We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andrew Garza a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Andrew, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
I inherit my work ethic from both the men and women in my family. My father has been an entrepreneur long before it became fashionable. As a teenager, he was pulled out of high school and forced to work in the fields picking onions. To this day, he won’t eat anything containing onions. When I asked him why a few years ago, his response staggered me. He explained how the onions would grow soft under the hot sun, and his fingers would dig into them, leaving a lingering scent that still makes him nauseated. Talk about lasting trauma.
On my mother’s side, my grandfather exemplifies remarkable work ethic. Born into a migrant family, he recalls driving his mother and sisters up north when he was just 8 years old. As a young man, he started by cutting grass for the city of Mission in South Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. Determined to advance, he put himself through school and became an electrician. Today, he owns a business that has created a more than comfortable life for my mother and uncles.
Interestingly, I always felt somewhat different from the men in my family. However, my heart connected to them in a profound and unexpected way when I began my own journey as a creative entrepreneur.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
My name is Andrew Garza, originally from a small town in South Texas. I’m a photographer and an aspiring cinematographer.
My love affair with cameras began in 2004 when I observed a mother photographing her toddler at a local park. It was a brisk afternoon, and my stepmom had taken my siblings and me there for lunch. In retrospect, I realize she was offering me an escape from a difficult day in our tumultuous household. That simple moment sparked something in me that would take years to fully ignite.
Despite this early fascination, I didn’t purchase my first camera until 2020—yes, right as the pandemic began. After relocating from Chicago to a small town of just 17,000 people, I found myself craving meaningful connections. Photography became my bridge to building new relationships.
In 2021, I moved to Dallas and worked for the city for a year before taking the leap into full-time freelance photography. As an active practitioner of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I naturally gravitated toward the athletics world, finding my niche there. My first significant breakthrough came when I secured a recurring client relationship with a soccer team called Shape the Game.
My career took another turn in 2024 when I was hired as a director and video editor with AT&T—marking my first six-figure income, which was incredibly exciting. However, eight months into the role and just two months before my wedding, I was surplussed.
This unexpected change became a catalyst for something greater. In early 2025, my wife and I made the collective decision that I should fully embrace the sports world and claim my space there. Since then, I’ve invested in comprehensive lighting equipment and have focused on creating dynamic “sportraits”—portraits that capture athletes in their element. I continue to shoot and edit videos for various sports academies and businesses beyond the athletic sphere.
A significant milestone in this journey was establishing Lone Wolf Media Productions, our LLC. My wife and I founded the company to formalize our growing media business and expand our service offerings. The name reflects both our independent approach to creative work and our commitment to authentic storytelling. Through Lone Wolf, we’ve been able to diversify our client base while maintaining our focus on sports photography and videography. The company has allowed us to take on larger projects and collaborate with brands that align with our vision of capturing genuine moments of human performance and connection.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The quality that I would recommend for every entrepreneur to develop is discipline. There is no safety net when you leave your 9 too 5. It starts and ends with you.
I would also recommend that every entrepreneur learn the basics of business. This is what separates that ones that make it and the ones that don’t. Learn to build a good customer funnel, find a good CRM software and learn how to communicate.
Surround yourself with good people. This race isn’t a sprint. It is a marathon. There’s a proverb that says, “If you want to go fast – go alone. If you want to go far – go together.”
* This is a bonus tip from me. Take the time to discover who you are and what makes your heart beat. This journey is long and you will need a bigger motivation than money, success and glamour.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist” has profoundly shaped my perspective on life. The greatest lesson I’ve taken from the story is that “the destination is a facade.”
For years, I placed tremendous pressure on myself to achieve specific milestones that I believed would signify success—making six figures, owning my dream car, and other material benchmarks. However, what the book helped me realize is that by the time I reached these goals, I had often outgrown them, and they no longer brought the fulfillment I had anticipated.
The journey of Santiago, the shepherd boy in the novel, mirrors this truth. As he pursued his Personal Legend, he discovered that the real treasure wasn’t necessarily what awaited at the end but what he gained along the way—wisdom, love, and self-discovery.
This realization has transformed how I approach life. I’ve begun to find peak happiness not in achieving predefined goals, but in the process of loving and caring for others. The true alchemy, I’ve learned, happens when we stop fixating on destinations and start appreciating the transformation that occurs during the journey itself.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lone-wolf-productions.com/
- Instagram: @andrew.garza_photos and @the.lone.wolf.productions
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-garza-5ba889276
Image Credits
Andrew Garza
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