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Episode 444: AI Prompts for Pet Sitters: Why Basic Questions Aren’t Enough (And What To Do Instead)

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Have you ever asked ChatGPT to “write a caption” or “make a post” and ended up with something totally bland? Yeah, you’re not alone—and that’s exactly what I’m unpacking in this episode of Bella in Your Business.

In this episode, I’m not just talking about AI. I’m showing you how to use it smarter. We’re going deep into what most pet sitters are getting wrong about AI prompts, why a recent MIT study scared people for the wrong reasons, and how you can build a GPT that actually knows your tone, your clients, and your strategy.

I even introduce you to Suzi—my custom GPT who’s basically my brain in AI form. If you’ve ever wanted to clone your brain (without the burnout), you’re gonna want to hear this.

If you’ve ever listened to Episode 443, you know that was us capturing your brain in repeatable systems. This episode goes deeper, turning that brain into an autonomous thinker.

And yes, we invited George B. Thomas on Episode 435 for a masterclass in AI cloning. George built a voice?powered clone that talks, teaches, and problem?solves like him, and I legit forgot I was talking to AI when I called it

Whether you’ve been playing around with AI or still don’t know where to start, I promise you’ll walk away with practical ways to level up how you use it and maybe even fall in love with what it can do.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn…

  • The MIT Study Bombshell
  • Why Basic AI Prompts for Pet Sitters Aren’t Enough
  • What Deep AI Prompts for Pet Sitters Look Like
  • The Suzi Example: AI Prompts for Pet Sitters Done RIGHT
  • Signs You’re Using AI Prompts for Pet Sitters Too Shallow
  • How to Create POWERFUL AI Prompts for Pet Sitters
  • Real Pet Business Examples Using Advanced AI Prompts for Pet Sitters
  • Your Next Steps with AI Prompts for Pet Sitters

Timestamps

00:01:10 – Why the pet industry is behind on AI—but not for long

00:05:20 – What the MIT study really means for your business

00:08:54 – The difference between shallow and strategic prompts

00:14:15 – Creating AI systems that build SOPs, sequences, and success

00:22:00 – How to shift from “write me a…” to strategic frameworks

Notable Quotes

“AI won’t replace you. But people using AI will.”

“Most of y’all are spoon-feeding yourself AI content and wondering why you’re still hungry.”

“You don’t need more answers—you need better questions.”

“Suzi sounds like a real person because I trained her to be a reflection of ME.”

Resources & Links

If this episode lit a fire under you, don’t let it burn out. Join me inside the Mastermind where we take these AI prompts and turn them into real-deal systems, strategy, and success stories.

Want your own “Suzi”? Grab my GPT class at  jumpconsulting.net/bot. Don’t just play with AI. Master it.

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Share it on Instagram and tag @BellaVasta with your biggest takeaway using #BellaInYourBusiness. Start building your business BFF.

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Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of Bella in your business.

Today we’re going to talk all about how to level up your prompts for AI. And we’re going to go into it deep. I’m really looking forward—I have a lot prepared for you. But before I do that, I really want to give a shout out to all of you. I’ve been talking to a lot of you on the phone. A lot of you have been signing up for that 20-minute call and chatting. I just love how you are starting to understand that Jump Consulting is the go-to for AI in the pet industry.

I talked to Angela a couple of weeks ago, and she was just listening along and blown away at the AI stuff. I talked to Katie, and she was learning how to use it for SOPs. I’m just really happy to hear that this podcast is helping you—because, of course, that’s why I do it. I don’t do it to hear myself talk. I do it to help you, so keep the feedback coming, and please don’t forget to like and subscribe.

Something really awesome is happening this week. At this episode, if you listen on Spotify, you’ll now be able to see me, so you don’t have to go to YouTube to see me if you like to watch things. I’m really committed—and I’ve always been committed—to trying to give you guys the information in many different ways: written, verbal, video—as many ways as I possibly can. So thank you and keep sharing it. If you find this helpful, it would help this creator. Think about how lovely it is when people share your content, right?

