We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Garret Wing. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Garret below.
Garret, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you manage your own social media?
When I first started social media about 3.5 years ago, my wife and I did everything from filming, to editing, posting and replying to all comments and messages. In that time, we have grown to an internal social media team of 7 individuals consisting of (1 social media manager, 3 editors, 1 videographer, 2 moderators). This team did not appear overnight. We grew slowly starting with just one part-time videographer/editor. We slowly began to add more folks to the team as our social media channels grew. I think it’s important when you first start out to be very involved in your social media in terms of filming, editing, posting, etc. You have to learn what works and doesn’t work. Most importantly, you have to know “How things work within social media” so that when you hire or train someone to take over you know whether or not they are doing a good job. However, the most important advice I can give to any business owner or entrepreneur that wants to grow their organic social media is that it will require more work and hours in the day than you can do yourself. You will have to eventually hire people to help and you may have to go through a handful of editors/videographers before you find one that you are happy with. Simple rule of thumb is it requires one hour of editing to complete one minute of final video. So, if you’re putting out one short form piece of content (60 seconds or less) every day it will require 7 hours a week. And, you should be putting out at least one to two pieces of content per day. Currently, short form content is the fastest way to grow a channel.
Garret, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Garret Wing. I am the owner and founder of American Standard Dog Training and DIYK9.com. We have over 5 million followers across social media where we help folks determine which breed of dog is best for them, and ultimately help them train their dogs and puppies to be the best that they can be. My background is in Police K9 training where I spent most of my adult and childhood growing up with and training police K9s. In the Police K9 world we cannot afford to have dogs failing to follow commands or perform their jobs as lives can be lost. I take all of the training and experience from Police K9 training and now specialize in obedience and manners for pet dogs. We have two main branches of the business: American Standard Dog Training and DIYK9.com. American Standard Dog Training serves VIP clientele with in-person premium level boarding and training for their personal dogs. We train celebrities, professional athletes and other VIP clients who want the highest quality professional level dog training for their personal dogs.
Due to our rapid growth in social media we quickly outgrew our capability to serve all of the clients who were requesting us to train their dogs in person. Born out of that necessity to serve more customers our online “Do-It-Yourself” dog training courses were born. DIYK9.com began in April of 2022 and has been successful beyond anything I could have ever imagined. We now are able to help dog owners across the globe train their pets to be the best that they can be. The results of our online courses have been so successful that many of our customers have actually begun their journey to become professional dog trainers. It’s no surprise, as the methods we are teaching in our courses are the exact same methods we use to train our VIP clients’ dogs. Thus, a new chapter in our business has begun.
The American Standard Academy for Professional Dog Trainers is the next vertical in our business. The mission is to teach others how to become successful dog trainers. Whether they are fresh out of high school, want to quit their 9 to 5, or they are already in the game, we want to show others how to fast track their way to success by doing what they love. As much as I love training dogs, my true passion is training others how to train dogs and as a bonus improve their personal and business lives. There is nothing more satisfying then hearing how we have transformed people’s lives whether that’s having an amazing pet or being able to quit their dead end job while making more money.
As we continue to push out highly qualified trainers our hope is to have an American Standard Certified Trainer in every part of the country and beyond. We have already trained and certified six trainers. Our aim is to build up to 100 trainers or more in the next few years and provide our high quality dog training services to anyone that can afford it.
Have you ever had to pivot?
In the summer of 2022 I had the biggest decision of my life I had to make. I was 18 years invested in a law enforcement career. I was only 3 years away from having a pensioned retirement and would have been able to “retire” at the age of 42 making about 70k a year for the rest of my life. The rough math was about a 3 million dollar retirement if I lived to be about 85 years old. The problem, however, was that I was in the 3rd year of growing my dog training business and it was starting to make significantly more than my law enforcement career and was requiring more and more of my time. I ran the numbers hundreds of different ways to try and determine what was the best course of action: A) Continue to juggle both my professional law enforcement career and growing my business, or B) Walk away from my guaranteed retirement and focus solely on the business. I was making 120k per year as a Lieutenant with the City of Miami Police Department. I was in a highly coveted position in the department overseeing one of our tactical investigative units. I only had to survive another 3 years and I could have a decent amount of “guaranteed” money coming in for the rest of my life. My business was making high six figures annually and my team had grown to about 8 employees, not including my wife and I. I had two young children 4 & 6 at the time, and they were a large factor in the equation as well. Working one full-time job and running a full-time business left little quality time to spend with the family. I agonized over this decision for about 6 months. I spoke to anyone and everyone that would listen including family, friends, mentors, a psychologist and a business/life coach. My business coach, Eddie with Eddie For Life, was the biggest help in terms of prioritizing things in my life and my business. But, even then, he couldn’t make the decision for me. This decision was too huge for anyone to take ownership of but a decision had to be made.
