Are you running on fumes, questioning if your pet business is even worth it anymore? You’re not broken—you’re burned out. In this episode, I’m calling out the six lies that fuel pet sitting business burnout and block your growth.

These myths sneak in through Facebook groups, outdated advice, and even your own inner critic. But today, we’re flipping the script.

You’ll learn:

• Why taking time off isn’t a luxury—it’s how real CEOs stay creative and sane.

• How doing everything yourself drains your energy and stalls your success.

• What “professional” really looks like—and why boring branding doesn’t work.

• Why showing up on every platform isn’t helping (and what to do instead).

• How S.O.P.s and AI tools can save your sanity—even if you’re a solo pet sitter.

• Why your business should never look the same all year long.

Huge thank-you to Becky from Paws Around Motown for showing us what strong systems, great leadership, and actual balance can look like in real life. Your example is pure gold.

This episode is not about surface-level tips. It’s a truth-packed reality check with practical steps you can take right now. If you’ve been stuck in survival mode, it’s time to shift. You don’t have to keep spinning your wheels.

Let’s bust these myths and beat pet sitting business burnout together—so you can lead with vision, energy, and joy again.

In this Episode, You’ll Discover…

• How to stop believing the lies that cause pet business burnout

• Practical ways to reclaim your time and energy

• Real examples from business owners making bold shifts

• How to use AI and seasonal trends to stay proactive, not reactive

• Learn how to delegate with clarity and confidence—even if past hires left you burned.

Timestamps

00:42 – The myth of “I can’t take time off” and how Becky from Paws Around Motown proves otherwise
08:51 – The trap of being on every social platform and what to do instead
12:24 – Why “professional” doesn’t have to mean “boring”
14:32 – S.O.P.s aren’t just for big businesses
19:05 – The myth of “I’ll save money by doing it all myself” and the true cost of DIYing everything

Notable Quotes

“Just because it didn’t work doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It means it doesn’t work that way.”

“You can still be fun and serious about safety. You can be warm and still have rock-solid SOPs.”

“Professional doesn’t mean boring. It means intentional, trustworthy, and human.”

Links & Resources:

• Join the Mastermind

• Email Bella: bella @jumpconsulting.net

• Connect on IG: @bellavasta

• Book a complimentary 20-min strategy call. 

Watch all our Podcasts on YouTube

Previous podcast episode:

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta.

And you know what I told you last episode that we might just continue on. And we totally are. I got a couple of emails and texts from you guys, that last week’s message was totally on point.

I even want to read one from Lily Johnston, she said. Bella, this episode was a smash hit with my brain. It’s given me so much confidence.

I’ve listened to a lot of your podcast episodes. But this one was perfect and just what I needed for the moment.

I am in right now. Thank you.

Girl, you are so welcome! Absolutely. And it wasn’t just you. It was some other people that was like, yes, that totally hit it home.

So I decided, I’m going to keep going.

I’m gonna keep going. Because why not? And this is like literally what I call stinking thinking. If you’ve ever worked with me, and as we’re on episode 440 and guys, I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. I’m like the slow and steady. Okay.

If you’ve been with me for a long time, you know that I started this podcast in my closet.

10 years ago, when my daughter was in NICU. It was the only place in my entire house that had a carpet and everything else had tiles, so it was very echoey, and I did it on my laptop with my laptop speaker.

Now I’ve got this really fancy expensive Shure microphone that hopefully makes me sound like butter.

Is it even on? What is going on? It’s not even on. I’m really glad I just looked at this.

Let’s see, the microphone is not on.

Oh, you know why? Cause it’s not plugged into my computer. And do you know why?

We’re not cutting any of this out.

We’re not. I’m so glad that I tried to look at this. Okay, if you’re watching the video, you’re gonna see my back porch.

Or my backyard.

And we’re going to put the microphone on because you’re gonna see the difference.

Oh, this is gonna be fun! You’re gonna see the difference between me having a really good microphone and not a microphone. So here we go. Are you ready? Oh, yeah, it just connected.

Anyways. So we’re gonna continue on with this episode. Guys, this is real life.

I do not claim to be perfect at all. Even my AI is not perfect. I’m going to actually tell you something that you may not have seen on my stories.

I’m recording this at 9 AM on Monday, June second.

And I just actually posted a video. And it was about something that came to me.

I’ve been very, very inspired lately, and what it basically said. And you can look up my Instagram if you want to see it firsthand.

But this is what it looks like, and it talks about the fact that, you know I was posting some content in the mastermind, because this month we’re talking about delegation.