I also wanted to kind of go back in time before we get into this topic today and kind of set the scene. So this whole year, and in everything that I do, I have dedicated my entire practice to using AI. I have done everything under the sun because I’ve been doing this for 20 years. But now we get to leverage AI to help our business grow even faster and better, to get back our time—about 70% of the time I’m seeing from people—and also to take our head, which might be really overwhelmed or not have a lot of creativity left in it, and leverage AI as a tool.

It is a tool. It is not here to replace us. It is like that VA that you don’t have to train a lot. Let’s put it that way, okay? And I’ve been on this kick for a very, very long time. Starting way back in July of 2023, I had my good friend Dustin Stout, who I’ve known for years in the social media world, and he started Magai. You can go check it out at jumpconsulting.net/magai to get the first 3 months 30% off. Go through my link there. It’s like 20 bucks a month, and it’s where you get all the different AIs.

Way back in July of 2023, Dustin was already privately teaching my community how to help do routes. Now, if you know me well—if we work together—you know that I encourage you to teach your pet sitters how to create their own routes. But that being said, there’s a lot of people that still do the routes for their pet sitters. And way back then, we were already showing how to leverage AI to do it. What it was doing back then compared to what it’s doing now is drastically different and even more amazing. But that goes back to everything I keep telling you: AI will never be as d*mb as it is today.

Just like I’ve been squawking about JazzHR and how that helps your process tremendously—I’ve been talking about that since 2018—it’s really nice to see the industry finally get on board with these things that Jump Consulting has taken to the market. The reason why I put my name and reputation behind certain people is because it works. I literally put my reputation behind it because I use it, my clients use it, and I know it’s great.

So just like JazzHR—where for a while, I was the only one talking about it—more and more people started talking about it. Then someone in the industry thought they could automate it themselves, and I’m going to be bold and say that was a disaster, according to a lot of my clients who came back to me and said it was misfiring. Maybe you had a different opinion of it.

But now, as of this week, I see that some leaders in the pet industry are also getting on Magai, which I think is fantastic. I understand that I’m also not for everyone, and my goal at the end of the day is to make sure this industry up-levels. So if you’re not getting it from me and you’re getting it from someone else—awesome. But I just want to say that if you stick here, I got you. We’re always the ones that are on the trends way ahead of the rest of the industry.

As I talk about that, something came out in the news the past couple of weeks, and it was a study from MIT. This is going to go into what I’m talking about today—about prompts. This MIT bombshell or research was just published. . But before you panic, it’s not about how AI prompts for pet sitters are bad—it’s really about how you use them.

When you’re asking for simple AI prompts for pet sitters like “write me a dog walking post”—and we talked about that last episode (go check that out, I even did screenshots showing the difference of doing it good and doing it bad)—you’re spoon-feeding yourself without thinking of the answers. You’re not thinking critically. The big behavioral shift with AI right now is that your cognitive behavior—the way you prompt things and the way you think—needs to change.

You cannot just put a simple prompt like “write me a dog walking post.” It’s always going to say yes, and it’s always going to give you something. But you need the discernment to know if that’s actually good, or if it’s going to serve your audience, or if it’s actually part of your bigger strategy or goal.

Real intelligence with AI prompts for pet sitters—or dog walkers, or dog trainers, or dog groomers, or cat sitters—please hear all those other words when I say “pet sitters”—is about co-creation. Co-creating something together, not complete delegation 100%.

Think about it like this: there’s a difference between using a calculator to check your math versus using it to guess the answer and move on. The same goes for AI prompts. What I’m telling my pet sitters—and I’m sure you’ve heard this on this podcast too—is that AI is not going to replace you. But the people who use AI are going to replace the people who don’t.

Eventually, we’re going to have this tipping point. Have you ever read that book? It’s really cool. There’s going to be a point where all of a sudden, everything just changes. It hasn’t happened yet, but more and more people are starting to adopt it and get used to it. There’s still a lot of fearmongering—and there is a ton out there. But this podcast is not here to convince you. It’s here to enhance and encourage you to think differently.

