Ray Carballada is the Managing Director and CEO of AmpiFLY, a next stage evolution video production company. He is an accomplished and creative business leader in the converging worlds of content: advertising, television, motion pictures, social, and online media. Before joining AmpiFLY as President & CEO/COO, Ray led Alkemy X’s transformation from a small crewing and post company into a fully integrated creative content company.
Ray’s experience also includes building Campbell Soup’s first in-house ad agency and production services department, and serving as Managing Director and Executive Producer of a Washington, D.C.-based production company. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology and a Master’s in Business Administration from Bucknell University.
In this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, John Corcoran interviews Ray Carballada, the Managing Director and CEO of AmpiFLY, about his work in content production and how he grew a small company to over $35 million. Ray also talks about the challenges he faced growing that company and his interest in working with augmented and virtual reality.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- Ray Carballada talks about building the first in-house ad agency and production services department at Campbell Soup Company
- Why Ray decided to work at Alkemy X and what he did to grow the company from $2.5 million to $35 million
- Ray talks about meeting and working with Marc Summers
- The challenges Ray faced in growing a small business to $35 million
- Ray’s advice on how to build business processes and working with advanced technology
- Ray explains why he decided to leave Alkemy X and his experience building AmpiFLY
- What makes Ray excited about augmented and virtual reality as opposed to traditional media production
- Examples of companies and organizations that are using augmented reality
- The people Ray acknowledges for his achievements and success
- Where to learn more about Ray Carballada and AmpiFLY
Resources Mentioned:
- AmpiFLY
- Ray Carballada on LinkedIn
- Lewis Schiff on LinkedIn
- Birthing of Giants
- No Man’s Land: Where Growing Companies Fail by Doug Tatum
- Marc Summers
Sponsor: Rise25
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:14
Welcome to the Revolution, the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we ask today’s most successful entrepreneurs to share the tools and strategies they use to build relationships and connections to grow their revenue. Now, your host for the revolution, John Corcoran.
John Corcoran 0:40
Welcome everyone. John Corcoran here, I’m the host of this show. I am a recovering political hack, recovering lawyer having spent many years working in politics, including as a speechwriter ever since working in the Clinton White House for California Governor also spent years practicing law in Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area. And in 2010, I discovered this medium of podcasting, I’ve been doing it ever since, or 10 years of hosting the show. I’ve had the privilege to talk with top CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs, all kinds of companies and organizations ranging from YPO, EO, Activision Blizzard, Lendingtree, Open Table, FreshBooks, and many more. And today, I’m also the co-founder of Rise25, where we help b2b businesses with the strategy and production they need to create podcasts that produce content marketing and tremendous ROI and connects them with their ideal prospects and referral partners. And first, before introducing today’s guest, I want to give a big shout out to Louis Schiff, who connected me with today’s guest. This is the chairman and birthing of giants check them out at birthing of giants calm also a past guest on this show, and my guest is Ray Carballada. Ray is the Managing Director and CEO of AmpiFLY which is a next stage evolution video production company. They combine new technologies data strategy and product research to help companies use video content to reach new customers.
So we’re going to talk about that they produce branded video using a combination of video virtual reality, augmented reality and entertainment content for brands. He’s also an accomplished strategy operations and production executives and he’s worked in all kinds of different worlds including motion pictures, TV, advertising, social and online media and before AmpiFLY, he actually led transformation growth of Alkemy X, which was a small video production company into a fully integrated $35 billion dollar creative content company. He also developed and sold the first reality TV show to err on the Food Network restaurant impossible. So we’ll ask him all about that. And more about his background first, before we get into that this episode is brought to you by Rise25 Media, right? So Rise25 helps b2b businesses to get clients referrals and strategic partnerships done for your podcasts and content marketing. If you’re listening to this, and you’ve ever thought, should I start a podcast? I say yes, you absolutely should. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done for my business. And for me, personally. And we specialize in helping b2b businesses with the right strategy and the behind the scenes team to make sure that you get a really great ROI from that initiative. So to learn more, and get inspiration and ideas on how to get clients referrals and some of the best friendships or your life from a podcast, go to rise25media.com or email us at [email protected]. All right, Ray, I’m excited to talk to you about the amazing background here. And you started it all at, you know, this iconic company, Campbell’s soup, and you develop the first in-house ad agency and Production Services Department, which is amazing to think that such an iconic company didn’t have that at all. What was it like building that within such an iconic American company?
Ray Carballada 3:36
Well, there was, you know, interesting, they had just brought in a new CEO, David Johnson, who really turned the company around, he was the first I think he was pretty sure he was the first outside CEO that wasn’t part of the family that owns Campbell’s. So he was making a lot of demands, and on the company overall. And part of it was, you know, trying to really look at things very differently. They had a design department to design, you know, labels and things like that. And, and this department I took over, it was really a photography department that did photography and some presentations and things like that. And the goal was to really provide a much, much more of an in house kind of agency to work primarily with a lot of brands that didn’t have agencies behind it, like open pit Marie’s, things like that. And then we also, you know, we’re involved in market, a lot of market research, the amount of test commercials that I did for Campbell’s, you wouldn’t believe I mean, some of the things that were going on Actually, that’s how I sort of got my start of looking at data differently, too, because they use data way back, way back round two.
John Corcoran 4:49
That’s pretty early. Yeah.
Ray Carballada 4:50
Yeah. So you know, so it was an interesting, interesting job and actually, I learned you know, I learned more about business there are actually put everything together for me in business by working at Campbell’s, because I ended up being very involved in the board and strategy presentations there, helping write them and present them and things like that. And you know, David Johnson CEO was a self made guy from Australia. So, you know, he’d called me into his office, I can remember the first time he called and said, Hey, great. Come on, I want to talk to you about my presentation on Wall Street. I called up my boss and said, David called me. He goes, Yeah, I know, he told me, he was gonna call you to go talk to him. And since then, you know,
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