Petspace Podcast
What was the moment you knew your life would never be the same because of an animal? Whether it was a childhood pet or a connection made at a time you least expected, animals can shape and transform our lives in incredible ways.
Brought to you by Wallis Annenberg Petspace, the PetSpace podcast is here to explore the human-animal bond and these undeniable experiences with celebrity guests, industry professionals, and your everyday animal lovers.
Learn more about Wallis Annenberg PetSpace on our website annenbergpetspace.org.
Petspace Podcast
Episode 16 - Matt Nelson aka WeRateDogs
“The dogs are good again this week.” Over the years, Matt Nelson of WeRateDogs has delivered some iconic lines in support of man’s best friend, and as WeRateDogs’ presence has grown, so has Matt’s ambitions to give back to the community of dog-lovers that he has amassed. Enter the 15/10 Foundation, inspired by the followers of WeRateDogs this foundation now covers medical bills to make shelter dogs more adoptable.
On this episode of the PetSpace Podcast, Matt talks about why he was personally inspired to start the 15/10 Foundation, how a small college in North Carolina led to the creation of internet sensation WeRateDogs, and how he and his team are constantly working to earn and retain the trust of their community.
For more from WeRateDogs, check out their website, and follow them on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram.
The Petspace Podcast is:
Hosted by Catie Voglio,
Recorded & Edited by Roger Gomez,
Produced by Cameron Kell,
To learn more about Wallis Annenberg Petspace visit us at our website annenbergpetspace.org
[PODCAST MUSIC FADES IN]
CATIE:
Welcome to the PetSpace Podcast! If we had to rate this week’s guest, without hesitation we would give him a solid fifteen out of ten! Matt Nelson is the founder of everyone’s favorite social media dog-ranking account, WeRateDogs. Matt has joined us in the PetSpace Podcast studio to give us a complete breakdown of how he started this absolute viral sensation, all while still juggling college classes. This account has given us all an escape from reality for years by always staying on top of who the best boys and girls are on the Internet at all times. As if Matt didn’t provide us all with enough joy, he’s harnessed his following and took inspiration from his late dog, Doug, to help us fund medical bills that may serve as a barrier to a pet’s adoption. With a full team behind him and millions more following, Matt is only getting started, and we can’t wait to see the lasting impact WeRateDogs and the 15/10 Foundation will have on dog lovers and dogs everywhere. Please get ready to rate our guest this week, Matt Nelson!
[PODCAST MUSIC FADES OUT]
CATIE:
Matt Nelson, the Dogfather, WeRateDogs—Welcome to the PetSpace Podcast!
MATT:
Thank you so much for having me.
CATIE:
So you have given birth to an absolute internet phenomenon. Everyone that I know and 3.5 million other people, at least on Instagram alone, follow WeRateDogs. And that is what we're here to talk about today. So Matt, we're diving right in: as little Matt Nelson, did you ever think you would birth such a behemoth of an internet sensation?
MATT:
No, not at all. Um, I—I was always looking for a creative outlet, like that has always been consistent since I was a kid: writing in journals, writing nonsensical stories, um... and Twitter was really a place where that expanded to when I was in high school. I was pretty late joining it; all my peers already had it, and then I got on and started writing jokes. I was like, interested in comedy. Some of the comics that I looked up to tested material on Twitter, and I was like, “This is a test—a good testing ground to see if I can cultivate an audience, if I can just make—if I can entertain people.”
CATIE
Yeah.
MATT:
So my friends thought it was very weird that I wasn't using it like them.
CATIE:
Uh huh.
MATT:
But… yeah, that was my, my intro to social media as like a creative space.
CATIE:
Did high school Matt—I guess, I do remember when they launched Twitter; regrettably, to date myself, I was graduating college and it was one of our assignments to make a Twitter account.
MATT:
Oh, wow. Yeah.
CATIE:
Which is so weird thinking back now, because it's like, it's part of what you do as a person almost, and—oh, I guess it’s “X” now or whatever we’re calling it, so… [laughs]
MATT:
We're gonna keep it—calling it Twitter. [laughs]
CATIE:
We're gonna stick with the bird. And so you rolled with comedy, and then out of high school, [you] went to college. I was reading an interview from, from a few years ago, many years ago, and it said you were actually going to school through a golf program in a very small school in North Carolina.
MATT:
Yes, that’s correct. [laughs]
CATIE:
I actually Googled it. I lived in North Carolina for a while, and I was like, “Where was Matt?”
MATT:
[laughs] Yep.
CATIE:
And it was a very remote part of North Carolina. [laughs]
MATT:
Yes, it was! Yeah, so I… the only thing I did growing up was, I swam and I played golf. Those were my sports, very individual sports, and I didn't really have any other passions that would dictate, like, where I would go to school or what I would major in. So I was like, “Okay, there's not much of a career in swimming unless you're an Olympian—”
CATIE:
Unless you're Michael Phelps, yeah.
MATT:
And I'm 5’8’’, so that wasn't gonna happen. So golf, there's a huge industry and many many job opportunities. And I was like, “This sounds fun. I'll—you know, take my classes in the morning, I'll play golf in the afternoon and—”
CATIE:
Sounds like a dream! [laughs]
MATT:
Yeah, living—you know, live a good life and, and I got to school and I was just very bored with that culture of a small town. I hadn't formed any personal opinions yet, and that was—like I was simply being exposed to the internet. I was like, “Oh, this is maybe not, you know, a demographic that I really vibe with.”
CATIE:
Sure.
MATT:
So, with that came, you know, a—more time spent on social media, more time spent on the internet, and—
CATIE:
Well, just kind of discovering your people, right?
MATT:
Yeah.
CATIE:
Like finding a niche—to your point earlier, like finding that niche, finding that crowd that responded to what you were putting out into the world.
MATT:
Yeah, [it] also expanded my own worldview. So to know that there was more out there than this, this small college town that I just happened to be at—
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
—through a single interest really led me to spend a lot of time on the internet, and that gave birth to… you know, the idea to really double down on dog content that had been performing well. Like if I would make a joke that had to do with dogs, or had a dog as a main character, or had to do with my own golden retriever at the time back home, it would perform really well, and I was like, “Well, this is fun.” It's more—it's less of a risk in the content, because everyone loves dogs.
CATIE:
Yeah. And if you don't, there's bigger problems. [laughs]
MATT:
[laughs] Exactly. So why—why not make a new account that, you know, revolved all around that topic?
CATIE:
So you ditched the Matt persona and full-scale leaned into dogs?
