AI mindset shifts for pet sitters are no longer optional—they’re essential. If the idea of using AI in your pet business feels intimidating or overwhelming, you’re not alone. But here’s the truth: it’s not the tech that’s holding you back, it’s your mindset.
In this episode, I’m opening up about the invisible blocks I see so many pet sitters carrying when it comes to AI—beliefs that keep them stuck in busy work, burn out, and creative paralysis. I’ve been having more and more conversations with business owners who are watching others use AI to their advantage, but still feel hesitant to jump in. It’s not because they can’t. It’s because they think they can’t.
This episode is your invitation to shift those thoughts. I want to help you stop waiting for perfection, stop fearing that AI will dull your creativity, and stop assuming it’s only for “techy people.” Because once you embrace the right mindset, AI becomes a powerful tool—not a threat.
You don’t have to be perfect to start. You just have to be willing to think differently.
If you’ve been second-guessing yourself or stuck in analysis paralysis, let’s change that together, starting now.
In this Episode, You’ll Learn…
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Why waiting for AI to be “perfect” is costing you time and opportunity
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The false belief that creativity dies with automation
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How to use AI without sounding robotic
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The difference between information and instruction—and why it matters
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What makes AI better with your unique voice and guidance
Timestamps
00:01 – Why mindset matters more than tools
05:18 – The perfection trap with AI
08:42 – “AI will kill my creativity” myth
14:36 – Why your input makes the output
18:50 – Using AI to sound like you
Resources & Links
Ready to stop playing small? Upgrade your tools and start working smarter, not harder. If you’re still using the free version of ChatGPT, it’s time to level up.
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Try Bella’s custom pet sitting GPT.
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Learn how to build your own AI assistant.
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Connect on IG: @bellavasta
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Book a complimentary 20-min strategy call.
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Join Bella’s Mastermind.
Did You Love This Episode?
Share it on Instagram and tag @BellaVasta with your biggest takeaway using #BellaInYourBusiness. What’s one AI mindset shift you’re ready to make in your pet sitting business?
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Transcript
Welcome to another episode of Bella in your business. My name is Bella Vasta.
You know, I’m gonna go in a lot of different directions today, because there’s a mindset thing happening, and it’s starting from some of the leaders in our industry.
I’m gonna keep this pretty anonymous. But without saying names. I had 2 people share with me the same exact message that was in a group by someone who is positioning themselves as a leader in our industry.
And it came to me because these people paused after reading this message, thinking, “Wait, Bella, is this true?”
And so I read through it. And it was this message that was like alert: Google has made an update. You need to know what this update is.
And it was talking about AI, and it was basically saying Google is now specifically directing their quality raters to identify pages where main content is created using AI tools and automated generators.
Okay, if you just read that part, you’re gonna be like, “Oh, my gosh! I can’t use AI on my website.”
And then it goes on, and it says, if your content is mostly AI generated with little original value added, it gets rated as lowest quality, which means it basically disappears.
And then it went on to say, like what this means — AI content that shows little effort will not get ranked in the searches, and that Google’s doubling down on their reward content that demonstrates experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Okay, this thing got like 31 comments when I saw it. 36 likes and stuff. But here’s the — and then a lot of the people that started talking in it, it was cackling. Yes, I said it. I’m not sorry if I just offended anyone.
It is things like the stinking thinking that gets perpetuated in everything that you read. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between fantasy and fact. It doesn’t.
Whatever you tell your brain, it believes it as truth. So whatever you read continuously over and over again, getting notifications coming up on your phone, having it come across your feed — all of this — “Well, I just can’t get ahead, and I’m not a marketer, and everyone else is doing it, and if I can’t… oh, poor me! I’m a poor business owner.”
I could read you some of the comments, but I’m not going to, because I’m not going to perpetuate it.
But the thing is, this leader — while they kind of came in and talked about “You need to have quality AI content” — he wasn’t clear enough, because a lot of people were still wondering what’s going on, and I was getting tagged.
And so I just want to set the record straight. And I want to explain to you factually what actually is happening.
Because anyone that’s fear mongering your business right now, anyone that’s deterring you from AI — and when I say deter, I mean not using AI in everything that they’re doing — every leader… this is a call out to every leader right now.
