Photo Credit: Garrett Shiner
Written in partnership with DN News Desk
To this day, society continues to frown upon those who drop out of college. Those who do not make the grade and fail to go the distance are thought to lack character, ambition, innovation, creativity, and a work ethic. As an idea, this is quite ridiculous when you consider world-famous luminaries such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Charles Darwin all dropped out of college to pursue a bigger dream.
Following a dream and staying true to your own instincts is something Garrett Shiner is all too familiar with. The founder of Shiner Marketing knew since the 7th Grade that he wouldn’t find his true destiny at college. Yet as he admits, “By the same token at the time, I had no other definite career path to follow.”
Through his formative years, seeds were continually being sown, which would stand him in good stead in later life. A young Shiner was forever dabbling in such things as Bitcoin Mining and starting Shopify stores. He had always enjoyed and seemed to have a knack for building communities on social media. When he was 15, he built a following of 4k in a week on TikTok’s old platform Musical.ly, and when not busy mastering the piano and learning Japanese, he proved to be extremely adept on Twitch.tv.
To establish a career in what became his passion – streaming, Shiner began to dedicate every waking hour, and even some of those that should have been used for sleeping, to make a name for himself on his Twitch stream.
Shiner explains, “I lived, breathed, ate, and slept streaming. It’s something I loved to do. With college on the horizon, I told my girlfriend I don’t need a degree to make this happen and would give my all to make it a career.”
As it transpired, giving his ‘all’ is exactly what Shiner did. His obsessive commitment to his passion cost him his girlfriend, friends and forced him to switch schools. Realizing the damage it was doing, Shiner also quit streaming.
Yet the tale doesn’t end there; in fact, it’s merely the beginning. Taking the key lessons he had learned about work/life balance on board and exploiting his experience to maximum effect, Shiner founded an apparel band called Easel and monetized his social media accounts. The upshot was his income was soon so healthy and consistent that he was in a position where going to college was off the table, and starting Shiner Marketing was very much on.
Shiner explains, “I felt I could use my skills to help others to make money through social media, lead generation, email and text marketing, SEO and websites and paid advertising. I’m certainly glad I did because it has paid off big time. We now work with businesses across America and have a team of 100 employees across the globe.”
Reflecting on why he opted to strike out on his own as opposed to following the more traditional college path, Shiner muses, “I don’t think college could have taught me anything about the area I wanted to work in. Only experience can do that. I’m not knocking college. It works for a lot of people, but there’s an exception to every rule. So work hard to become the exception.”