And I was trying to do a prompt where it was. First it was me, and then it was just a woman in a business suit stranded on an island, trying to get cell service like a jungle behind her.

And in the software that I do this in, I just kept—I call it an AI symphony. So I’m over here working on something else on one tab, but then I press enter into the one that I use which is not ChatGPT, DALL·E. I do not like it. I think that there’s so much better stuff out there.

And what I do is when I use these pictures as I post in the mastermind, I tell them what the prompt is, and I tell them how many times it’s taken me. I’m doing that this month.

This one took me over 15 times.

But what got to me was, I was like shoot. I was like, you know what the Jumpers, they probably think like this doesn’t work, because oh my gosh! I have to try it so many times.

But I want to ask you.

With a crayon in my hand. When was the very last time that you started coloring something?

Or drawing something, sketching something.

And you knocked it out of the park, and it was perfect. The very first time.

You don’t usually go and then just start drawing, right? Like you kind of like, lightly do it so that you can kinda manipulate how you’re doing it.

AI, at least right now is just like that. Okay, you’re not gonna knock it out of the park. And just because you don’t knock it out of the park. Does that mean it doesn’t work?

No, it doesn’t. It just means you got to try again.

So you got to look at your prompt, see if maybe you prompted it wrong. Maybe use AI for a prompt, maybe tweak something in it. Maybe switch the model that you’re using. Maybe the model that you’re using isn’t proper. Maybe your instruction isn’t right.

I’m going to say this again and again and again.

I need to make a graphic on it. I was talking with this about my cousin, who’s very high up in AI. Last night at dinner.

And I was saying, I was like, you know what, it’s all about the information you give AI and the instruction you give AI.

And that’s where our world is. It’s not about me teaching you about anything anymore, because you can get all of that on ChatGPT. None of us coaches have information to give you that you can’t get on Google or ChatGPT. Newsflash.

But what is different is the way in which we teach you, the way in which we come alongside you, the way in which we strategize with you, the way in which we have that personality. AI can’t take that over. Okay, so it’s not the information. It is the delivery of it, which is exactly why I was saying a minute ago, I don’t have any desire in stopping this podcast anytime soon.

I love doing this. This is the way I can talk to you. I don’t hope. I am going to keep doing this.

So without further ado, we’re going to get into a couple of myths. I could not only pick five. I’m going to go through these fast because I just talked to you guys for a little bit. But I thought it was kind of important to give you a little bit of what’s going on.

The first myth that I hear, and I’m going to call them myths today—but they’re really like propaganda that I’m not falling for, as the trend would be right now. It is lies you tell yourself.

It is crap that’s perpetuated in Facebook groups.

However you want to frame this.

You frame this however it resonates with you.

But the first one is: you can’t take time off.

Now let me tell you about my friend Becky with Paws Around Motown. This girl goes to her cabin every single month.

And like every quarter she takes about a month off.

But this is because when this woman is working, she’s doing things like creating sales scripts for booths with me, in our intensive sessions.

Or she’s making her website run without her, or she’s training up her protégés, her office managers, who are absolutely incredible. Shout out to Megan.

And I know I’m missing some, so I apologize. She’s training people.

And she’s doing it in a way that she’s thinking bigger. She has this bigger vision.

She’s getting on camera. She’s leveraging AI. She was one of the first people to leverage AI.

And she’s not concerned with things being pristine and perfect and cookie cutter. She’s doing it, and she’s being authentic with it. She’s running a dog training business.

She’s running pet sitting—pet sitting VIP, which you have to be a dog walking client in order to have their pet sitting services.

It’s just brilliant what she’s doing. Her team meetings are amazing. The company culture that she’s building…

If you guys want to see what a great business owner that has some really great balance between time off and working looks like…

There’s no coincidence that she is this great, and it’s because she does take the time off.

That’s when your brain and your nervous system and everything quiets down long enough so that you can be creative and cast this vision again. She’s not caught in the rat race every single day, forever burning out.

And that’s what happens—it helps her so much. And you can see it.

So go look up Paws Around Motown if you haven’t already. Go follow her. Tell her that you heard about her from this episode. I know that’ll be really encouraging to her, and she deserves it.

The second thing I want to talk about is that you need to be on every social platform.

I cannot believe when I go to some people’s websites they literally have Twitter still listed. By the way, it’s called X now, and it has been for about a year.

And they have things like YouTube, Threads, LinkedIn…

They’re not on any of those. And so it takes two seconds to just delete that from your website. I would really encourage you to focus on one thing first—maybe two. If you want to do Instagram and Facebook.