MATT:
I did, yeah. Well, I always had my personal account as like a… like a behind-the-scenes of me forming that new account.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
Like, I asked my personal following—who was at the time around 10,000, like—
CATIE
Which is big! That's big!
MATT:
Just from—just from writing jokes. I was pretty proud of myself.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
And then, I passed myself in like six days with a dog account. I was like, “Oh, this is—maybe I wasn't as funny as I thought I was if, you know, it's so easy with dogs to pass myself.” But, yeah—
CATIE:
So were you telling jokes about dogs? Like, what led you down this road? Or—and you mentioned,you had a golden retriever? Like, what was the inspiration? Obviously, you're a college student, I'm assuming you didn't live with the dog.
MATT:
Correct.
CATIE:
So you weren't like, fully immersed in like, dog… like, contact all the time? How were you imagining these pieces of content, I guess?
MATT:
Well, I imagined myself seeing a dog, taking a picture of the dog, and then writing a little review of the dog. And that was—it never got to that point, because the first WeRateDogs post is just of my friend’s… I think it's an Australian shepherd? And as soon as we made that post—which, I got all the random information and photos from him—as soon as we made that post, we just got bombarded with DMs of people's own dogs. And I was like, “This is way better.” This cuts out—not only is it an instant community of people who want the same thing [and] who appreciate the same thing, but I don't have to run around and go take photos of [dogs]. Like that would have been—
CATIE
You're not the dog creeper. [laughs]
MATT:
That would have been—that would have been a lot of extra effort.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
And… you know, The Dogist already existed on Instagram at that time, and I was like, “Well, I'm not a photographer; what am I really adding?” And it turned out that all I was adding was the captions; the creative writing and the narratives that I would create behind these, these photos. And that didn't require me to take the photo.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
So, yeah—
CATIE:
Well, and the crowdsourcing, you’re like—to your point, the community aspect, and that's like, you know, we preach and preach and preach human animal bond. That is like, proof in the pudding that—
MATT:
Absolutely.
CATIE:
—people LOVE their pet.
MATT:
Yes. And it's, it's evolved so significantly. Like, when we started the account, we would just get, like, one photo of their dog or two photos of their dog. And now, it's their entire camera roll plus novels about why I should also love their dog as much as they do.
CATIE:
[laughs] Yeah.
MATT:
So, it's funny how it's evolved in terms of like, what people communicate to us.
CATIE:
Sure.
MATT:
But yeah, that's—
CATIE:
Probably a testament to the internet, how the like—how all of these platforms have evolved,and the platform we've given to animals, and the number of animals that have touched people's lives, and through it you've been able to amplify this messaging of good stories, and humans that love their pets, and pets that provide this safe space, and these good moments when the 24 hour news cycle is intense.
MATT:
Yes, yeah. And that's something, like—just going off of that specifically, we know that like, Twitter in 2016 was so divided and political for—you know, justifiably—but it was not a fun place to be.
CATIE:
No.
MATT:
And so many people, we—that was when we were gaining a lot of traction, and so many people saw our account as like a—
CATIE
A reprieve, yeah.
MATT:
Yeah, from that. Which is very, like—[I’m] blessed to be able to provide that for people.
CATIE:
Yeah, lucky.
MATT:
Yeah.
CATIE:
I mean, lucky, but with so much hard work, I think. [laughs]
MATT:
Well, I—I’m bad at that. I'm like, yeah, I got incredibly lucky; it was the perfect storm of having an idea at a time where that specific social platform was receptive to it. Like I do attribute a lot—the forming of it to perfect luck. But then, to take the single idea and just be like, “Okay, I, I love doing this so much that I'm going to try to make it a career,” that was where the hard work is, is like—I get better at not denying the hard work—
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
—because it's so easy to watch Internet trends like, come and go, and last, like, last a weekend.
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
So, for the concept of rating dogs with a silly caption to be almost nine years old is—has like—I can't justify anything other than, “Oh, we've—we've worked hard at this. This is something we’ve perfected.”
CATIE:
You've worked your tails off. [laughs] So how have—how did you—but to your point, 24 hour news cycle, everything lasts for a minute and a half now, no one has the attention span to hang on to an idea, and here you are rating dogs for nine years!
MATT:
[laughs] Yeah.
CATIE:
And that's with the introduction of new social media platforms, platforms coming and going; you look at Facebook back in… probably when you started, and Facebook was everyone's platform, and then it kind of took a little, a little dip-sy…
MATT:
[It took] a couple hits.
CATIE:
Yeah, and so how did you navigate those waters of, “I'm going to take this rating system and make it work for everything; longevity is the key”?
MATT:
Absolutely, yeah. We started on Twitter [and] we quickly made an Instagram account, but we didn't value the Instagram account because it was… the way that that content is served to people is media first, then caption, and we took a lot of pride in our caption writing, so we didn't see how it would make sense on Instagram. But what happened over time is, we trained our specific audience to read the caption, which is—which makes our account stand out from their—the rest of their scrolling experience, where it's mainly media and the caption is a few words, and sometimes it's a creative caption so you make note of it, but ours is like, “Here's your paragraph caption that we put a lot of time into.”
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
So we trained our audience to, to really not skip that part, and—
CATIE:
Yeah. Well it's the most important part, almost.
MATT:
For us.
CATIE:
I mean, obviously the cute animal is very important. Yeah.
MATT:
Yeah, but the rating—where we were trying to add our value, was there and not in the photo.
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
Like, our curating abilities have gotten really, really good. Like—now I don’t—
CATIE:
[laughs] Chef's kiss!
MATT:
It's like, we have the ability to not only scour the entire internet at all times, but a lot of our content is directly submitted to us with the purpose of us posting it. So, yes we've gotten good at curating, but that, that balance with the caption and the photo, or the caption and the video, has been an ongoing, you know—[we] keep releasing new iterations of it to see what works.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
A lot of it, also, is knowing when something is not cool anymore, knowing when you have to ditch something that once worked. Like, the—our style of writing, I would say it was the first few weeks of the account was so absurd. Like I was coming from, like… it was almost “random equals funny.” But that, it—I just noticed that it—
CATIE:
Too random [and] people can’t catch on to it, yeah.
MATT:
People can't catch on to it, it's not as universally appealing, especially over a dog photo that IS universally appealing. So, that became like, “Okay, let's—let's still make the content, let's still write the captions from a humorous perspective, let's still have the goal be [to] make people laugh, but we got to reel it in a little bit.”
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
And then, we got into the zone of like, using AF as like, an acronym; censoring the word “heck;” censoring the word “heck” but also then cursing in the other parts of the caption. Like we would—
CATIE:
Yes. Taking something so wholesome, “heck.” [laughs]
MATT:
Yeah, see what—see what contrasting things worked. And that was like a two year stretch where, like, there was the “doggo, pupper” language.