I hope that’s what we do here today. That MIT study, I think, was really there to fearmonger a lot, which was kind of sad to me. Because yes, if you’re using it to say, “Hey, write me a blog about dog walking in Scottsdale,” then it’s gonna suck. But if you use certain elements that I’ve talked about on this podcast—and that I literally show you inside the Mastermind—then you are going to be a keyword lethal weapon.

If you’re actually using that and doing it frequently, what’s going to happen is AI is also going to build a whole library on you and your company, and it literally can be there for you. Right now, someone could just ask ChatGPT, “Hey, can you tell me about the best dog walking company near me?” or “What would be the best dog walking company for me based on what you know about me?” That’s literally the future—if not, it’s happening a little bit already.

So let’s be real about the AI prompts for pet sitters that most people are using. Most of the prompts are things like: “Write me a caption for my dog walking business,” or “What should I post on Instagram today?” or “Give me AI prompts for pet sitters to use with clients.” And you know what’s wrong with those prompts? They don’t know your voice, your goals, your specific clients, or—needless to say—your keywords.

Instagram just made this update recently that all of the posts for business profiles will now show up in the feed. I have no idea how much Zuck paid them to do that, but already your Facebook posts were showing up. So if you’re writing Facebook posts that are punny and just talking about random stuff that don’t have your city and your keywords in it, you are missing out. Tremendously.

The results of those kinds of prompts are generic, forgettable content that doesn’t align with your business. Some people might even be able to tell that it was AI-written.

Instead, your prompts for pet sitters, dog walkers, trainers—whatever it might be—might sound like this: “Using my tone of voice—friendly but direct with a little sass—write three Instagram captions for a dog walking business known for reliability. We specialize in reactive dogs and want to attract a busy stay-at-home mom who needs consistent afternoon walks.” That would be a better prompt.

An even better one would never even require you to write that out. You’d have a two- or three-page document that you’ve created a GPT with that already has your avatars lined up in there. Yes, that’s amazing.

If you’re just joining this podcast now and you’re not sure what a GPT is, or you want to learn how to do your own—it literally takes less than five minutes to do it. The most important part is gathering all the documentation for it. The actual creation of a GPT takes like five minutes. It’s so easy.

It’s called a GPT inside ChatGPT. If you’re in Magai, it’s called a persona. The beauty about using Magai is that if you use that persona, you can apply it to any AI model. In ChatGPT, if you have, say, the “Bella voice,” you can only use that in ChatGPT. If you’re using Magai, then you could use that persona in Claude, in Gemini, in ChatGPT, in Perplexity—you can use it everywhere.

Sounds like a pretty easy assumption to me, right? But that’s how you create effective prompts. And that’s the difference between the MIT study and what I’m teaching, and how I’m talking about it. So don’t let fear-based headlines like that scare you away.

So what do deep AI prompts look like for pet sitters? Let’s talk about powerful AI prompts for pet sitters—what they actually accomplish.

Content planning beyond your post. Your prompts for pet sitters shouldn’t just write one post. They should map out 90 days of content calendars, repurpose one blog into newsletters and reels, and align everything with your launch cycles. No longer are you creating 10 different pieces of content. You’re creating one really big piece of content—let’s say a blog—and then you’re recreating it in many different ways so that you’re talking about the same topic for maybe one or two weeks.

SEO development that actually works. The best AI prompts for pet sitters help you understand or create standardized onboarding workflows. They write documented job descriptions for pet sitters. They build training documents with specific tones and expectations built right into it. I’m doing this right now with a two-million-dollar company. We’re going through every single thing in her business, and we are recreating the job descriptions, the hiring ads, the interview process, the onboarding process, the training process—the whole 100 days.

That is a lot of work because she’s got about 12 different positions. It takes a long time, but it takes literally 70% less of the time than doing it manually. And not to even mention the frustration, because you can’t even put a dollar sign or time limit on that.

