Ryan Hintze is a 24-year-old from Bradenton, Florida but was born in Providence, Rhode Island before moving to the sunshine state with his family when he was in the 3rd grade. He is the owner of the digital media agency, Hintze Media, a signed Wilhelmina fitness model and a lifestyle social media influencer. He is also an investor, traveller, fitness enthusiast and former Division 1 college athlete.
During his childhood, Ryan was a pretty shy guy and not the most popular kid in school. Ryan prefered hanging around adults and listening to intelligent conversations and didn’t relate much with kids his age. Ryan got picked on by kids in middle school, partly because they couldn’t understand him. That experience started a fire inside him that turned into motivation. Unlike other kids his age that played video games all day, Ryan would sell things on eBay and worked part-time at a golf course. He would go to yard sales and thrift store to purchase items at rock bottom prices then turn around and sell the items on eBay for top dollar. When Ryan was young he dreamed to one day become a product tester. He was and still is a geek at heart and loves the latest and greatest in gadgets. For fun, Ryan liked going to the skatepark, going fishing, playing golf and didn’t start playing sports competitively until high school. In high school, he played six varsity sports: football, basketball, golf, tennis, track and field and weightlifting. Once Ryan started playing sports, grew to a 6’6″ stature and packed on the muscle; the bullying came to a screeching halt.
When Ryan started playing college basketball and taking modelling more seriously, he began gaining a following on social media. His images were getting reposted by big publications and Ryan’s audience began to grow. After that, it was up to Ryan to keep his audience engaged. There have been times where Ryan has posted on social media three times a day for months straight.
Ryan leverages all of the content he has from his modelling career and repurposes it on his social media pages to constantly provide his audience with fresh content. He never has to scramble around to figure out what he’s going to post because he has millions of shots from the hundreds of photoshoots he’s had over the years.
When Ryan was in high school and college he often got aggravated because most of the time the teachers just had students do busywork that had nothing to do with the real world. He wanted to spend the time he spent doing unnecessary math problems researching new ways to make money online or running his business. There were many times when Ryan wanted to drop out of school but he decided to stick it out because one of his goals was to be a college graduate. In 2017, during Miami Swim Week, Ryan was booked for a few shows through his agency at the time, Elite Model Management. He had football workouts at 6:00 AM at his school, The University of South Florida in Tampa, attended class in the morning, then drove 4 hours to Miami to walk in runway shows until about midnight, then drove back to Tampa, slept for two hours then repeated the whole process for 3 days straight. He said the last day when he was driving back he started seeing things on the road and had to pull over to a rest stop and sleep until the next day. At the end of 2017, Elite model management decided to close down their men’s division in Miami so Ryan was on the hunt for a news agency.
Towards the end of college, the producers for America’s Next Top Model reached out to Ryan and asked him to apply to be on the show. Ryan submitted his application, made a video reel and went through the entire interview process. Right before they announced the cast, the producers sent an email out to all of the potential contestants and announced that they were going to take the show “back to the roots and have girls only”. After going through a bit of adversity Ryan started searching around the country for the best agency for him. He found the Wilhelmina Models Sports and Fitness board and knew right away that was the agency he wanted to be represented by. Ryan flew to NYC during his spring break to meet with agents and had 4 photoshoots in three days. The next week Ryan signed a contract with Wilhelmina USA.
After Ryan graduated college he decided to move to New York City to pursue his fitness modelling career full time. After three months of living in New York City, booking a few campaigns, attending many influencer events and doing almost every sightseeing activity possible he decided that although he loved the city, it just wasn’t right for him. His family was still in Florida and he didn’t like how far away he was from home. Ryan was spending thousands of dollars per month to rent a small 1 bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. It just wasn’t making sense for him to continue living in NYC when he could spend a fraction of that amount on a mortgage payment for an entire house in Florida. Ryan has since bought a house with his fiancé, Emily, and just finished renovating it. When Ryan gets booked for modelling gigs he now hops in his truck, drives to the airport 30 minutes away and flies to wherever he needs to be.
A day in the life of Ryan Hintze consists of managing Hintze Media clients, checking emails, working brand deals, posting on social media and going to the gym. Ryan does carpentry work on the side and plans to start flipping houses and investing in rental properties in the near future. When he’s not working, Ryan enjoys fishing, shooting guns, boating and home improvement.