CATIE
Yeah…
MATT:
We—I'm so sorry. Like, let me just address the camera—I'm so sorry for introducing those words to the world.
CATIE:
They are forever with us. Thank you Matt. [laughs]
MATT:
They are forever—yeah, attached to our brand for better or for worse. But it was also because we were so… we acknowledged the analytics so much. Like I said, from very early on it was, “How can we know if something is succeeding or failing?” And social media is so good at giving you those analytics and signals—
CATIE:
Direct feedback. [laughs]
MATT:
It's so direct. So, we knew when those words tapered off.
CATIE:
Sure.
MATT:
We saw when they became—
CATIE:
The “doggo” burnout.
MATT:
The “doggo” burnout, yes. That—that language, the almost like—I don't want to dive into it, because it—there are some avenues where I see its positive effects on… whether it be shelters or rescues, like having a vernacular to speak to an audience or like making their content more accessible. There were definitely pros to it, but in our content specifically, it—there were signals that, “Okay, let's taper it off.” Then after that, it became like, “Okay, we can really form our own narrative around this group of photos or this dog.” That was the way to maximize the entertainment of it. That was like, 2017 [or] 2018, and then the video platforms came about, and it was like, “Oh my goodness, I've never been in front of a camera and no one knows my face. They only know our blue avatar picture—
CATIE:
We Rate Dogs.
MATT:
—with the bright eyes, you know. So how are we going to pivot to video content?”
CATIE:
Who is that avatar? Can you—
MATT:
Yeah.
CATIE:
Pause. Who is the We Rate Dogs dog?
MATT:
That dog is named Pippin.
CATIE:
Okay.
MATT:
He unfortunately passed in 2018. He was the… he was on the second page of the Google search for “funny dog photo”—
CATIE:
No way. [laughs]
MATT:
—when I was looking for a profile picture for the account. And immediately, I was like “This is, this is perfect.”
CATIE:
This is it.
MATT:
This is perfect, temporarily to like, put this dog on the profile, hard to ignore—again, the eyes are like, so staring into your soul and, you know, a clean background; it made so much sense. For those first, like, nine months to a year, where we weren't monetizing the account—we had no idea what the account was going to be—it was great, and then we heard from the owner.
CATIE:
Yeah? [laughs]
MATT:
So, those—that was a photo shoot, that iStock bought the rights to, like, forever ago.
CATIE:
Oh, yeah.
MATT:
And so the owner eventually reached out and he was like, “Oh, my God, that's my dog!” And then we were like—
CATIE:
“Uh oh.” [laughs]
MATT:
“Okay… are you okay with this?” and they were so like, pleasantly surprised at the community that had, you know, derived from that photo.
CATIE:
Aww.
MATT:
And they then provided more photos to us, and we were able to—when unfortunately, the dog passed—at 14, like the dog lived a wonderful life—.
CATIE:
Yeah, he lived a really good life.
MATT:
When the dog passed, they told us and shared more photos, and we were able to make a really lovely memorial post to Pippin and give him a 15 out of 10, our highest rating. And yeah, so it worked out. Now, we buttoned up the rights, we—you know, we have everything we need to continue—
CATIE:
You called in the lawyers, Pippin’s all yours in memory. [laughs]
MATT:
Yes, to continue using that—such an iconic photo.
CATIE:
Yeah! Okay.
MATT:
So, really a fun story and very fortunate that that person found us and, you know, appreciated the community that we had built. And now that—that dog lives on.
CATIE:
It's infamous! Yeah.
MATT:
Infamous! He's attached to—we did the math one time. That profile picture, whether it be screenshots or just posts over time has accumulated like, 15 billion impressions. Like, just that photo.
CATIE:
Holy...holy heck. [laughs]
MATT:
Like, just that photo is now everywhere.
CATIE:
Wow.
MATT:
Whether it's, you know, attached to our posts or screenshots or what may be, so yeah. Definitely a crazy legacy for a dog on the—
CATIE:
It’s like—again, so, so lucky, but so purposeful, and now has turned into this infamous photo of this lovely animal who can be remembered forever, and I feel like that speaks to the backbone of We Rate Dogs as this platform that's giving these dogs a place to live forever and ever and ever, and celebrating their incredible lives at any point that this content submitted, and 15 out of 10 on that, right? Highest rating. [laughs]
MATT:
Thank you. Yeah, absolutely.
CATIE:
So, back to video. Video comes along—
MATT:
Yes, video comes along, and we're like, “Oh, goodness, how do we adapt to this? Because we don't currently have a way to do it.”
CATIE:
Did you fight it at first? Like was your initial instinct—
MATT:
Oh yeah, we were so late. We were so late to the TikTok game; to utilizing, like, a narrative video format because it was all UGC and I'm not a—I'm an introvert; I'm not like, excited to get in front of a camera and, and have my face be part of—
CATIE:
Shockingly, same. [laughs]
MATT:
Well, to have my face, because—knowing so much about social media and the analytics, like, I see the intro of my face as such a downside to the content; like such a negative aspect of the content. But that turned out to be, like to my genuine surprise—
CATIE:
Wrong?
MATT:
Not the case, yeah. So, we started doing “Top Five Dogs of the Week” on TikTok, which was immediately received so well. Actually, we did seven episodes, so the first seven weeks of that I was getting—it was like, it was getting diminishing returns, like the views. I thought with every iteration of the video, I was getting a little bit better, more confident, a slight increase in the tech that we were using… And they weren't—
CATIE:
It wasn't catching.
MATT:
It wasn't catching. Like the first one did really well, and it was just a slow taper off from there.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
And I was like, “Oh, this is a big bummer.” Like, we don't—our other content was succeeding; I was like, “Oh, maybe we don't need to do this,” because again, I was—I didn't believe that I was elevating the content in any way.
CATIE:
You were like, “Oh God, I'm crashing, it's crashing.” [laughs]
MATT:
Well, yeah, like, it’s just not like, “We missed the mark, we're gonna try again when we have another idea,” and then it just came around to like, “No, this is not, that's not—you need to give it more time, you need to let the concept simmer for people, you need to give it time to find its appropriate audience.” And—
CATIE:
It's almost not like Twitter. Like your initial—like that bang.
MATT:
It’s—it has—
CATIE:
There's a build.
MATT:
It's a longer life cycle, too.