Ultimately, I made the decision to walk away from my retirement and focus 100% on the business. It’s the most stressful decision I’ve ever made in my life but it’s been about 12 months since making the decision and I don’t regret it for even one minute. My business has improved and grown significantly. We know have 24 employees with plans to continue to grow. Time with my family has greatly improved. We were able to move out of state (impossible when tied to a government job in one city) and buy a dream house (worth more then my entire retirement pension). And, this is only the beginning.
We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.
Let me paint a picture for you. About 4 years ago, I was hanging out with my wife and two young daughters (3 years old and 1 years old) in front of our small modest home in South Florida. The home was a 3 bed/2 bath and about 1750 square feet. It was in decent shape but far from fully renovated. We had a postage stamp for a yard (pretty much zero lot line). We had two vehicles, neither were luxury cars and both a few years old. We didn’t go on extravagant vacations or spend money on anything crazy. AND….we were barely making it. While I was in the yard with my wife and kids, who were playing in one of those cheap plastic pools you can fill up with a hose (our yard was too small to put in a pool but we couldn’t have afforded a pool if we wanted one anyways), I was on my phone and just finished paying our mortgage payment and was at the same time looking at the bank account and calendar to coordinate how our finances were going to be over the next few weeks based on my bi-weekly paychecks coming in and the bills we had coming up (credit cards, auto loans, student loans, etc). I was doing some math and I told my wife, “Hey, I don’t think we are going to be able to afford next month’s mortgage”. She looked at the numbers with me and came to the same realization. We were screwed…
I wasn’t panicking by any means, but I was definitely stressed and annoyed. We didn’t live a lavish lifestyle and didn’t live beyond our means. My wife was a stay at home mom so I was the only provider but I was making 120k per year (before taxes) and you would think we could afford to live in a decent neighborhood and have a decent life and not be living paycheck to paycheck. But this was the situation we were in. The solution almost all police officers do to afford to have a “nice life” and buy a new car or go on vacation with their family, etc. is to work “extra duty jobs”. This is what I’ve been doing for years working my regular 40-hour per week job and picking up an extra 10-20 hours of week of extra duty. But, since my kids had been born I was trying to stay home more and spend more time with the family. I still worked extra jobs but kept it around 10 hours per week. “Well,” I told my wife, “looks like I’m either going to have to pick up more jobs at work. Or, I’ve been thinking…What if I can make extra money but stay at home while doing it?”. I spoke with her at length for the next day or two strategizing what my talents were and where it might be possible to match up my skills with needs of would-be customers. The answer was ultimately “Dog Training”. I knew how to do it, there were people somewhat regularly asking me to help them train their dogs as they knew I had a strong background in police k9 training. I just always brushed it off as something I was “too cool” for as I was a high-speed experienced police K9 trainer, not some “pet dog” trainer. But, having kids to feed and a mortgage you can’t afford creeping up on you, trying to be “cool” takes a back seat and being practical and prudent takes the driver’s seat. This is how my side-hustle was born. That side-hustle has exploded in just a few short years. And now, even though I’m not stress free, I can say that I haven’t been worried about making my mortgage payments for a while. Instead, I stress a little bit about payroll as I want to make sure all my employees are able to cover their mortgages and expenses and live a great life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.americanstandardk9.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/americanstandardk9
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanStandardK9/
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/garretwing
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AmericanStandardDogTraining?sub_confirmation=1
- TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@americanstandardk9