Daily Inspiration: Meet Ryan Gallego

Ryan Gallego
August 27, 2021

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan Gallego. He shares his story with us below:

I picked up my first camera at the age of 14 when I started working for a sports photography company in St. Louis, MO. It was here that I started feeding my passion not only for photography but for business. My boss at the time, Paul Bryant, who would turn out to be a long-time mentor, took me under his wing and started sharing his business knowledge. At age 17, I started my first “unofficial” photography company and made $30,000 in the first year. This taste of financial success and business autonomy is what drove me to go on to double major in Economics & Finance at Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville.

After finishing school, I relocated to Austin, Texas to work with the corporate and cultural giant – Amazon. A year and a half into working at Amazon and feeling unfulfilled by my work was when the concept for Media Pouch was born. On a business trip to Seattle, I attended a dinner with one of my coworkers’ fathers who needed help building a website. He had heard of a hobby I had been building on the side of developing websites and digital marketing. While working on the website, I realized that the company had no digital content to display. Spotting a hole in the market almost immediately I offered to bring my camera and drone up to Seattle the next weekend.

An epiphany about the freedom and potential of entrepreneurship as opposed to the grueling day to day of office life came on a boat in Croatia with my old college friend. It was here, after filming for The Yacht Week, capturing World class views with my camera and drone, that the future of Media Pouch was cemented. Around this time, the digital world of Instagram and Facebook were opening new doors for the online advertising space and I said, ‘epic videos for million-dollar homes’ that’s how I was going to get into the game. Upon returning from this trip, I was laser-focused on improving my skills and dedicating as much time as possible to build this company. Throughout 2018 & 2019, I spent all my spare time building Media Pouch on the side while working at Amazon.

In May 2019, on my 3-year anniversary with Amazon, I took the leap of faith and resigned, determined to build Media Pouch full time.

I went on to follow a lifelong dream of mine and moved to Sydney, Australia to work with some clients and launch the company abroad. I returned stateside in November 2019 and have since been scaling Media Pouch across the USA.

Our mission at Media Pouch is to dethrone Red Bull Media House by capturing the most epic and exclusive content in the entire world.

We’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the most powerful and innovative companies around the World like Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, Freedom Supercars, Air BnB, The Yacht Week, Sotheby’s International, F45, Elevate Holistics, HoloGear, Bossman Brands, Industrious, Ranger Creek Whiskey, and Dutch Bros Coffee.

In 2020 COVID hit and it had a positive correlation with video production. What was going to take the next five years for video adoption happened almost overnight in under two months. Brands, businesses, and entrepreneurs needed a way to communicate and tell their stories to their customers/audience once everything shut down and restrictions were put in place, video ultimately became the most effective tool to accomplish that. In 2020 alone our videos drove $1.75M of new revenue for clients.

2021 has been a wild year of growth. We started the year at $10K in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and last month was our first month of $50K MRR. The team has grown to 6, which includes video editors/producers and a project manager. Our client base has changed drastically and we continue to work with even bigger names and brands ranging from a famous dentist where we consistently work with big name influencers/celebrities to new exotic supercar brands/apps all the way to cannabis companies.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
When I left amazon to build media pouch full time, I also left to go launch the company abroad in Sydney, Australia (specifically Bondi Beach). My biggest dream in life was to do exactly that, but ultimately I hit a fork in the road with visa issues. I went over to Australia on a working holiday visa with the hope to sponsor myself at the end of the year, but about five months into the move, I learned that in order to do that I needed to have an Australian business partner with stakeholder equity and about $1M in investment behind the company. My other options were to work on a farm for a year, go back to school, find a corporate job to sponsor me or marry an Australian citizen. It was a really hard decision to make since this was my dream and I had already started doing business in the country with a growing client base. I knew that in order to truly get this company off the ground I needed to be able to dedicate all my blood, sweat, tears, energy, thoughts, and money solely at media pouch and not to visa-related issues so I made the tough decision to leave.

