AI is EVERYWHERE—but are you using it the right way in your pet business?
Have you ever wondered if all these AI tools are doing more harm than good—leaving the heart and soul of your pet business behind? You’re not alone. That’s why today, we’re diving headfirst into Ethical AI for Pet Businesses. Truth is, AI doesn’t have to feel cold or impersonal. It’s all about striking the perfect balance—saving you time without losing the personal touch that keeps your clients coming back.
In this episode, I’m breaking down real-life examples of how pet business owners—just like you—are leveraging tools to save HOURS every week while keeping their client relationships stronger than ever. From rewriting a 5-page SOP into a game-changing 13-page team manual, to saving $1,700 a year by ditching unnecessary software, these are wins you can’t ignore.
Here’s the deal: AI is here. It’s happening now. But the question isn’t if you’ll use it—it’s how you’ll use it to stay authentic and aligned with your values. If you’ve ever wondered how to make AI work for you (instead of feeling like it’s taking over), this episode is for you.
So, hit play, and let’s dive into Ethical AI for Pet Businesses—because your clients deserve the best of you, not a robotic replacement.
Let’s make your business smarter, stronger, and ready for the future!
Timestamps:
[01:00] How AI is Shaping Pet Businesses Today
[03:25] Are Your AI Tools Reflecting Your Values?
[15:29] The Right Way to Use AI for Client Communication
[18:2] Balancing Tech and Humanity in Your Business
[24:01] Ribeye and AI: What’s the Connection?
[24:59] Tell Me What You Think!
Notable Quotes:
“AI isn’t the future anymore—it’s the now. The question isn’t if you’ll use it, but how you’ll use it to stay authentic and aligned with your values.”
“Trust is at the core of what we do as pet business owners, and that trust can be damaged if we rely too heavily on automation without thinking about how it’s being used.”
“Automation should enhance the client experience, not replace the genuine connection that makes your business unique.”
“Using AI tools ethically doesn’t mean replacing your creativity—it means amplifying it and making your processes smarter.”
“If you don’t tell your AI tools who you are and what your values are, how can you expect them to represent you authentically?”
Resources:
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Transcript:
Welcome back to another episode of Bella in youn Business. Today we’re diving into something that’s becoming more and more critical in the pet care industry. AI tools. Like I told you, I’m not going to stop talking about this because it’s here. And I believe that it is so important for you to have a guide and someone in your ear in the industry to help guide you. But it’s not just any AI tools we’re going to talk about today. I’m going to talk about using it ethically and effectively in ways that will save you time and stress without losing that personal touch your clients love. Because I think one of the biggest fears is that AI is, you know, taking the humanness out of it.
And yeah, it does if you use it wrong, but if you use it right, that’s not going to happen. And the thing is, is that AI, it isn’t the future anymore, it’s the now. And it’s already here. And businesses everywhere are using it to streamline their operations, improve communication, and grow even faster. In fact, let me put my money where my mouth is. I’m going to share with you a DM from Carlene, and she’s the owner of Barks to Meows Pet Sitting in Ohio. And she sent me this note the other day and she said, I just have to tell you because I’m uber excited that I’ve absorbed so much information and learned so many new things that I am so excited about 2025 for me and my team. I was able to rewrite my SOP and bring it from my cheap Fox 5 page document to a full 13 page document and send that to my team and they are so excited.
Sorry, I’m rambling, but I also created my GPT and still tweaking that. You don’t have to respond back. I always respond back. You guys, I love getting your dms, especially ones like these. But I just wanted you to know I’m so excited for the opportunity to grow and to have so many besties to grow with. I guess I just got it assigned an accountability partner too. He’d better be ready for my energy. I’m stoked.
Have a great night. And I’m ready for our call next week. Guys, this is someone who joined the our community like two weeks ago. Okay. And we had so many of you guys join in the past couple weeks and I think it has a lot to do with the AI. I want to let you know that this month, you know, we always talk goals and vision. It’s January. It’s very timely, but we did that so many times and I probably got, I haven’t counted them maybe six or seven, like 20 minute trainings with all different members on all the different ways that you can like plan out your goals and your strategy and get it even down to like daily tasks and affirmations.
And it’s quite wild. It’s pretty, pretty amazing. And then there’s some other trainings in there that I’ve mentioned in my newsletters, I’ve mentioned on, on the podcast. So I’m not going to keep, I’m not going to keep gushing about that. I’ve got so many more testimonials and things that you guys have been like texting me and, and saying how exciting it’s been and I’m on fire for you. You fuel me. And so keep it coming. Keep telling me.