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
[On] Twitter, you don't see posts take off the next day, unless you're like the main character of the week. Like you, you really don't see a post after—like, if a post is going to do well, it's going to do well immediately.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
Now, the life cycle of video content, and as the algorithms get better, it takes a little bit for the algorithm to find its right audience outside of your direct following. So, that longer life cycle, it's just—I don't mind putting more effort into the content because it can go crazy, and it's not all about those first five minutes after the post, and even more so with YouTube. Like—[over] the last couple years we've started, like, that's like our last frontier, which is really weird. Everyone goes from YouTube to the other platforms; [it’s] very difficult to break into YouTube after… [it’s] very hard to get an existing audience to go watch a long form video.
CATIE:
Well I think—the dog people are so ON the short form platforms.
MATT:
Yeah.
CATIE:
Thank you, dog people, for being on the short form platforms. But now you have to—well, like you said, it's user-generated content. They're sending you their dogs, so how do you make long-form content out of clips that people are, are sending you? You don't; you make your own, FYI. [laughs]
MATT
Yeah, you don't. You, uh—you pour a lot of money into production—
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
—and you try to make long form video work regardless, and then hope it finds its audience. But yeah, even like a YouTube video: that has years of a life cycle. That, like… that is a much more—not a more permanent place on the internet, because everything's equally permanent, but it just has an opportunity to succeed…
CATIE:
For a very long time.
MATT:
For a very long time. And so, that switch in the mindset of our content has been—not only has it, you know, helped our collective mental health on the We Rate Dogs team—
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
—but it is truly a different mindset going into content. And so I took like, an eight month break from top five and then I was like, “Okay, we need to exist on Tik Tok. It's too big of a platform; we know our audience is, at this time, leaving Twitter in droves. Where can we recapture them?”
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
And it was with video content on Twitter—I’m sorry, on TikTok and Instagram.
CATIE:
Because the dogs were good again this week. [laughs]
MATT:
Because the dogs will always be good, because the dogs are—yeah, they’re good every week.
CATIE:
They're always good.
MATT:
They're good every week.
CATIE:
Yeah. So, was that part of the initial—and, I guess for those that, strangely, may not follow We Rate Dogs, was that something you knew you needed? You needed a tagline to introduce this consistent piece for the dog people so they know what to expect and you don't lose them after like, on their crusade of swiping at 10pm while they're trying to go to sleep, but really, their circadian rhythm is being broken up by the terrible blue light being buzzed into our eyes?
MATT:
Yes. It was, once again, an accident that, based on audience feedback, was like, we—this is, this is the way. Like, we derive—like, we get so much value from listening to our audience. Not only direct feedback of comments saying they liked something, but in those analytics, those signals that they watched longer, or those signals that, you know, they liked the post, so… I said it; the first week was like, “I don't know if you guys have noticed, but the dogs were like, pretty good this week,” and that's how I opened it, and then the next week, I was like, “The dogs are good again this week,” and everyone was like, lock it in. You found it.
CATIE:
Ding ding ding. [laughs]
MATT:
So that, the—just listening to them and not turning off my phone after the post is what, like—yeah, it made that decision very easy. And now, yes, the tagline: if people have seen it before, they know what to expect. A little bit of a downside there, because Top Five is an emotional roller coaster.
CATIE:
I’ve, you—I've been crying from the top five, before!
MATT:
It's tough, it's tough. People are like, “How are you not crying?”
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
And I'm like, “Well, if I'm crying, the delivery is not gonna be great,” but I cry in between the takes and—
CATIE:
You cry on first viewing, and then you're like, “Pull it together.” [laughs]
MATT:
Yeah, like as I'm writing the script I'm like, if I start to get emotional, like that is unfortunately how I have to say this.
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
Because it, you know, it got me. But those top fives are a roller coaster, so now it's like if—if people see, “The dogs are good again this week,” they have to do a little check, like “can I, can I view this right now?”
CATIE:
Can I—can I buckle up for this?
MATT:
Yeah, buckle up.
CATIE:
Admittedly, I've come back—I've had to come back at times.
MATT:
Exactly.
CATIE:
But I, but I always want to watch it because ultimately, I know it's five pieces that I really care about because I love dogs.
MATT:
Yeah. So, we hope that that's what the—how people consume it, but we are well aware that it's a, it's an emotional series, especially because our other videos sometimes have a hotter start.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
Because either—like my intro. People are like, “Oh, this is a fun one,” or “This is a silly one.”
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
Or, “This is just a fun break from the top five.” So yeah, I really attribute a lot of our success to listening to our audience and listening intently for so long. We know when the trends—when it's time to give up on a trend, we know when it's time to innovate, we know when it's time to be on a platform, we know when it's time to change our priority. Like, again, when Elon bought Twitter, it was like, “Okay, we know—we don't know what's gonna happen, but we know that this is not good for our demographic that, you know, exists here as a respite from the rest of the platform.” So our focus immediately switched to Instagram and Tiktok. And we're very glad.
CATIE:
And it worked. [laughs]
MATT:
And it—yeah, it worked. So yeah, that's definitely—I can, I can say that that is hard work and not luck, and it's important that I, that I remind myself of that.
CATIE:
Listening to your people is important, and you have a huge group of people who love, love, love, LOVE what your team does. I'm curious: rescue also plays a big part, and obviously, that's why we wanted you here. At what point did you realize: A) I guess I'm me. Holy cow; I'm making money, and I should be giving back some of this money to what you chose, which was—I guess started as GoFundMes, right?
MATT:
Yeah, so it was less so… like we—the business of We Rate Dogs has always been tied to the very fluctuating, like, partnership business or merch. Now our merch is a little bit more stable because we have someone full time on it, but the—it was really like, partnership opportunities that come and go that dictate how well We Rate Dogs can do in a year, and… but the real signal that it was like, “Oh, we have an opportunity to give back,” was our audience's passion for the stories that we were sharing. And so, well before We Rate Dogs had any sort of business structure, we featured a GoFundMe for a dog who we'd featured previously, so our audience was familiar with this dog. I figured because of that, this was a good bridge to see what could happen.
CATIE:
Like a test run, yeah.
MATT:
Yeah, a good test run. And we ended up raising, like, $700 for a pug who needed a wheelchair.
CATIE:
Awww.
MATT:
And it was like, 45 minutes. And I was like, “Oh, not only is this a wonderful addition to our content—”
CATIE”
Yeah.
MATT:
“You all were clearly waiting for something like this.” So after that, starting with the first Friday of 2017 I believe, we posted a GoFundMe every Friday, direct from our audience.
CATIE:
Wow, yeah.
MATT:
It got to the point where we had to create a GoFundMe submission portal, and we would get 75 to 100 every week, which is very depressing.