Every leader in our industry should not only be using AI, but they should be leveraging it in their teachings.
We’re leaders, we’re supposed to be leading the way. AI is the way.
Okay, maybe robots aren’t gonna be walking the dogs. But most of our people — the people that we serve, that we help, that we want to help — they’re burnt out. They’re stressed out. They don’t have enough time. And they’re overwhelmed.
They’re maybe not eating right. AI can literally come alongside and help a lot of these people.
Not only that, but they can also come alongside them and let them know that they’re not alone, and that there’s an outlet, and that there are ways they can talk through things.
There’s so much, and I see it on a daily basis with all of my jumpers.
I see them implement it into their personal life and their business life. I see them struggle all of 2024 trying to get their SOPs done and get their SOPs done in 2 weeks — in the mastermind — using the methods to get the SOPs done.
SOPs are fun, said no one else ever. Right?
And take it a step further. This person who is giving this information or allowing this information to be out there — they don’t even have a blog on their website.
So you’re giving advice about things that you don’t even have. For me, that doesn’t make sense.
Danny Sullivan, in 2023, Google search liaison — he was a prominent voice in clarifying the stance on social media and interviews. He’s consistently reiterated that the method of content creation is not the primary concern.
“I don’t care what you write,” the content with… in a series of tweets, he basically explained, “We have said for years that the content created for the primary purpose of just ranking is spam. In search, it’s spam.”
It doesn’t matter if it’s humans writing or AI writing. If it’s for search, it’s spam.
Which takes me to the next step of this, you guys. And this is like, really your wake-up call, okay. I am transferring to all of my listeners — in anything that you do, it should be valuable.
So when I see these blogs that are like “Summer grooming tips for your dogs” when your pets are a dog walker — that makes no sense.
Let alone that it’s not even locally targeted or geo-targeted to your geographical area.
When you’re like “Christmas tips to keep your pet safe,” again, what you’re doing is you’re competing with everyone in the entire world.
Okay. What it comes down to is strategy. And from the strategy, it’s prompting into AI.
And this is what I say all the time. Right?
So we all — the whole industry hopefully, because I was loud enough — went through the whole Marcus Sheridan Big 5. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go look it up.
Marcus is on a warpath again, but doing it like leveling up the Big 5 AI style, which is just so exciting. Like, go look it up. Watch it. I highly recommend it.
But now I would say that it’s even more than the Big 5. It’s literally figuring out how you can provide value all the time.
When you provide value, that means make them laugh. It means give them some information that they can actually use.
Like, how about all the places you can get Santa Paws pictures in your area. Let’s say this is like Christmas, right?
And then also stamp the date on it — 2025. That means it’s gonna expire in January. But right now, that’s gonna be the hot like hotcakes.
And I did this with my clients last year. It’s going to be the hotcakes on Nextdoor and in Facebook groups and get a lot of people onto your website.
You add a strategy onto that where you’re capturing all of their IP addresses so you can retarget Facebook ads or Google ads to them — you’re like golden.
That’s what it means. Does it matter that AI did the research for you and created the blog for you? Absolutely not.
And this is the same exact strategy and method that I’m using with my Marketing with Bella clients — the people that I’m creating specific, customized content for every single month.
This stuff works.
And so I want to spend a minute to just make sure that anyone that the sound of my voice is reaching is not being influenced by any of this stinking thinking.
AI has never — it’s never been an easier time to run your business than in 2025. I will die on that hill.
It is so much more exciting and easy.
The problem that happens is that people just use only ChatGPT, and they only use it to reword an email or give them like generic ideas — without ChatGPT really understanding who they are.
What do I mean by that?
Go to your ChatGPT right now and say:
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Who’s my avatar?
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What makes my business unique and special?
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What do I worry about in my business?
Questions like these are going to immediately tell you if your ChatGPT or your AI knows you well enough.
And there are so many different things that you can do for this.
So I’m gonna go through this whole thing because I do not intend to beat you over the head. What I intend to do is take you under my wing and say, “Don’t step there. Don’t think that way — because it’s gonna hurt you. You’re gonna break your ankle. You’re gonna hurt your business.”