Because what we’re going to be doing is I want, today, I want to kind of pause for a minute because I think this is something that’s in the back of a lot of people’s mind, minds. And I want to like, ask ourselves, like, are we using AI in a way that aligns with our values and are we staying true to what our makes our business unique? Those, those two questions are so important. And it isn’t just a matter of, I think scarcity and a fear mindset comes from saying something like, I can’t use AI. It’s so generic, I don’t want it. And that’s like not the kind of people I’m working with. Okay. The kind of people that I’m working with and, and the things that I’m teaching are ways to truly make it so unique to you and your business. But before we figure out how to tell AI how to make it unique to your business, we need to know who you are, who you are and who your business is.
And that’s a little uncomfortable for some people because a lot of people have just been flying by night. I’m a dog walker and a pet sitter and we’re the best in the area and that’s it. Well, that’s gonna also produce a lot of generic AI and I think that AI is actually gonna help people in that way. But today we’re gonna walk through some AI tools that I recommend for pet sitting and dog walking businesses, how to use them ethically and real life examples from my amazing clients who are already leveraging the tools to save hours of work every week, literally. I have a client who in one of my trainings, um, it had to do with staff schedules this week. She, she said that she could cancel the software that she was been. She’s been using that has costed her seventeen hundred dollars a year. Seventeen hundred dollars.
My little training video helped her do. I’m. Yes, I’m bragging because that’s something to brag about. It’s freaking amazing. All right, so I’m going to try so hard to stay on topic because I get really, really excited. I’ve been thinking about doing a webinar on this really soon. If you’re someone who would like to attend that, I would love for you to DM me at Bella Basta or Bella jump consulting.net and tell me what you’d like to learn about. What would you like to hear about? All right.
So as many business owners know, trust is the core of what we do. Pet parents, they all trust us with their pets and they trust us to communicate clearly and our staff to communicate clear, clearly, deeply and to show up authentic, authentic, authentically. Sometimes I get tongue tied if, if you rely too heavily on automation, that trust can go down. I’ll give you an example. Have you ever been a part of a company or like, you know, signed up for a company and then all of a sudden you just get these templated emails? God, I cannot tell you how much I hate templated emails. Stop the madness. This is not 2002. If you’re sending templated emails and what I mean is like literally sending that template email and just punching in their name, then like, please, let’s get on a call.
Jump consulting.netforward/20. You should not be. Automation is really actually people. How do I even say this? A lot of people say that AI is, is taking the human out of everything, but you’ve already taken it out by automating everything people know and it makes a difference. And all of these automated emails that I see, so many not jumpers, there’s not a lot of jumpers that are doing it. It just, it kills me. So now a template is a template. It’s something that you start off of and then you build it out.
It is a place to start. It’s kind of like the, the cookie batter, right? But then you still got to decorate the cookie and make it your own. That’s probably a weird thing. I hope you’re understanding what I’m saying. If you’re not literally bark back at me like, get in my dms. But listen, the. I’m getting so excited and I want to try to stay so on script today. I almost Am about to throw away my entire script.
But that’s okay. We’re going to stay on top topic. Because this is a really important topic to talk about. The ethical, the ethical part of it. So the trust can be damaged if we rely too much on the automation or AI without thinking about how it’s going to be used. For example, a cold, generic message sent to a client. It might save time, but it literally leaves them feeling like they’re just another number. I know you’ve felt that on the receiving end before, so why are you doing it? And while I’m at it, stop sending emails that have all of these, like, like these borders and this like fluffy stuff like that also is like spam, like just simple, plain old emails.
That would be great. And our businesses are based off of relationships, not transactions. And I know that you feel that, I know that you agree with that. But unfortunately, because we’re, we’re stressed out, overworked, overtired, hungry, hangry. You know, we’re just trying to like press the button and get the motion going. And this isn’t giving you more things to do, but this is, this is, this is taking back, putting back the relationship into it. So, okay, let’s get into the tools. The first one is Canva.
And I know you probably already know about it, right? But just hear me out. So it’s a life saver for creating graphics, right? Social media posts, flyers, client resources like welcome packets or schedules or maybe gift certificates or, or, or, or, or blog article. There’s so much you can do with Canva and there’s so much that they have AI in Canva. If you’re not using AI in Canva, then we need to talk because you’re already behind, right? And that’s what makes Canva so much more powerful now. The magic design to upload a photo and instantly get dozens of design options or the magic, right, to generate captions and descriptions for your content. Like, and then the caveat to this is again, okay, level one, anyone can do that. Sure, let’s just do that and we’ll get all these different things. Level 2 is knowing how to, to create it so that it also reflects, that reflects your brand.