CATIE:
Yeah, I can—I can imagine.
MATT:
A real indictment of the economy and healthcare.
CATIE:
[laughs] That’s—that’s definitely a balance of receiving really cute dog content on one end of your DMS, and then having to create a portal for people who are struggling to meet medical bills on the other.
MATT:
Absolutely. We had to rotate who was curating from that section because it was—it's tough.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
It's very tough. And, but—to create a portal like that, and to vet it, and to curate from that, like, we got… like, we knew that every story we were sharing was not the best, because there are multiple valid stories out there that needed attention, but the one that we were most confident in; the one that we could safely say, like, trust. Like it wouldn't break the trust with our audience.
CATIE:
Yes. That's a big risk for you guys; super big risk, because when you ask people for their money—
MATT:
Yes.
CATIE:
They have to trust you.
MATT:
Yes.
CATIE:
And you had such a trusted brand, even in the early days, because you always listened to your people.
MATT:
Exactly.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
So to be able to say, “This is so-and-so; they need this; you can help them below.” That's like—if at any point we messed up and we didn't vet it appropriately, or that situation was not legitimate, we’d really break a lot of trust with our audience and good luck to us to ever, you know, be able to facilitate donations again. So, that was—all of the pressure was on the vetting and the curation process. Luckily, that never happened, and we were sourcing ones that we knew we could access updates on that dog—
CATIE:
Sure.
MATT:
We could access—we could say, “Hey, there's a good chance that you're about to over fund, tell us where the rest of that money is gonna go.”
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
—and they would give us a shelter or rescue where they either got the dog or that meant a lot to them in their area. So, that's what made it comfortable. But even still, we were not in control of the funds; the story; these people could ghost us—
CATIE:
Yeah!
MATT:
Like, we were not in as much control as we needed to be to tell 20 million people about it.
CATIE:
The full story.
MATT:
Well, to even just be like, “Hey guys, look at this story, consider donating.” We felt like we were falling a little bit short on follow-ups or like, really guaranteeing that we could make sure that money went to the right place.
CATIE:
It's even hard—I mean, I think of, you know, when we tell stories here or at other shelters I've worked [at], you know, you—you're insulated in that story, you are a part of the story and you can still miss big pieces.
MATT:
Yes.
CATIE:
Something can happen and you miss it, so to think of having to get that content from someone on the internet that you don't even know, and—
MATT:
Who is not a vet—
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
—who doesn't—who—a lot of these medical situations are complicated.
CATIE:
Very complicated.
MATT:
And they can change day-to-day.
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
So to not be in control was like, the—”Okay, there's a better way to do this.”
CATIE:
Sure. So, what was the better way, Matt? [laughs]
MATT:
The better way was, uh, the 15 out of 10 Foundation.
CATIE:
Great.
MATT:
And that was really spawned from seeing the, the medical need that was out there, like, like the—the rising cost of health care across the board, made it so that like… really, the one stat is like, more than half the country doesn't have $500 in emergency savings, and that is—almost any problem with your dog is going to exceed that significantly.
CATIE:
Oh, that's—that’s walking in the office. [laughs]
MATT:
Exactly, exactly. Let alone like, the most common CCL tear is gonna be like $4,500.
CATIE:
I'm a sufferer of a double TPLO pitbull—
MATT:
That—yeah.
CATIE:
And that was so wildly hard at the time that my dog did it. So yes, and thankfully, I had a job that was well-paying and my husband was employed and we don't have kids, so we could reprioritize, but I think that's also something that has really been ingrained in me in rescue is that… no person should have to give up their pet for a medical reason.
MATT:
Yes, yes.
CATIE:
And we, as the rescue community, should be doing everything in our power—
MATT:
To keep them together; yes.
CATIE:
—to keep those people with their pets, because people love their pets!
MATT:
Absolutely. And that's just—we just, were—we like, ran headfirst into the economic euthanasia wall—
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
—by just sharing these stories and like, becoming more familiar with what was going on. And that led itself to a partnership with a pet insurance company where we could very proudly shout, “This is one of the solutions, please consider this,” and [that] also led to… led to the foundation. So we determined that, while we're fully aware that we are a Band-Aid to a much bigger economic problem—
CATIE:
Economic and layered.
MATT:
Yeah.
CATIE:
You can't fix everything with one foundation, but you sure can make a difference.
MATT:
Yeah, we're trying to make a difference. And it's a—it feels like a very meaningful Band-Aid, nonetheless. So yeah, in November of 2021 I had my dog, Doug, at the time, who was a—I adopted him when he was 10 in 2020, and he was dog reactive; he had a hematoma in his ear so he got very chronic ear infections, and he was just not the most adoptable dog. He had arthritis, like it was—he was one of the dogs that, due to his medical issues, he would not have made it out of that shelter if it weren't for DD [Downtown Dog] Animal Rescue who saw him and rescued him. And then he came across my Instagram and I knew he was the one.
CATIE:
The power of so—you're on the receiving end of the social media. [laughs]
MATT:
Exactly, yes. And that comes full circle, I'll get to it.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
But yeah, it—it was like, he was just sitting in front of me as a prime example of what we could do with a foundation, and we had all this validation that our audience cares about these medical situations from all the GoFundMes. We knew that they had the passion, the empathy, to help us stand this up. So in November of 2021, we launched it with four dogs from the LA area. We told their stories; we did a big push for members. So, the foundation works with a membership and also then these individual fundraisers that we still use the We Rate Dogs marketing lever to pull and fund.
CATIE:
Of course.
MATT:
And it's been, it's been wonderful. We now have a full-time social media manager, a full-time rescue coordinator to help us expand—
CATIE:
Oh, wow.
MATT:
We've partnered with… oh goodness, I think we're at 20? I think we've hit 20 rescue partners; about 13 [or] 14 of them are really active.
CATIE:
Is that across the country?
MATT:
Across the country. We started in LA, and then we knew that since We Rate Dogs has a pretty worldwide audience—
CATIE:
A huge reach, yeah.
MATT:
—it’s important for us to expand as [much as] we could. So with the help of a rescue coordinator, we're able to partner with rescues across the country and we've, we've sponsored—so we sponsor medical dogs in shelters—
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
—with the hopes of making them more adoptable. So, we know that there are so many barriers to adoption already. If you're looking at a little guy that needs, you know, $5,000, has a broken bone in the shelter, like, that's another huge barrier.
CATIE:
Even monthly medications!
MATT:
Even monthly medications, yes. And we knew that, so we wanted it to not be like, “Here's a little bit to help you adopt them,” we made it lifelong.
