With HeyGen, she does not have to.

Transforming a single photo into a consistent video presence

Creating a polished video once meant getting camera-ready, finding time to film, writing scripts, and sending the footage to a video editor.

Heather discovered HeyGen after watching another creator demonstrate an AI avatar. She was impressed by how difficult it was to tell the AI version apart from the real person and decided to try it herself.

She began with a static photo and provided video clips so HeyGen could recreate her voice and movements.

​"I was very impressed by how it animated my entire self," Heather said. "It used my actual voice, which I really liked as well. I thought, okay, this is really cool."

Heather now uses her avatar for talking-head videos and can add B-roll, exercises, captions and other visual elements without having to film every segment herself.

Create days’ worth of content in under an hour

Heather has integrated HeyGen into a broader AI-powered content workflow.

She uses Claude to analyse existing content, identify topics and keywords, and help write scripts. She then brings those scripts into HeyGen to quickly turn them into videos.

​“In less than an hour, I can have nearly three days’ worth of content prepared, scheduled, and ready to go,” Heather said.

That speed makes a demanding publishing schedule possible. Heather has increased her Instagram cadence from one morning Reel to as many as three Reels throughout the day, organising content around weekly themes such as lower back pain.

She still films herself for demonstrations where showing a precise technique matters. HeyGen handles more of the educational talking-head content that fills out the rest of her calendar.

​And Heather hasn't seen any drop in engagement when her avatar takes her place.

"It doesn't matter whether it's HeyGen or me personally," she said.

Heather says no one has identified the videos as AI-generated, and friends she has shown them to were surprised to learn that they had not actually been filmed.

“They’re like, ‘Wow, this is truly impressive. I would never have known it wasn’t you unless you had told me,’” Heather said.

Establishing trust before the first conversation

For Heather, creating more content isn't simply about filling up a social media calendar. It helps potential clients understand her expertise before deciding whether to work with her.

Her YouTube channel is already a major source of demand. Heather estimates that nearly 50% of her leads come from YouTube, often after people have watched several educational videos.

"They've watched and taken in quite a few videos," Heather said. "They think, okay, she certainly knows her subject. She's educating us. Then they get in touch."

Consistent video content gives Heather more opportunities to explain movement patterns, clear up misconceptions, offer injury-prevention advice, and help athletes understand their bodies even before they speak with her.

HeyGen makes it possible to create those touchpoints without taking time away from existing clients.

Create more without paying for each video

HeyGen has also transformed the economics of Heather's content production.

Previously, she worked with a professional video editor who charged approximately $175 to over $200 for a single video. Heather still provided the script, storyboard direction, B-roll suggestions, and other creative inputs before the editor put together the final product.

At that price, producing the volume she wanted was not practical.

With HeyGen, she says the cost is “still a fraction of what I was paying just to have a video editor”.

She can now produce educational content at the scale her strategy requires, while maintaining consistency in her voice, appearance, brand and messaging.

Next, Heather wants to extend the same workflow beyond short-form social content to advertisements and longer YouTube videos. In the longer term, she sees an even greater opportunity: making more of her expertise accessible to people who may not be able to work with her individually.

For Heather, that is the promise of sharing her knowledge at scale without putting further strain on her schedule.

"You can't meet everyone," she said.