Okay. Because your brand elements, is it like a curve? Is it straight? I mean, I’ve done so many podcast episodes on that. But like, does it reflect your branding? So like, for example, one of my clients, she used Canva magic design to create a beautiful holiday schedule for her dog walking business. She added her brand colors, logo, a friendly note to clients about Holiday availability. It took her 15 minutes instead of hours. And the feedback she got was, like, awesome. Some, like, a lot. Even complimented how professional it looked because normally she doesn’t take the five minutes it takes to create this.
And it was in a email when she was talking about, hey, book now kind of thing, you know? And the ethical tip on this is what I already said. It’s. It’s keep your branding consistent. Canva makes it easy to use the templates, but then you also have to have your branding, like, put up in there. And, yeah, it does take time and you can absolutely do it. Or you could have my team do it. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert.
If you’ve been kind of. If your brain’s been wandering on this episode right now, you want to come back to me. If you’ve ever wanted to have custom content, custom marketing content for you, you need to DM me. You need to text me right now, because I’m going to be doing something completely different, which, with better marketing, with Bella second half, and it’s going to be all custom content, and the extent of which what I’m doing is going to blow your mind. Okay, that was off script again. Here we go. Let’s get back on tool number two, Grammarly. I know that again, you probably know about this, but I love it.
I. I started saying something interesting this week that, you know, it’s not AI if you see a. A typo. I saw one of my friends who does a lot of posting on social using AI and it forgot, like, it didn’t have an E in something, and I was like, like on the dms and I was just like, I don’t think you should. You should change it. I think that typos in the future are going to be a sign of authenticity, and that makes me happy because if you know me. To know me is to love me. Uh, and you know that I.
Ugh, I’m terrible. Like, I spell things wrong or I just type really fast or sometimes I. My. My nails. I haven’t been to the nail salon, and when my nails get long and I’m typing fast, I make more mistakes. But Grammarly is great because it’s like having a second set of eyes on everything you write, whether it’s an email to a client, if you’re actually still writing the emails and not using Gemini, which is now free by the way, through Google, you should be using that too. I should have that on this list. All right, we’ll save that one for another time.
But Grammarly, also, you Know, it checks for spelling, grammar, tone, and even clarity. So it’s not just like a spell check. One of my clients was drafting a sensitive email to a pet parent about a last minute schedule change. She used Grammarly because, you know, it’s like right inside your stuff. You don’t have to go someplace else for it. And you can make sure that Grammarly is making the tone warm and apologetic while still staying professional. And what it did is it flagged a few phrases that might have sounded a little too abrupt, and she was able to adjust them to better match her company’s friendly voice. So the ethical tip for Grammarly is that it’s a great tool for catching mistakes, but don’t rely on it to write your emails.
It’s a tool to enhance your voice, not replace it. Number three, I did put Gemini in here. Okay, good. Google Gemini for email. Now let’s talk about the newer tool. Up until like two weeks ago, you used to have to pay for it. You don’t anymore. If you have magi, you have already used it because you’ve been able to use all the LLMs.
That means chatgpt, it means Claude, it means perplexity, like all of it. Right, Gemini. But now you can use oh, and Notebook, lml, ML, LLM is coming the beginning of February as well. And that’s something else you’re going to want to check out. I’m telling you the reason why you’re going to want to like stay close to me is because I’m literally going to show you as things happen, what you’re going to need to know or how this can benefit your business. So instead of like listening to people that are out there, that aren’t in our industry, that don’t know your unique problems and solutions, I’m going to show you literally how you can or how your colleagues are using this. So with Gemini, Gemini is like inside your email. It is inside Google.
It is Google’s AI assistant that can help draft emails, thumb summarize threads, and even suggest responses. Then you probably already seen it in there. Guys. This is going to become more and more and more prevalent already. You can do that on your iPhone now. Like when you’re trying to send text messages. You can have it, you know, do friendly or professional. It’s in your email.
There’s no reason why you should be sitting there and posting in Facebook groups saying, what do I say back to this client, Guys, when I see people do that, it’s like nails on a chalkboard to me because I’m Like I want to save them, I want to help them, but I don’t think they, they have the mindset and luckily you’re listening to this podcast, which means you are a jumper mindset. Hopefully you’re also a Mastermind member and you understand the behavior modification that is drastically happening out in the world inside our businesses and our businesses are going to be forced to do. I’m not going to go off script, but I’m going to tease you with something and it’s something I posted in the community today. Do you know that the agents are out and the agents can book dog walking now? Do you think I’m absolutely crazy? I’m telling you I’m not. Like this stuff is here, guys. Okay, we’re going to stay on topic though. I want for the ethical tip because I’m trying to give you tips for each one of these. So for Gemini, always review and personalize the AI drafted emails.
