For Jim McDonner, standing out as a new real estate agent meant doing something different.

After retiring from the U.S. Navy and starting 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 exploring ways to build a network using AI," Jim said.

Instead of producing the same listing videos and market updates as everyone else, Jim chose to focus on education. Every week, he answers the questions buyers and sellers ask most often, creating videos that explain the market rather than simply advertising homes.

After discovering HeyGen, Jim built a workflow that enables 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 take up most of the day. Jim researched topics, wrote scripts, collected B-roll, recorded narration, and then manually put everything together in Canva.

"I would spend hours editing each video," he said. "I simply don't have that much 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 surprise my channel didn’t get any traction."

Jim knew that consistency would determine whether video became a genuine business driver, but he needed a workflow that would fit into a hectic real estate schedule.

Building an AI-powered content system

After completing an AI certification course, Jim started testing dozens of AI tools to build the right technology stack for his business. Today, his process is almost fully automated.

He uses Manus to research the latest market trends, ChatGPT to draft scripts, Gamma to create 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 then gets on with the rest of his week.

"I can spend three, four hours at most on a Monday morning and create an entire week's worth of videos and schedule them in advance," Jim said.

Instead of editing every transition manually, Video Agent automatically creates engaging visuals, captions, and local B-roll footage.

"The Video Agent is what I use almost exclusively these days," he said.

The realism also surprised him. "I was quite surprised that you could take basically a still picture and recreate the mannerisms," Jim said. "Most people do not realise unless I tell them."

Reaching more buyers with educational video content

Since adopting HeyGen, Jim has moved away from generic market updates and towards educational content built around actual buyer questions.

"If someone asks me a question that really resonates with me, I make a quick 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 is seeing a noticeable shift in who watches his content.

When he first launched his channel, most of the 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 of age.

His videos have also started generating business. One educational listing campaign helped sell a $650,000 property in just seven days on the market. Another video attracted buyers relocating from Memphis.

He has also generated enquiries 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 the actual market value. The video became popular enough that a shopper recognised 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 that 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 irregularly, and finding it difficult to reach relocation buyers outside Arkansas.

"I wouldn't have come anywhere close to the audience I have reached," he said.

Today, he not only relies on HeyGen for his own marketing but also recommends it to other agents. He is preparing to conduct 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 come across," Jim said.

As he continues to grow his business, Jim sees video as the cornerstone of modern real estate marketing.

"To reach people, especially the younger group of buyers, you have to do it through video," he said.

And for him, HeyGen has made that possible.