We were lucky to catch up with Mandy Boutelle recently and have shared our conversation below.

Mandy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

First, I was a dog walker and trainer for 7 years and while I was actively working with clients and their dogs I always found myself wanting to wear shirts that represented the training methods I use and lighten the conversations around dog training.

Initially when most people think of dog training, they think of obtaining control over their rambunctious do, having a dog that can walk perfectly in a heel without a leash or they still believe the old school notion that dogs need a ‘pack leader’ and to be dominated in order to learn something new. Though they don’t think of or even know just HOW to go about training or how particular methods can make things more difficult.

This is the reason I started Woof Cultr. The more I wore shirts like: ‘Give us space we’re training’, ‘Always Bring Treats’ or ‘Reward Your Dog’ for example – the more I noticed people making the connections between what my shirt said and what I was doing with my clients. They started conversations and made people think.

Woof Cultr is a small, woman-owned apparel business which was created to give dog professionals, parents and behavior nerds alike a chance to wear apparel that advocates only for the use of humane training methods without the use of corrections and aversive tools (i.e.prong, choke, remote or ‘e’ collars.)

“….dominance theory should not be used as a general guide for behavior modification…..behavior modification and training should focus on reinforcing desirable behaviors, avoiding the reinforcement of undesirable behaviors, and striving to address the underlying emotional state and motivations, including medical and genetic factors, that are driving the undesirable behavior.” – American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior

Mandy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have always loved animals, since I was a little girl – I never reached for dolls, only stuffed animals. So it just made sense for me to follow that love of animals and become a dog walker back in 2015! Then after being an off leash group walker for a year and after seeing/working through some behavioral things with client dogs, I decided to obtain more knowledge and attended the Dog Training Internship Academy in San Francisco to become a certified trainer and behavior consultant.

Woof Cultr was created on a whim back in February 2019 and I think that can sometimes be when the best ideas are started! I was looking for some trendy/cool shirts to wear while out training and dog walking that also touched on my preferred training methods and at the time there wasn’t anything really other than the overly done ‘dog mom’ shirts in cursive writing or really generic “dog trainer” shirts that didn’t interest me.

When the COVID19 pandemic hit hard in March 2020 we decided that was the push I needed to go into Woof Cultr full time and step back from training. I just KNEW Woof Cultr had the potential to be bigger than what it was previous year but I couldn’t have made that happen if I didn’t lean fully into it and give it all of my time. It definitely was not easy by any means, there are a lot of people out there that message me saying they loved my online store until they saw that I only support positive, force-free training methods and in the beginning that hate got the best of me. I second guessed our mission, I wondered if I should pull back from that and be more general to cater to more people so that we could grow faster. My values and my mission were what was most important to me and I realized that my business should not matter or be gauged by the amount of followers or likes had, what mattered was the impact we were making, the conversations that were starting and how we could help bring more attention to changing how we approach training with our animals. Once I reminded myself of that – my follower or like count didn’t matter and I fully started to enjoy what I was doing and loved how I could connect with people who had my same views.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Spend time seeing what folks like, follow trends, connect with conferences and events that are within your niche, network and make relationships with more people in you niche/industry!

With social media, reels especially — it was much easier to get in front of my niched target audience because I was creating things I myself wanted, but wasn’t yet being made and could then post it (and use commonly used hashtags within our industry) to insert our brand to be seen by the right people.

I grew our entire following organically over 3 years while staying within our niche just from being re-shared/posted/tagged, etc. Which I feel is very important when you’re trying to stay true to your businesses purpose and not fall into the ploy of buying followers or shifting gears with your values in order to gain more of a following/popularity.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I did!

When I created Woof Cultr I was actually still a full time dog walker and trainer working from 9AM-6pm, Mon-Sat, while driving all over San Francisco working with clients. It was pretty overwhelming the first several months while I worked out all of the kinks, system errors and really figuring out the direction I wanted to head in while still working full time and not running myself into the ground. I thought I would be a trainer forever and that Woof Cultr could never become my full time job and (now) career, it would just be a passion project on the side and grow slowly over time.

Then, when the COVID19 pandemic hit hard in March 2020 my husband and I decided that was the push I needed to go into Woof Cultr full time and step back from training since I didn’t want to train virtually and we couldn’t work with clients in person. I KNEW Woof Cultr had the potential to be bigger than what it was previous year but I couldn’t have made that happen if I didn’t lean fully into it and give it all of my time. I don’t think we would not be where we are now if I hadn’t done that.

I think the most memorable milestone for me was when a trainer I looked up to that is respected within our industry and has a large platform, reached out to me to partner for a conference, we were asked to supply all of the merch for that conference and have now done it for 2 years in a row! If I was still training full time and only working on Woof Cultr on the side, I wouldn’t have had the time to set that up and put the work in to make that happen though.

Contact Info:

• Website: woofcultr.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/woofcultr/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Woofcultr/
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1bBybg2MDnKz1cBdlLilnu?si=0ba00db8b9974014

Image Credits
All images are provided by WoofCultr© and their brand ambassadors, whom allowed WoofCultr credit for the images.