And if there’s one thing that I can do, it’s to have this podcast — I mean, 441 episodes. First of all, this is a long-term relationship.
Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing it. Thank you for all of your comments. Whether you agree with me or not. It’s okay also to disagree with me.
I know the world doesn’t operate that way right now. But it’s okay to disagree with me.
I love listening to people I don’t necessarily agree with, because I’m like, “Hmm, that’s an interesting way of thinking about it. I respect your opinion. I don’t agree with it, but I respect it.”
It’s good to understand where other people are coming from. It’s not threatening to who I am.
But I want to go into a couple — I wrote down like a couple of mindset blocks that we tell ourselves.
So the first one is: “I’m not tech-savvy enough.”
Honey, no.
You’ve never actually had to be less tech-savvy when it comes to AI.
It’s been integrated in our entire life for years. Whether you realize it or not. It’s just now it’s in a tool. It’s in a form that we can actually use it.
It’s like — it’s finally arrived for us to buy at the grocery store and cook with in our kitchen, when before it was only for chefs. Think about it that way.
But if you just put AI down on the table, and you haven’t added your own spices to it, or you haven’t added it to your own meal — then yeah, it’s gonna be stale.
You don’t need to be techie to do it. Can you talk?
I actually 100% recommend that you never type into AI. You are getting drastically different outputs from AI depending on whether you talk to it or you type in it. Another hill I will die on.
The second mindset shift is: “AI will make my business sound robotic.”
Well, yes, you are absolutely correct — if you go into it stale, if you don’t add anything to it, if you don’t put strategy to it.
If you literally just say, “Tell me four blogs I can write for Bella’s House and Pet Sitting,” and it tells you four blogs, and you pick one of them, and you say, “Okay, write that blog.”
But yeah, that’s definitely gonna sound robotic. It’s gonna sound corporate. It’s gonna sound fluffy. I will probably be able to read it and say, “Hey, AI wrote this.”
Because there’s certain words, and there’s certain styles and dialects that I can tell 100%.
And you know what? The general world is going to start knowing too.
What you want is you want your output of your AI — your language model — whichever one you use (Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT)… Oh my God! There’s been so many amazing advances like this week with some of Gemini’s products — like whoa!
And Claude… that’s another story for another time.
But yeah, if you don’t put in the right strategy, if you do not spend the time letting it learn you and understand your uniqueness…
I have a client — we literally squeal. I’ve talked about her many times on here. We squeal every single time we do it.
We were actually on our AI Lab in the Mastermind yesterday. And we have these labs where we get together and I teach them stuff.
So yesterday I taught them a whole bunch of stuff: how to extend pictures from the side, from the top, how to change pictures that AI gave you that have words in them that are messed up, and how to change the words easily. I taught them how to create videos from pictures, and then also take those videos and make them into GIFs and how to strategically use them to stand out online — to get all the eyeballs on your business when people are like, “Hey, I need a pet sitter or dog walker.”
I mean, we covered so much.
But while we were doing this, this client volunteered to have me make the GIF for her. And so we were coming up with what it should look like.
We gave it instructions that we wanted it to be really funny and to stick out, and obviously to be on brand for her. And to give us 11 ideas.
It gave us those ideas. It was perfect. It was so awesome — because we didn’t have to sit there trying to be funny or try to figure it out.
So yeah, you’ll sound robotic if you’re just like, “Yo, make me a picture of a dog getting walked.”
But if you’re like, “Give me a picture of a dog being walked in the DC Ranch neighborhood of Scottsdale, Arizona,” for example, it’s going to be a lot different.
It’s not going to be robotic or plain or stale.
The other thing that I keep seeing too is: “When you use AI, you’re lazy.”
Really? Okay, that just shows me how ignorant you are. Yes, I just said that — because I’m Bella, and this is my podcast, and I can.
If you’re sitting there thinking that using AI is lazy, allow me to expand your brain a little bit.
Here’s what — and I know people that are listening to this don’t — but I want to put this in your brain right now. You’re spending time with me, and I want you to have this retort in your brain when you see this horrible stuff online.