Even though the suggestions can save you time, the clients will notice if it feels robotic or generic. And I don’t feel like Gemini actually understands your tone as good as Claude or ChatGPT. So there’s also that whole discussion to be had. It’s not a universal fix, it’s it’s more of a conversation than me a one way conversation on a podcast right now. The other one is Calendly. And guys, again this I just want you to keep your mind open and I know you know about these tools, but do you understand and are you using them to the fullest capability? Are you only using 20% of what you can be doing? So Calendly is an AI powered scheduling tool that makes booking consultations or meet and greets a breeze. And a lot of people use that. Now here’s where the fork in the road splits if you are usually it’s sitters that are solo or just starting up.
They don’t really have Google Workspace. Calendly is a great option for them because you do have to pay for it. If you’re using G Suite or Google Workspace or whatever they’re calling it right now, you have access to Google Calendar. In fact, if you book with me, you’ll see I canceled my Calendly and we use Google Calendar. It’s like why use a third party app when Google’s doing it right? But like a client of mine in Colorado, she uses Calendly for all of her new client consultations. She even customized the booking page to include a friendly welcome message, a list of what clients need to prepare for the meeting, and A short video introducing herself. I’m pretty sure her competition’s not doing that. Clients have told her how much they appreciate how easy and professional and warm the process was.
So that’s another wonderful way of how you can merge together, you know, the technology and the humanism. And so make sure you’re doing that. Ethical tip it’s always good to include a personal touch like a thank you note or follow up email after the booking to keep the interaction warm and human. Number five, this is one I know that a lot of you guys aren’t using. And it’s one I have used in the past. I am not currently using it just because I don’t have someone on my team that can do it. I would love to get someone on my team to do this, honestly, but it’s a fantastic service and there’s some other services out there as well. But I’m just going to talk about the one that I know and this is my last tip for today too.
It’s ManyChat. It’s an AI chatbot that works with Facebook, Messenger, Instagram DMS and even your website. ManyChat’s perfect for answering FAQs like your rates, availability, service area. But what I love most is you can set it up to hand off the more complex questions to a real person. For example, one of my clients in Florida, she uses manychat to handle Instagram dms. When someone asks what are your rates? The bot responds instantly with a link to her pricing page. If someone asks, can you handle an aggressive dog? The bot flags it for her to respond personally. The tip here is to make, it’s to make your life easier, not to avoid interacting with clients.
And automation should never should enhance the client’s experiments, experience, not replace. And I see this used wrong a lot, A lot of people have these like chats on their website and they don’t even use them. And it’s just like a big, it’s, it’s, it’s intrusive, it pops up, it’s something you have to get rid of. It like hides part of the screen. No one ever answers it. It’s annoying af, okay? And I think that in this age, especially when there’s going to be a lot of automation coming up, it should really jump up and just say state it. And this is what we did is hi, I’m Jumpy Bot, Bella’s assistant or bot, dog, dog, bot. And like we literally gave it a name and we told people out the gate, this is who I am.
This is what I can do this is what I can’t do. And out the gate, like, do you want to talk to a human? You know? And so I, I just encourage you to open your mind, open your brain, think about what, what is possible and these changes that are coming. It’s not. Stop thinking. Please don’t think. Oh, my God, I’m stressed out. Because I’ll tell you, a lot of this stuff, it’s not hard to learn. It’s not like Facebook ads where there’s a million buttons you could click.
It’s like getting to outer space. And it’s a long game because you have to build an audience and you have to build a warm audience and you have to build a hot audience. Like, it’s not like that. AI is not like that. AI is intuitive. It, it used to predict what the next thing is. Now it knows. Now it reasons.
It has common sense right now in January 2025. And I have to keep saying, saying this because this podcast is going to be completely outdated in 6, 9, 12 months. It is. And I’m telling you guys, it’s here. And you can’t stick your head in the sand. You’re gonna need someone in your back pocket. Me. Who is going to be the strainer? I, I wish I had a better analogy, but I don’t.
I think I’m gonna even try to record a video with a strainer. Let me be your strainer. You’re gonna hear about so much stuff out there. Sentra. I mentioned it. One of my last podcasts. Someone actually just messaged me today and said, oh, my God, that thing was horrible. I wish I heard that podcast because I heard you say it on the podcast.