When I came back to Texas, I moved in with my ex-girlfriend. We thought it was a good decision at the time, but it backfired once COVID hit. As I was getting media pouch off the ground in the US she helped me land a couple part-time gigs to stay afloat. On the weekends, I was wrapping tulips on a tulip farm down in San Antonio, pouring alcohol for tasting events at stores like HEB, twin liquors, and total wine during the weeknights all while attending 3-5 business networking events per day between Austin and San Antonio. It was a lot of work and full transparency, it hurt the ego/confidence quite a bit. When I look back at that period of time, I know for a fact that those hard times of pressure were the ones that made diamonds for me.

From November 2019 to April 2020, media pouch’s revenue was about $4K total and I remember I had about $25K in credit card debt, along with monthly rent and student debt payments, which was nerve-racking. Those exact things gave me so much fear/anxiety that it fueled my motivation to push even harder/faster to get media pouch going.

Another huge obstacle was back in March 2020. I contracted out a videographer to help me with a massive automotive shoot, but he ended up stealing all of media pouch’s footage from the shoot. He took it a step further and even started stealing our IP. From our mission statement to slogan and even to our process. In the end, I had to hire a lawyer to send the person a cease and desist to save media pouch’s IP from being stolen. It was a disaster but a huge learning lesson for me in the long run.

In regards to it being smooth, I did not expect Media Pouch to get to this level of revenue, brand recognition, client base, and even team size in under two years. COVID had a positive correlation with video production/editing/marketing and it was a huge blessing in disguise for the company. We went from doing $4k over six months to finishing 2020 at $10K MRR and this year, we’ll finish at $50K MRR. So it was definitely the right place, right time to start media pouch when I did. Another smooth aspect has been just living in Austin. Everyone is so nice here and that’s initially what drew me into this city back in 2014 when I first visited. Doing business in Austin with a thriving economy has been so amazing and good for business. Everyone is more than happy to network with you and introduce you to whoever.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I always tell people I’m an entrepreneur that just so happens to have a super creative mind.

On a daily basis, I’m a filmmaker, editor, problem solver, director/producer, IT manager, therapist, and a whole lot more. The point is I wear a lot of hats and I absolutely love it since everyday is completely different. I love creating content that makes a difference in the world, makes people smile/laugh, or tell a story that’s never been told before.

I’ve developed an exclusive and unique process that drives results for our clients in an unconventional way. I won’t spill all the beans here, but this is where we can guarantee an ROI to our clients by writing metadata into their videos. Essentially, writing metadata into videos that you publish online is like writing SEO rich keywords into your google ads.

The other key ingredient that sets us apart from others is our editing style. Our edits are seamless and buttery smooth. It’s hard to explain, but this is where my imagination goes crazy with creativity. From the song choice to the transitions, to the shot selection, to the sequence of shots, etc… I just have a unique way of looking at things from the viewer’s perspective and I try to give them an experience that they haven’t seen before. We’re telling stories in such a unique way that’s actually engaging to people and causing them to stop scrolling. I identify unique and epic brands for us to work with since it’s important for us to work on projects that max out our creativity and passions. A lot of brands struggle with creativity and we’re helping bridge that gap. We know these companies expect results with the amount of money they’re spending with us, but that’s why we design our videos with ROI and business in mind from the get go.

Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
Apps: Calm. I use the app for meditation and sleeping at night.

Books: Currently, I’m reading trillion-dollar coach. I’ve read a ton of books on entrepreneurs from Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos and to Steve Jobs. Those provide a lot of insight on the entrepreneurship roadmap.

Podcasts: Joe Rogan. His podcast helps me digest a ton of information in a short amount of time and understand his guest’s perspectives on the topics.

Other resources: YouTube. I consume so much content on youtube for the specific task of learning about something that I don’t know how to do. I’ve learned about 85% of everything related to media production/filmmaking/editing solely from YouTube. It’s by far the best resource that’s helped me excel in life.