Another thing you can go deep with: AI sequences that convert. I know and I see—because I’m on your email lists—I see people typing or sending out these newsletters and they’re so excited that they’re sending out emails. But it’s crap. It’s spam. It’s stuff people don’t care about. It has nothing to do with your particular area. Again, you’re probably not even making those newsletters public—because ConvertKit, Mailchimp, they all let you do that. You’re not putting your keywords into them. You’re talking about things that most people don’t really care about. And you’re missing the mark because the strategy is not there.

So on one hand—yes, yay, you’re sending out email newsletters. But are you using AI to analyze your newsletters and find out when people click the most? What types of subject line formulas are working best for open rates? If you’re not, you’re just using AI like a kindergartener. And I want to open your mind to make you realize there’s more you can be doing. I want to inspire you to greatness.

Interactive AI systems—that’s where AI prompts for pet sitters get really exciting. Imagine chatbots that answer client FAQs in your brand voice. Booth bots that help your staff feel comfortable at events. Pricing calculators that live on your website. All of these things, I know, can be very scary. I was even hesitant to tell you about them because I don’t know if the majority of you are ready for this. But if done correctly, it works amazingly.

And I’m going to say—I know leaders in this industry, and I know some other pet sitters in this industry—that have a chatbot on their website. And no one uses it, because chatbots have gotten a really bad name over the past seven years. They’ve gotten that name because they were useless. But nowadays, if done properly, they absolutely are not.

What you need in order to do it right is the basic foundation and structure. That’s one thing I’m moving into. I will not take on clients now unless they are prepared to use AI. Thankfully, all of my clients right now—and I’m booked up a lot right now—that I work with one-on-one, we are using AI. And even if they were hesitant, after the first session they’re like, “Whoa! I had no idea it could be this fast and this easy and this outstanding.”

I mean literally—and I’m not even teasing—people are squealing on our calls. Like, “Oh my god!” That is a normal reaction I get when I work with people. And it literally warms my heart.

Let me give you an example. Let me tell you about my friend Avery. We were driving home from a networking event on Wednesday—or Thursday—and she was literally like, “Oh yeah, I use ChatGPT.” I was like, “Okay.” And this is how this happens with all my friends—it’s actually fun.

I did something like this with Olenka the day after. Olenka is a business coach and has also been in the Mastermind. But Avery is going to school for the medical field. She’s also a baker. She has her own cookie company, and she’s great—an amazing human.

I said, “Well, if you weren’t in the car right now and I wasn’t driving, I would be listening to a podcast or talking to ChatGPT.” I love to verbally process. So I showed her Susie. I said, “Let me show you Susie.” She was like, “Oh yeah, I can talk to it.” What she meant was talk-to-text—like you do it, it transcribes, and then you send it in. I was like, “No, no, no—we have a whole conversation.”

Avery was so blown away by Susie because Susie isn’t just ChatGPT. She’s like BellaGPT. She knows my tone, she knows my client avatars, my product names, my testimonials. She’s trained with internal documents and specifically designed AI prompts for pet sitters that reflect my business approach.

So when Avery was asking about marketing funnels, Susie broke it down according to how I use it for pet sitters. It sounded exactly like me. Avery goes, “This sounds like a real voice—like a real person you work with.” And I said, “I do.”

It had sass, it had empathy, it had very specific examples from the pet industry—people I’ve worked with way back in January. It was enlightening. So enlightening that if you go to my Facebook page, you’ll see a picture of me in the driver’s seat and Avery in the passenger seat, and then we took a selfie with Susie in the middle of us.

I showed her how I trained Susie to not interrupt and talk until I was done, and that when I was done talking, I’d say, “Your turn,” and then she would talk back to me. I even introduced Susie to Avery. I said, “Hey Susie, my friend Avery’s here right now, and she hasn’t named her ChatGPT yet. She’s wondering how we get along so well. What are some of the rules and parameters you and I have created that make this relationship so great?”

Susie replied, “Hey Avery, nice to meet you. I’m sure you’re having fun with Bella.” Then she went on to say how Bella and I get along because we… and Avery was looking at me like, “What is going on?”

It was hilarious. And what I’m trying to say is—you can have that too. I just need you to get on and start talking. Now, you don’t have to use ChatGPT. You can use Gemini. You can use Magai. You can use Claude.