I want you to know this:
It’s not lazy. It’s actually more mental effort than ever, because you have to have high-level critical thinking.
You have to know what your end goal is.
Most people are running around with blinders on just trying to get done what’s in front of them — not realizing how it pertains to the future.
When you’re using AI, you need to reverse-engineer all of your visions, your goals.
You have to know where you’re going in order to get good stuff from it.
It’s not lazy at all. It’s lazy if you do it robotic and just bare minimum.
And I think a lot of people get it twisted — and please don’t get it twisted — just because it gives you an answer doesn’t mean it’s the right one.
It’s never going to say, “No, Molly, I’m not giving you that answer.”
It’s going to give you an answer. And we’re so burnt out, stressed out, overwhelmed, that we’re just like, “Okay. Finally, I got something. Yay, it’s a win.”
But what we don’t realize or stop to think is: Is it good enough? Does it sound like me?
That’s where people get into the conundrum of, “Oh, well I’m just gonna edit what it has,” and then they still sit there for a half hour rewriting what AI already did.
Well no — let’s take that up another level.
If it didn’t give you something that was mostly great for you — like 90% great — then you need to change your prompt.
Or you need to redo your GPT, which teaches it how to talk like you.
So, AI is not lazy.
I’m not going to call anyone lazy, but I am going to say it actually takes more work — and understanding how to do this is what I teach all day long. Business owners everywhere. By the way, not just the pet industry.
This happens to be a pet industry podcast, but I’m helping a lot of other industries now too, which is really fun.
“I don’t have time to learn it.”
No. This one’s — it’s literally the least expensive software you’re ever going to have to do. You can learn it for free.
There’s no gatekeeping to this.
You can learn in Facebook groups, in memberships, on YouTube. You can even ask ChatGPT to show you.
I often take screenshots and send it to it and say, “How do I do XYZ?” And it’s like, “Oh, click here.”
Boom. You just learned it, right?
Please don’t have these stinking thinkings in your head. And if you want to talk about them, I would be more than — I’m not scary to talk to on the phone. I get really, really excited.
If you’re not quite convinced — I’m very nice on the phone, okay? I might sound cynical right now, because it hurts my heart that people are working so hard in 2025.
It hurts my heart.
Because I understand and I know the pain and agony that you guys have on a daily basis — running your businesses, your life, your personal brains, right?
And I want to help you.
It pains me when I see other people fear mongering and giving you bad information, or allowing people to perpetuate horrible things.
You should see what was written in those comments. How Debbie Downer and negative it was.
You know what? I’m okay having a small group of really positive and solution-oriented people — than having a group of thousands of people where they’re just beating each other down and have a small mindset.
Like, no thank you — as my 11-year-old would say.
“Saying my clients won’t like it.”
I have disproved this multiple times. You’ve heard me say it here on the podcast.
I have created really cool emails for my clients — and I’m doing it in my program right now — to help them get bookings.
The old way, in our brains, because we’re all not creative writers, is like:
“Hey, don’t forget to book for the summer. It’s coming up soon. We’re gonna get booked up. Don’t forget.”
And it’s like… okay. You were just asking for it. Nothing really exciting about it.
But then you take your brand. You understand the tone that you want. You tell it to come up with a couple different ways for you. You add a Giphy to it. You have a strategy.
You literally have access to everything right now.
You can probably even ask it, “How would Bella Vasta say this?” Because AI has my voice. Go try it. Let me know what it comes up with.
Obviously, it’s not gonna be perfect. But I’ve had people do that — it’s amazing.
Your clients will like it if you send the right stuff. If you put the right prompt in there, okay?
So your clients will actually like it. Just don’t be obvious. And I did an episode months ago about “I can tell when you’re using AI,” and I gave away all those dead giveaways.
Let’s put that in the show notes for this episode, so you have it to refer to.
But that might be one you want to listen to.
“I’ll lose control of my brand.”
Absolutely not.
The only way you’ll lose control of your brand is if you go into untrained LLMs (large language models) and just tell them generically what you want in one or two sentences.
If you’ve trained your language models — which does not take much time — then you’re gonna get things that are right on point.
I did an hour-long avatar training with one gal in my mastermind. We posted it last week. It was magnificent.