I wish I heard that before. You know, there’s this, this thing that’s just, you know, it looks like all these, it’s, it’s beautiful marketing. It looks like the Care Bears of like AI bots. And it tells you, you know, we got all these assistants to do all this stuff for you. No, it doesn’t. They don’t know anything about you. It’s a third party tool. Go straight to the source, go to your, go create your own GPT.
That’s the stuff we’re talking about. And I’m teaching in the mastermind. We’re not going to be going into a Google Document anymore and trying to search for something. We’re going to have a GPT that just spits it out to us. It is so intuitive. It’s, it’s amazing. And the more that you talk to it, not only the more that it learns about you, but the more that you learn how to talk to it, the easier you’re going to have of. Of helping you with your life.
I almost want to start a series, and I’m kind of. I would love to hear your opinion. The things that I used AI for this week. For example, last night I went out to dinner with my girlfriends, and there was this steak and potatoes and a broccoli, which, by the way, that’s like, my favorite, like, meal. And. But it was, like, for two, but we knew it was gonna be pretty big. And so our girlfriend was on our way, on her way. And so me and.
Me and my friend were there and I texted her and I was like, hey, do you want to split this with us? It’s a rib eye. And she goes, oh, is that the fatty one? And this girl is a twig. She’s beautiful. All my friends are beautiful, but she’s beautiful, right? And I’m like, oh, brother. I’m like. So I just went. I was like, yes, it has fat in it. It’s not the.
The most lean meat of meat thing of meat, right? But that’s what makes it juicy. So what did I do? I literally went to chat GPT and I said, is ribeye fatty? And it said, I’m going to read it to you. And I copy and pasted this to her. And like, I screenshot it. So she knew it was from chat, because all my friends know that I’m, like, super into. I, like, I’m helping them and like, their businesses. Like, it’s hilarious. But she said, yes, ribeye is considered a fatty cut of beef.
It has a high level of marbling, the white streaks of fat within the meat, which makes it tender, juicy, and flavorful. And it kind of keeps going on for, like, two more sentences. But it’s just. It’s really funny because I was like, I’m not even going to try to explain this to her. I’m just going to let chatgpt do it. And that’s what I did. And there’s so many more instances where I have just gotten out GPT now and, and, and figured that out. But that’s the thing.
The more that you use it in your life, the more that you understand how you can use it in your business. And here we are again at 25 minutes. These have been a little bit longer episodes. Let me. Let me try to wrap this up, because I don’t want to be too. Too long. Do you guys like them when they’re long or Are they harder to listen to? Do you like them more bite size? I am starting to get some responses from you guys, but I would like to get more responses instead of getting, like, five or six. I would love to hear from a good 20 of you.
So if you think, oh, Bella’s not talking to me. No, I’m talking to you right now. You. If you hear me, I hear you. Okay, I want to hear you. I’m not hearing you right now. And I want to hear you. So, in conclusion, AI is a very powerful tool that can save you time, reduce stress, and help scale your business, but only if you use it ethically and responsibly.
And a lot of people are not using them responsibly. And then saying that AI doesn’t work, which is just enraging. And that’s a whole nother podcast for me. Your clients trust you to care for their pets with love and attention. That same same care should go into how you communicate with them, whether it’s through an email, a social media post, a chatbot. AI should support your values, not compromise them. Do you know that you need to tell your bot what your values are? If you’re feeling overwhelmed by everything, I am here to help. Like, nothing would excite me more.
And my excitement is contagious, just like back in the day when we might have worked one on one, because I know a lot of my clients, clients who are very successful. Now, you guys still listen to the podcast. It’s time to come back for a little bit because we need to do some tweaks and adjusting. We need to get you caught up to 2025. I’m not. I’m not exaggerating, guys. I am here to help, and I can guide you through it all so you can focus on what you’re doing best, caring for the pets and managing your team. So thank you so much for joining us today.
I probably should have said this at the beginning, but I would love it. Please, like, subscribe, follow. Hit that follow button. It helps me. And if there’s one thing you could do by listening to this podcast and me preparing all of my thoughts and my notes, that takes at least. Okay, well, it used to take an hour and a half. It takes more like both 20, 25 minutes now because I’m able to put all my thoughts into AI and then it helps me build my script. But nonetheless, that’s still time.
And then another half hour doing this. I would love it if you would share it with your friends, put it in a Facebook group, post it on your Facebook page. Whatever feels good to you. Leave a review and like and follow. And I also want you to remember that when life gets you down, always keep jumping. Bye now.