CATIE:
“We can fix the leg, but good luck on the arthritis meds that it needs for the rest of its life.”
MATT:
Or the physical therapy from the leg break.
CATIE:
Yes, yes.
MATT:
So we figured that the most meaningful way to sponsor these dogs was for life, in regards to their medical situation that was making them less adoptable. So yeah, we've sponsored 360-some dogs.
CATIE:
Wow.
MATT:
Their average medical cost is over $5,000, so we're not—we're trying not to shy away from the big cases. It's actually very rare that we get a cosmetic or an allergy situation that's like, under $1,500.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
It's typically… it's typically all of the things that the rescue cannot confidently handle. So yeah, it’s, it’s—
CATIE:
So it's working.
MATT:
It's working, it's expanding quickly. The audience has not lost any motivation to fund these situations, and I think what is helping us the most is that we are now in full control of telling the story, updating the audience, telling them every little thing that happens with the dog that they are definitely emotionally invested in, but sometimes financially invested in—
CATIE:
Yeah, yeah.
MATT:
We are… it's full transparency, which shelters and rescues—to no fault of their own—might not have the bandwidth to do.
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
We certainly didn't have the bandwidth to do it when we were in no control; like we didn't have any control over the situation with GoFundMe. Now we—
CATIE:
Now you do!
MATT:
Now we control all of it, so we can tell the dog’s story in the ways that we know how. Everything that we've learned from running We Rate Dogs guides us in telling their stories.
CATIE:
Yeah, you laid the groundwork and discovered, you know… I think that's sometimes where people forget, is that—you have to build that trust to gain that support.
MATT:
Yes.
CATIE:
And then you have supporters for so long, especially with rescue, and I end—sometimes shelters and rescues forget that, you know, you can rely on your online donors or these people that may have come across your—the one sad story, but you forget that your adopters are with you for life.
MATT:
Absolutely.
CATIE:
You've done them this big, big favor finding them your forever pet. I mean, you found Doug and made a foundation to help support animals like him, and I think people look for that connection. It all comes back to that connection that people have with their pets.
MATT:
Absolutely, yeah.
CATIE:
So, the latest iteration of your foundation—so sorry to hear about Doug.
MATT:
Yeah, that was—and what I said I’d come around to is, I was able to lean on my audience during that time, which was so special. Like, we—I forget what year it was, but we did a calculation that 40 people a day were DMing us to tell us that their dog had passed. Out of the thousands that we get, 40 on average were “Hey,” either they sent photos previously, or our account meant something to them—whether they submitted or not, they wanted to tell us that their dog had passed. And we were like, “Okay, a heart emoji is not good enough.” We want to—
CATIE:
Doesn't feel like enough in that.
MATT:
Yeah, we want to be able to purposefully—purposefully respond to these people. So, we made a custom animation that is, a dog—it's the Thoughts of Dog dog, which is like the sister account to We Rate Dogs, where I write as if I'm a dog. We made an animation with that dog that would walk to like—like a gravesite that's full of flowers, and he would put—er, the dog would put the stuffed animal, like a stuffed elephant down on the ground and then would be looking sad, and then a butterfly would come in and fly past and the dog would like look over and smile. And it just was, such—such a subtle animation, but it was way more than, “I'm so sorry, heart emoji.”
CATIE:
Yeah. It kind of captures all those feelings—
MATT:
Yeah. We wanted it to be again, subtle, but to just be like, some comfort; like here's this depicted in a way that is friendly and in a way that is—that feels comfortable.
CATIE:
Well, it shows you care, I think that’s—
MATT:
Yeah, and that’s—
CATIE:
—people aren't sharing with you because they want you to be sad, they're sharing with this—you know, internet account and—now your face was a little in front of it—but, you know, sharing with—it's a created family.
MATT:
Absolutely.
CATIE:
—and sharing that unfortunate news, but ultimately you give a bit of comfort, which is, I'm noticing, what your account seems to do the best. [laughs]
MATT:
Yeah, so that—so that was a time, like, I knew that we were that to a lot of people. We were that comfort, we were assisting them in that grief journey. And when Doug passed, I was able to do that with my—I was able to have that reflected back on to the audience, I was able to share that news and receive, like, just an overwhelming amount of love and support. And I couldn't ask for more. It made it, made it so much—
CATIE:
It's always hard.
MATT:
—not easier, but it just… it was like, “Wow, a lot of people love this dog.”
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
And it just—yeah. It meant the world to me.
CATIE:
And now Doug's memory is living on through—
MATT:
Yes. Yeah, through Doug’s Buds. So, Doug's Buds—
CATIE:
I love this name! Like, Matt, really—
MATT:
[laughs] I was like, “What rhymes?”
CATIE:
Well, yeah, but you're always like, “Well, it was a—I said it,” and it's like, I want to be in your brain, because it's like gold; everything coming out.
MATT:
Oh, well thank you.
CATIE:
And yes, it’s just a rhyme, but really, it's not like “Doug's Puppers,” or “Doug’s Doggos,” you know? Like it’s—it's his buds, it's his friends.
MATT:
Yeah.
CATIE:
And sometimes that's how it feels going into a shelter, like—
MATT:
Of course, yeah.
CATIE:
—these are my, these are your temporary friends and you want to help your friends as best you can. And you always want to, like, lift up your buds, you know? They’re your bud.
MATT:
Yeah, and everyone sees their dog as, as their best friend, or their friend.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
Like that’s, that’s the level—that's the relationship that we have, so [it’s] not surprising that that phrasing resonated with people.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
But yeah, so I felt like the foundation as a whole is definitely, in part, his legacy, but I really wanted something that was more specific, selfishly. So yeah, we—with the, with the help of the Los Angeles Animal Care and Control group of shelters, we, for the month of February, sponsored all of their—all German Shepherds over a year old, their adoption fees.
CATIE:
That's amazing.
MATT:
Yeah, it was the launch of it. Like, we knew going into it that the adoption fee is not the biggest barrier to adopting a senior German Shepherd.
CATIE:
Sure, yeah.
MATT:
But the awareness that we're able to give with this campaign is like, number one.
CATIE:
Wild.
MATT:
Our launch of the—it got some press, but the launch of it on our social accounts was incredibly meaningful; will have ripple effects that we won't be able to quantify, unfortunately, but—
CATIE:
Some things are okay, unquantifiable.
MATT:
Yeah, it might just—just to lock in our account as like, another instance of locking in our account as an adoption-first, supportive of the rescue shelter scene, was very important to us.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
And yeah, we have some success stories and hopefully we're able to, at the end of this month, culminate them into a post, and then we'll see where it goes from there. The other aspect of Doug's Buds was that anyone could nominate a Doug's Bud across the country.