By the end of the training — because we had AI learn it so well, and she talked for a good 25 minutes and answered like she was being interviewed — I gave it my “Make it cry” prompt, and the stuff that came out of it was incredible.
It was share-worthy stuff. On Instagram. It was amazing.
She sat there wide-eyed like, “Wow. I can’t believe we just did this.”
And the song that keeps playing in my head is from Aladdin — “A Whole New World.”
Because that’s really what it is.
Also, people like to say: “This is just a trend.”
It is not a trend. I’m not even going to dignify that with a longer response.
It’s not a trend.
The government is putting money toward it. Businesses are firing people and changing their workflows.
If big corporations are changing their workflows to enable AI to help them do things faster and better — the small business, the mom and pop, really should be doing it. And that’s you.
There are so many ways to do this. I have so many trainings and teachings.
I’m kind of the strainer — because you’re going to get overwhelmed. You’ll see people talking about how to use AI or buy this software and it’ll solve all your problems.
No.
I don’t believe in getting the softwares. I believe in getting the purest form of the LLMs and training them specifically for you.
You don’t need a membership to a software that has bots or agents inside of it.
That’s like buying fruit that’s been processed and bottled, instead of getting it fresh off the tree.
Another one: “AI images are fake. I won’t use them.”
Guys — go to my profile right now: facebook.com/bellavasta.
You’ll see a picture of me in June 2025, in a pink denim jacket. I don’t own that denim jacket.
Same with the photo before that — the black blazer with my hands out. I’m also not the one in the denim jacket at the beach.
All of those are AI generated because I taught LuxFlora how to be me.
Then I can transpose whatever my brain comes up with. It’s like being a little girl coloring on paper. Now, what my brain imagines, I say to AI — or type — though I don’t encourage you to type.
They’re not fake. And I’m not trying to pass them off.
Nor is my good friend Julia McCoy, who literally has a clone of herself running her YouTube channel.
Julia has been sick. Her team uses her clone. Google just bought part of it.
She introduces her videos with: “Hi, this is Dr. Julia McCoy, Julia’s clone.”
It’s not about faking. It’s about being real with it.
The real cost of these lies?
Burning time doing tasks AI could handle in seconds. AI can help you with your schedule, payroll, KPIs, Facebook engagement, open rates, and more.
It’s not the AI that creates a bottleneck in your business — you are the bottleneck.
Leaving money on the table every night while you manually craft emails using your last bit of brainpower? That’s where AI could help so much.
It’s not about faking people out. It’s about figuring out exactly what you want and making it work for you.
Train it. So when you say, “I need an email for June, personal to Scottsdale, helpful to pet parents, 300 words, funny but not punny,” it gives you exactly that.
Guys, I really want you to think about what you’re thinking about when it comes to AI.
My daughter is now next to my computer — it’s summer, kids are home — and I’ve gotta wrap this up.
I want you to know: I understand AI might be scary. People are telling you it’s negative. That you have to struggle to be successful.
No.
From solopreneurs to million-dollar companies — I know people using AI effectively.
Franchises are crumbling. Venture capitalists are buying up pieces of the pet industry.
You’re not taking your business to the grave. Start thinking of yourself as a steward of your company — not that you are the company.
That shift is huge.
And if you’re brave enough to embrace it, I’d love for you to join the mastermind — where Jumpers are jumping. Doing things differently. Inspiring each other.
I was the first one to start a mastermind in this industry — January 2017. Six and a half years ago.
I changed my mastermind completely in January.
And back to what I started with: I encourage every leader in this industry to start responsibly teaching AI.
I understand the fear — I had it in late 2023, early 2024 — “AI is going to replace me.”
But no, it’s not.
My commodity isn’t information. It’s community. Personal attention. Strategy. My ability to shift your brain.
That’s why I’ve gone so hard this year — talking mindset.
Because that’s what it’s going to take.
You can ask ChatGPT to act like me, to brainstorm anything.
But you can’t get strategy. You can’t know if what you’re doing aligns with your goals — unless someone helps you see it.
All right. I think I gave you a lot to think about today.
Let me know what you think about this episode. I’ll be back again next week.