Confidence in Front of the Camera with Bridget Ramey

“Authentic videos outperform any of the pretty, pretty property videos,” Bridget Ramey said. “People resonate with who you are.” She has found that the clients who come to her through those posts already share her values. “If you get to know me, you’re going to get to know my heart.”

For years, the luxury listing video has followed a familiar formula: a drone over the roofline, a slow pan across the kitchen, swelling music. It’s beautiful work, and it still has its place. But in a feed full of polished production, the content that gets people to pick up the phone is usually a person they feel they already know.

For advisors, that makes video less about production budgets and more about confidence. And confidence on camera comes from two things almost anyone can control: knowing your product and speaking in your own voice.

That was the case Bridget Ramey made on last Thursday’s Thursday 30. The session was the second in a back-to-basics series that Aaron Colby Begovich, REALM’s Vice President of Members and Community, has been calling “Better At…” Mac Mendenhall opened the series two weeks earlier with a session on in-person listing presentations. Ramey, an Austin luxury advisor who recently passed 100,000 Instagram followers, brought her own track record to back up every point.

Her first video was shot on an iPhone at the very start of the pandemic. She wore no makeup and a baseball cap. She was living alone, had just lost her dog, and was worried about the world and about the Austin market. She started standing outside the listings she hoped to win and simply telling the story of real estate. Then came a trophy listing and her first professionally produced property film. That one video drew so many buyers looking at Austin as a safe place to land that it led to a $28 million sale, followed by five or six more $20 million properties over the next year and a half.

“Once you get one, you get more,” Ramey said. She credits her face and name on screen more than the production value. “When people see you on screen talking about the property, ‘Hi, my name is Bridget Ramey from Austin, Texas,’ they feel like they know you. They establish this relationship with you that you don’t even know, and then they reach out to you because they’ve already chosen you.”

The unpolished videos win

The most surprising lesson came when Ramey and the marketing director on her team broadened her feed beyond listings to include the causes and moments that matter to her: Breast Cancer Awareness Month, National Kindness Day, a morning when her brother had been in an accident and she was simply sad.

“Those authentic videos outperform any of the pretty, pretty property videos,” she said. “People resonate with who you are.” She has found that the clients who come to her through those posts already share her values. “If you get to know me, you’re going to get to know my heart.”

She doesn’t put those posts on a content calendar. She estimated roughly one every two weeks, posted only when something is on her heart. During a recent trip to Tuscany, she set an alarm for sunrise over the cypress trees and recorded a single, unedited take about learning to be present and to stop and celebrate the win at the end of a transaction. Aaron played it for members on the call. It was one take, pauses and all, and it landed because it was real.

Your voice, your product, your squad

On the mechanics, Ramey was emphatic about one thing above all. “If there’s one thing I can tell you that is most key about starting in video, it has to be your voice,” she said. Scripts that others have handed her, written without her cadence or without the selling points she knows matter, have never worked.

In the early days she wrote her own scripts in the car on the way to a shoot and memorized them one short section at a time. Today her marketing director drafts them, having learned to write the way Ramey talks, and Ramey still adjusts them on set. The opening line is always the property’s top three selling points, the same way she would open a showing.

She also stressed knowing the subject. “If you asked me to talk about car batteries, I would fail,” she said. “It’s so important to know your product before you try to go speak about it, especially in front of a camera.”

She often gets a video in one take, but she told members not to hold themselves to that standard. “Do not scold yourself if you don’t get it in one take. You’re not expected to do that.” What helps more is the room: a videographer with energy and a “hype squad” of a friend, an assistant or a marketing director who makes you feel comfortable on camera.

The swing video

The clearest proof came from a Westlake Hills coming-soon listing. At the end of a shoot, just off a flight from Seattle, Ramey sat down on a swing on the property and talked with no script, walking herself through the house in her head. She covered nearly 1.7 acres on a corner double lot, roughly 6,000 square feet of single-level living, seven bedrooms and a guest house, a sports court, a pool and spa, and access to a lake club on Lake Austin. She closed by inviting viewers to message her for the price.

Her team posted it right away. “We launched that video on a Thursday. We didn’t even have pictures or video back,” Ramey said. “Saturday I had three showings from that video, I got two offers, and I sold it before we even had professional photography back.” The property also drew a backup contract.

Now every listing gets a “swing video,” whether or not there’s a swing involved. “If you’re already filming, why not get that swing video?” she said. “Why wait for the clock to start ticking?”

The same instinct shapes how she handles trends. She’ll dance to a song that feels like her, but she won’t chase formats that don’t fit. When videographers have pushed her toward shorter cuts, her answer has been simple. “I can’t sell this story in 30 seconds,” she said. “It’s been so important to me that we sell homes. That’s what I’m doing.”

A rising tide

Ramey’s latest project brings other agents into the process. For a strong listing that needs a fresh story, she is hosting what she calls a Real Estate Experiment. She invites fellow agents and local influencers to the property, brings her videographer, and helps anyone who is uncomfortable on camera record their own reels there, with restaurant gift cards for whoever’s posts travel furthest. The listing reaches audiences she isn’t connected to yet, and younger agents get a beautiful backdrop and a boost in confidence.

“Anything I’m doing that’s working, I want to share, because we should all have an equal platform in which to succeed,” she said. Her goal for the newer agents is to help them “wear that crown of confidence.”

She has seen what that confidence can do. Her best friend, Austin native Ryan Rogers, resisted video for years. About six months ago he finally got on camera, and since then people from his childhood have been reaching out and he has landed exceptional listings. Clients in his own backyard had simply forgotten he sold real estate.

“If there’s one thing I could tell you in your business to do,” she said, “picking up your iPhone is free.”

Aaron closed the session by tying it back to Mendenhall’s advice on listing presentations. “There is a proper way to humbly brag,” he said. “It’s not just to say, look how amazing I am. It’s saying, look how great I can be for you.” Ramey’s videos do exactly that. They let people meet the advisor they would actually be hiring, well before the first call.

REALM is a private, global membership community connecting leading luxury real estate advisors and independent brokerages through trusted relationships, shared market intelligence, strategic partnerships and meaningful collaboration.