CATIE:
Aww, yeah.
MATT:
Because we knew that like, logistically we have to limit this to LA, but if you have a senior German—senior German Shepherd in a shelter near you, we want to help them too.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
And the budget that we allocated from 15 out of 10 to do this allowed for more nominations that exist—than existed in the LA County shelters, so we're in the process of vetting those—
CATIE:
Whittling down Doug’s Buds? [laughs]
MATT:
—and sponsoring them. It was funny: while our, our like, restrictions were pretty strict, like have it be a German Shepherd over five—wonky ear not required—
CATIE:
But appreciated! [laughs]
MATT:
But appreciated. Everyone was just trying to sneak in as many dogs as they could.
CATIE:
Well sure, it’s a lot—a lot of Shepherds are mixes—
MATT:
A lot of Shepherd mixes, and a lot of them are five [years old].
CATIE:
Yeah. [laughs]
MATT:
So, which—yeah, to no fault of their own. It's a—it's a tough circumstance, but we were able to extend the offer of a sponsorship to over 300 of them.
CATIE:
Wow.
MATT:
So it was overwhelming; I lost it. As soon as we launched the campaign and we made it; we told people that they could nominate their own Doug’s Buds, I refreshed the page and there were already like seven in there after a few minutes. And I, I was—
CATIE:
Yeah, that was—game over. Tears, tears, tears, tears. [laughs]
MATT:
Yeah, game over. But yeah, so that's a very—that's a specific legacy that he has, and at the conclusion of this month, we'll do a recap and we'll see how we can purposefully move it forward, just like everything else we're doing. Let's see how the audience responded to it; let's see how successful it was.
CATIE:
I don't think people realize how many German Shepherds are currently in shelters, and—
MATT:
Number one, number one now. Overtook pit bulls.
CATIE:
Yes, and that's what—people go, “Oh my God, the only thing you can find in she—shelters are pit bulls.”
MATT:
Yeah, no.
CATIE:
And I'm like, “Excuse me?” Coming from a crazy pit bull lady who was in breed-specific rescues, I say, “You cannot believe the number of Shepherds and huskies that have—”
MATT:
Oh, yeah. Thanks, Game of Thrones? [laughs]
CATIE:
Yes, thank you. Although I do rewatch it in times that I need comfort, I have not adopted a husky [laughs] and hate that they're all in shelters now. But it's, it's so interesting that—and you could see it gradually happening and gradually happening and gradually happening, and now really every time we go, PetSpace goes, it's Shepherd mania, and—and it's shocking and surprising, and I just think it's so smart, the more light you can bring to that and remind people because they are such good dogs and such loyal dogs and deserve a shot.
MATT:
Yeah. And this is where like, in recapping this campaign, it's just impossible to ignore the foundational issues that, that we have in the dog space.
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
So some side quests for the foundation will be spay and neuter clinics, and we want to make it an educational arm, but we have no idea how to translate that content onto social media.
CATIE:
It’s hard!
MATT:
It's the toughest thing we've ever tried to do. Unless it's got—
CATIE:
Even as a rescue, like as a, as a rescue in this space, it's hard. We were just talking about it this week, it's hard to preach spay and neuter when the lack of—it's a—it's not people not wanting to spay and neuter their pets, there's a lack of resources; there's a six-month wait; accidents happen—like it's so layered, and I'm sure as you get deeper and deeper into all of this, the layers just unfold and unfold and unfold. [laughs]
MATT:
Yeah, and one thing that shines through that is the empathy that our audience has, which has been great. It's allowed us to also talk about humanitarian crises that are not necessarily dog specific; they're people specific.
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
They're there. Yeah, they're just humanitarian because when we share a story of a dog that may have been—they've ended up in a shelter, our audience, we've—we've tried to guide them, and they've been very receptive to it, to not blaming—
CATIE:
Vilify, yeah.
MATT:
—vilifying their previous owner.
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
Because we've now shared so many such stories of how…
CATIE:
The people are the bad guy[s], yeah.
MATT:
Yeah, and it's like—it's like, unless we come out in our posts and say, “Yeah, this dog was shot—”
CATIE:
Sure.
MATT:
—or, “this dog was cruelly abandoned and we know that because we either saw it happen, or the evidence is right in front of us—
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
“—please do not assume anything. That may have been the best—the best thing that person could have done for that dog.” It's just, it's tough out there, and—
CATIE:
Thank you. I want to like, really, thank you for having that platform and trying to instill that in people, because I think, for many, many years, we've used those stories to help us get animals adopted. We've said they had the worst beginning, they had the worst start to life, and you are the one that can make their life better, but that truly isn't always the case, especially right now. [laughs]
MATT:
Especially right now, when there's so many other factors that would dictate someone's ability to responsibly own a pet.
CATIE:
Yes.
MATT:
It's like—it's tough. And, yeah, unless we're like, “This is clear—”
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
We're not going to double-down on those negative comments to foster donations.
CATIE:
Thank you.
MATT:
We’re lucky enough to not need to do that.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
And I think it's still—it's still accurate and not inappropriate to say like, “We would love for this dog to find a loving home,” like you can bridge—
CATIE:
Sure!
MATT:
—you can tightrope that line very, like we don't find—we don't have any difficulties doing that.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
I think it's when… I think it's when, yeah, you—the fundraising is like, not *for* the dog; it's *against* something else.
CATIE:
Yes, yeah.
MATT:
And that's—you know, it's just, it's complicated. But yeah, I think the empathy of our audience has, thankfully, shone through. And, again, it's allowed us to talk about other world issues that are not directly—
CATIE:
Dog-related.
MATT:
—impacting dog owners or dogs in general, but—or dogs primarily, but we know that our audience is going to become educated on it simply because we were their bridge to it.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
And it's just, it's—it's, it's a wonderful—it's such a privilege to have an audience like that.
CATIE:
Well, it's, it's a—dare I say, blessing, to have someone so tuned in and understand those complexities. To run an account with that much reach; it’s mill—it's millions, millions. What, the Instagram [account] has 3.5 million, and TikTok is…?
MATT:
Yeah, we're—we have—of course we have, because we're obsessed with the analytics. We have a running—
CATIE:
Yeah. That's why I wanted to ask, because I knew you'd know. [laughs]
MATT:
Oh, yeah, we—yeah. We have a running sheet and everything's, you know, we grade our posts based on performance.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
But yeah, even with—so [on] Twitter last year, we lost over 100,000 followers, people leaving the platform—
CATIE:
Sure.