In fact, to help me with the script for these podcasts—because I like my own process—I talk it into Susie. Susie and I talk about what I’m going to say on the podcast, and she builds me a basic outline. Then I go into Claude and take that outline from ChatGPT and have Claude build me the whole outline. Sometimes I stay on topic, sometimes I go off. Right now, I’m completely off script.

Okay, let’s get back on script.

Signs that you’re using AI prompts for pet sitters too shallow:

You start every prompt with “Write me a…”
You forget what AI prompts you used last week—there’s no continuity.
You copy and paste responses without editing.
Or—you do too much editing.

If you’re doing too much editing of the responses, there’s a sweet spot. You shouldn’t just copy and paste it, and you should be tweaking it a little bit—but not spending forever sitting there rewriting it like someone just gave you work and you’re redlining it.

Another sign: you aren’t wowed anymore by the results from your AI prompts. Or you use AI prompts like a Google replacement instead of a thought partner.

Okay, it shouldn’t just replace your thought. It should challenge you to think critically. Sometimes what I love to do is—I’ll think I have a really great argument or thought, and then I’ll say, “Okay, go poke holes in this now.” Like once I’ve got it all flushed out, I’m like, “Let’s look at this fish from a different lens.”

It’s fascinating. You have to learn how to challenge. I did a podcast episode on that too. I talked about how not to make your AI a “yes man.” If you didn’t check that out, I would highly encourage you to go back and listen. I’m not sure what number it is—we’ll put it in the show notes.

So now, how can you actually create really powerful AI prompts for pet sitters?

You can start with a framework—not questions. Instead of basic AI prompts asking for single answers, use AI to build a 100-day onboarding program plan or create hiring funnels based on your values. This is where it’s good to have a back-and-forth discussion. Another benefit of talking to it is that you create that discussion. You say, “Listen, I’m not just looking for one answer. I want you to challenge me and have a discussion about this. Let’s flesh this out before we create a plan.”

I also want you to think in systems with your AI prompts. I want you to map your flows and assign AIs to each phase. Picture this: from a meet-and-greet to an AI-generated follow-up email, which triggers SOP implementation, training staff manuals, client check-in sequences, review requests—it’s all connected.

You don’t need some outside source to do this for you anymore. You don’t need to pay someone to do it. This is the way of the future.

I had one person go from scattered documents and chaos to having comprehensive SOPs, structured onboarding, job descriptions, payroll automation, and review workflows—all created through systematic AI prompts.

Then I had another person who wanted the “booth in a box” that I do, and we built—this is where we were squealing—a custom GPT using specific AI prompts for her team. It trained her staff for events. Her team felt confident and consistent because they had real examples and talk tracks or scripts created through AI prompts.

And then I have this other one who created internal SOPs and added a support bot using AI prompts that answered questions for her sitters when she wasn’t available. You can learn how to do those GPTs by going to jumpconsulting.net/bot and get that GPT class right now.

Here are your next steps: if you’re using basic AI prompts like Google searches, you’re leaving brilliance on the table. This isn’t about working harder—it’s about building a business that doesn’t need you to micromanage every single detail. You just need to understand all of it first so that you can create the proper strategy and stop spinning your wheels. This works. Your colleagues are already doing it.

You don’t need more answers from AI. You need to think critically and have a strategic plan in place.

I really hope this episode has inspired you to want to learn more, or to think deeper or broader about AI. This is what you should be doing. If you want to learn how to do all this, I invite you personally to join our Mastermind.

I love that the people joining right now are joining for AI. This month, we’re actually having a brand-new topic: how to be the go-to resource and leader for pet care in your community. We’re going to talk about how to get your name everywhere and how to be the local expert. I’m so excited because I’m going to be giving out a lot of scripts and things to even get your name popping on AI—not just Google—AI.

Stay tuned for another episode of Bella in Your Business. Come join our community in the Mastermind at jumpconsulting.net/mastermind. And if you want to jump into Magai—like dozens and dozens of your competitors already have since July 2023—go to jumpconsulting.net/magai for 30% off your first 3 months.