But please, for the love of God, do not post the same exact thing. Do not let it post from Instagram to Facebook. That literally screams you’re lazy.

It screams that you’re not present. Like if it’s on Facebook and I see everything with hashtags and I go to your Instagram, it’s the same exact thing—that shows me you’re lazy and not present.

And that is not what we’re going for when we’re trying to attract employees and clients, right?

We want them to see that we’re on top of it. We have this vision. We are innovative. We are present. We are timely. We are right now. And that doesn’t do that.

So it’s okay to only be on one or two platforms. All right? If you’re not on all of them, then move on.

The other thing is, it does two things if you show that you’re on all of them or you’re trying to be active on all of them.

Either one—you don’t do it well.

Because it’s literally like you have to translate for each one. The way you say something on LinkedIn is going to be different than Facebook, is going to be different than Threads, is going to be different than Instagram.

Is going to be different than email.

Yeah, it is. And so you have to take the time to translate if you really want to show up perfectly on that platform.

The other thing is, sometimes we don’t even get to the point of actually producing the content. It just feels overwhelming.

And we feel really overwhelmed because we’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m not doing this.” And then it starts perpetuating subconsciously in your brain—“I’m not good enough. I can’t keep up. I can’t get tasks done.” All these negative things—I don’t even want to put them into the airwaves.

But it’s a conduit to help beat you up mentally.

So just don’t do it.

Guys, don’t do it.

The third thing is: professional means boring.

I know a lot of people who are like, “I have to do it on my own”—which I’m going to talk about in a minute—but like, we can’t be too professional.

Because then it’s just boring.

Well, there is a little bit of truth to that.

But the thing is, you can’t just be all professional.

And you can’t be all “you did it yourself.” There is a fine balance, and that is what I used to talk about all the time with Better Marketing with Bella—and now it’s just Marketing with Bella.

So we’re not just… I know I just took out the “Better.”

How original, huh? It’s like the pauper and the shoes. I’m like, “I should come up with something really amazing.” But I’m just gonna keep it really simple.

But professional doesn’t mean boring, okay? Somewhere along the line, people told business owners that professional is stiff and sterile and perfect.

You know—Times New Roman, no personality, no story. Like I could copy and paste your postings, or your website, or your ChatGPT descriptions that I can tell are from ChatGPT.

It sounds robotic.

Professional shouldn’t be robotic, right? You can still be trustworthy and clear and honest.

You can be fun and serious about safety at the same time. You can be warm and still have rock-solid SOPs.

Or systems. And your brand really should be like a real person.

Someone your ideal client can relate to.

And so I want you to think—there is a fine line, and I see people go to one or the other extreme. It’s either super boring, really sterile and professional, or it’s really unprofessional and like a scrapbook album.

Professional doesn’t have to be boring.

And that is a myth. So you can take your personality and you can put a little pizzazz on it. That’s where branding comes in—using the same words, the same emojis…

Or lingo—what I mean is maybe the same embellishments, right? Like you use the same arrow, the same caption bubble, the same paw print. And that becomes part of your brand. It’s not just like you’re creating a new template every single time you create an image.

Does that make sense?

All right, we’re gonna keep moving on, because I told you I was gonna keep this brief.

SOPs—that myth number four, or propaganda number four, or whatever you want to tell yourself, stinking thinking number four—is that SOPs are only for big businesses. Let me tell you, even to you sole proprietors, there’s these people out there working day and night, from the morning to the evening, all by themselves. They are the owner-operator. I’m talking to you as much as I’m talking to the people with office managers and big businesses.

It’s not just for big businesses.

God forbid—I literally just posted about this in the Mastermind—God forbid something happens to you today.

Who’s going to know how to step in and log into your Time to Pet or Precise Pet Care?

How are they going to know what needs to be done? Daily, weekly, hourly, monthly. How are they going to know how to contact your clients, how to just even log in to your Time to Pet? What is your “oh sh*t” plan?

Having SOPs as a sole proprietor and having someone know to step in and help you is really important.

Because they’re either going to have to keep it running until it can stop—because, I mean, you’ve got all these pets out there that could be in grave danger.

They need medications, they need their food, they need to be let out.

They need their emergency contacts to be contacted.

Can your emergency contact go in there and do that? Now on a bigger scale, if you do have a bigger company, right? You need the SOPs.

This is something I just posted in the Mastermind, and I’ll share it here with you because you are a loyal podcast listener. This day and age, this is what you should have:

You should have something that says, “Go to this link: jumpconsulting.net/ohshit,” right? That would be funny.

And type in “How do I run the business?”