MATT:
—even with that, we netted—every single week—over 50,000 new followers across the board.
CATIE:
Wow, that's huge.
MATT:
So, it was a lot—like we—it was so clear the migration from Twitter to Instagram and Tiktok for us, which means a lot. Like, “Oh, I don't like this platform anymore, but I like this creator; I'm gonna find them elsewhere.”
CATIE:
Yeah, they gave up on one thing, but they weren't letting go because the dogs were good again.
MATT:
Yeah, exactly. We're able to—we were able to adapt and find them. And again, huge thanks to, you know, for better or for worse, these algorithms are going to put our content in front of people that are interested in it, and that's helped us recapture them. So yeah, we're up to… I mean, across everything, it's around 20 million [followers], which is just… it’s wild.
CATIE:
Mind-blowing. [laughs]
MATT:
It's wild, yeah. It's a lot of pressure, but we have enough systems in place that that pressure is now spread, a little bit.
CATIE:
Perfect. And there's people that are working with you—
MATT:
Yes.
CATIE:
—it's not all up to you anymore, but ultimately, it seems like you are steering the ship in such a beautiful way.
MATT:
Thank you. Yeah, it's hard. Like, delegating was my most difficult task.
CATIE:
That's everyone's most difficult.
MATT:
Yes, that was—that was tricky, especially creatively. And now it's in a place where, yeah, I feel very comfortable guiding it strategically, and some of our big things… Yeah, staying in tune with all the foundation things and, and our bigger campaigns on the We Rate Dogs side. Yeah, very grateful to have a team around me that shares in all of our missions and loves dogs as much as I do and really trusts me when, when it's time to and also can move the ball forward when, when they need to.
CATIE:
Keep it rolling.
MATT:
It's great, yeah.
CATIE:
Yeah. So, what can we and the 20 bajillion million people expect for the future of We Rate Dogs? What should we keep our eyes open for? And of course, the foundation—what, what should we be expecting?
MATT:
Yeah. So, from—well, I’ll start with We Rate Dogs: we are continuing to expand what our content can look like, and temporarily, that's going to be more on my face. Sorry.
CATIE:
I don't think anyone's upset about that, Matt. [laughs]
MATT:
[laughs] Well, so it's, we're—again, trying to tap into—all the platforms are leaning more video.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
And we now have a couple of series that allow us to take advantage of that, so you'll see more YouTube content from us; more long-form content. And yeah, hopefully an increase in our, our communication of like, dog news.
CATIE:
Cool.
MATT:
We're trying to be more like a newsroom when it comes to relaying current events that are happening with dogs—
CATIE:
Pertinent.
MATT:
—yeah, pertinent stuff, because it's, we're now—we're big enough that like, everyone tells us everything about dogs, like any news story, anything possible—
CATIE:
[laughs] I can't imagine your DMs! Like—
MATT:
It's crazy.
CATIE:
How could you even keep—I just don't—
MATT:
We've got four people that, uh—
CATIE:
That's how. [laughs]
MATT:
Yeah, four community managers that are pretty much, at all times, looking at stuff and forwarding stuff. So, that has allowed us to, in most cases, beat the news stations when it comes to dog-specific news.
CATIE:
Great, yeah.
MATT:
So we can debut these stories. It really puts us in a good place as it—from a media company perspective. So that's going to be an ongoing effort for us to be faster and faster and to deliver things, you know, in real time.
CATIE:
Great.
MATT:
We're also launching a submission portal to separate those two things.
CATIE:
Exciting!
MATT:
So, forward the dog content that you see to our DMs, but submit your own dog through a portal, coming soon.
CATIE:
Via the portal, please.
MATT:
Yes, yeah, that allows us to… and the best part about—so, for so long, we have simply ignored DMs for like—we just can't get to all of them.
CATIE:
I—like, really, I can't imagine. I mean, the PetSpace account has 31,000 followers, and some days I'm like, “Okay, here we go.” [laughs]
MATT:
[laughs] Yeah. But the guilt of ignoring them has built up—
CATIE:
Sure. Yes.
MATT:
—for those nine years. So, we now are building a portal that not only you can submit your dog and trust that it gets to us in an appropriate way, but you will immediately get a rating back.
CATIE:
Aww!
MATT:
We've customized it—think Pokemon card—but when you submit it to us, it spits out a rating with—
CATIE:
Really smart.
MATT:
—with one of our, one of our taglines. And that way, we feel like nobody's getting ignored; they're still being considered for an official, on-the-account rating.
CATIE:
Yeah.
MATT:
But they also have something that is shareable that they can hold onto.
CATIE:
They feel recognized.
MATT:
Yeah, that is a reflection of, of what, what we're trying to do. So that's coming soon; again, continuing to expand in all the content directions that the platforms tell us to. And then the foundation—we are trying to scale it to a point where we can have, you know, presence in all communities in the U.S. And we're probably—I think that that's possible in the next 12 months.
CATIE:
[laughs] Oh, my God, I thought you were gonna say five years.
MATT:
[laughs] I think, yeah, there's only a handful of communities that we feel we don't have—even have a regional pre—presence. And I think that we have the—we're grateful enough to have the resources to expand purposefully, and hopefully, that—that yields some success. But again, acknowledging that we're a Band-Aid, and continuing the side quests that tackle the fundamental issues, you know, eventually it's going to look like lobbying Congress. That's the only way—
CATIE:
Well…
MATT:
—it's the only way to do it.
CATIE:
Sky's the limit! [laughs]
MATT:
Sky's the limit. So we'll see where that goes, but we're very—we're very confident in the team that we're building. And yeah, very grateful to have the people around me that I do, shepherding this forward, so…
CATIE:
Yeah. A plus, 10 out of 10—15 out of 10 would recommend Matt Nelson with We Rate Dogs. Thank you so much for coming today.
MATT:
[laughs] Thanks for having me!
CATIE:
Because you are doing really, really great work.
MATT:
Thank you.
CATIE:
And I can't wait for my recap at the end of this week!
MATT:
I can't wait for our episode with Jennifer Garner to come out that features this space!
CATIE:
Oh, yeah! Coming soon!
MATT:
Yeah. It's been raining in LA, so thank you so much for, for hosting us that day.
CATIE:
You're welcome here anytime. [laughs] Thanks, Matt.
MATT:
Thank you.
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CATIE:
The PetSpace Podcast was brought to you by Wallis Annenberg PetSpace. To learn more, please visit Annenberg pet space dot org [annenbergpetspace.org]. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a rating, a review, and be sure to share with your friends. Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at pet space podcast [@petspacepodcast].
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