And this is your SOP. This is your GPT trained as an SOP, which I’ve taught many times. I have a class on how to create a GPT. And this GPT can come up from anywhere. You do not have to have a ChatGPT subscription. And it says, “Oh no, I’m so sorry user. I can’t believe Bella is unreachable. This is what we need to do immediately. This is what we need to do today. And this is what we need to do this week.”

And here are our contingency plans.

There is no reason why every single business owner should not have a system that could be activated just like that. Today we are in 2025.

So if you’re wondering how you can—DM me. I teach all of that. I have classes on it. Go to jumpconsulting.net/bot. That’s my bot class. But I’ve got over 20 trainings around things like this in the Mastermind as well, and that’s not a pitch. It’s just literally saying, this is what you should have done. If you want to know how to do it, come hang out with me.

Okay. Another myth is that your business should look the same all year long. Again, we’re in 2025.

So right now, your hero image on your website should be reflecting the summer. It’s June right now.

If you live near the beach, I want to see you walking a dog on the beach or the boardwalk, if that’s what you do.

Or in the woods, or on a famous trail around there. You can have AI transpose you and a dog in your area in a neighborhood right now.

And then have your website person just replace the image. It’s that easy. There’s no reason why our website shouldn’t reflect the actual time. Imagine if you went to a website—

And not only did you not see stock photos, but you saw pictures of actual landmarks of your city.

In the season that it was. Let’s say it’s winter, and you’re walking by the town square in winter with a dog.

Wow, that’s on point.

This business is up to date. This business is relevant.

That is out of this world amazing.

Or maybe, you know in March, you know that you have a lot of dog walkers in the summer, but you know that you have a lot that fall off because you have teachers. And teachers are home, and they want to save money because they’re not at school. And you know that that income is going to drop off. So in March, you start preparing differently.

Your business can be proactive and not reactive. I know I’ve done an episode on this before.

And I want you to think about that. Your business should look different in different times of the year. The stinking thinking is that your business should look the same all year round.

No. And I’m not talking about putting a pumpkin on your logo for Halloween.

I’m not talking about that.

I’m talking about your actual pictures. I’m talking about your actual marketing messages.

I’m talking about planning ahead for things and seeing trends. Which—let’s get even deeper into that. How do we plan for different parts of our business?

Easy. You take all of your KPIs, all of the reports that your software systems are already giving you, and you put them up into ChatGPT. And you put it on certain GPTs where it can analyze things in certain ways, and you ask it the right info, the right instruction, and give it the right information, and your business will be changed. It’s gonna be like you have a business analyst as an employee.

What? Yeah.

I’m getting good now. I’m getting good. I’m getting deep, and I’m getting inspired myself. I’m getting excited.

Okay. Number six: Doing everything yourself saves money.

Let me ask you—how much is an hour of your time worth?

Let’s just say it’s a hundred dollars, okay? Have you ever thought about how much your time is worth?

And have you thought about—can you get a VA for $15 to do whatever it is that you’re doing?

Ask yourself as you’re doing things throughout the day, especially on the computer: is this below my pay grade?

Everyone’s going to have a different answer. But let me tell you, unless you are a graphic designer, unless you are a copywriter, unless you are a bookkeeper—

You need to be getting people to help you do that stuff. Because the chances are, you’re just doing it to get by. But they have a lot more knowledge for you. It’s the same reason why you tell people to hire a professional pet sitter or dog walker rather than the kid next door. It is the same exact thing.

Your time is worth something, and if it takes you a couple hours to do something—even if your time is spent taking a nap and resting—

So that you don’t have to spend those five hours trying to do your books every single month.

This is important, you guys.

This is stinking thinking that we believe—“You know what? I’ll just do it myself.”

You have trust issues. I get it.

You’re not sure about delegation. You’ve been burnt before—I get it.

But just because it didn’t work—

Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work.

What it means is it doesn’t work that way.

I’ve done a whole podcast on that too. I mean, guys, this is the 440th podcast episode.

Let me also tell you—this is consistency. This is me showing up for you every single Thursday, whether I feel like it or not.

Because, let me tell you, sometimes I don’t.

And now, since we’ve started doing this so that you can also subscribe on YouTube, and you can watch the video of me sitting here talking to you—now I can’t be in my pajamas with no bra and my hair on top of my head. Yeah, true.

You know how many episodes were like shot like that?

Now I actually have—you know—I’m looking presentable at least.

And I’m on camera because I know that some of you like to consume on YouTube. So I’m going to meet you where you’re at.

All right, guys.

I really love talking to you, and I really love the comments that I get. So—

Let me know what you thought of these. Let me know if you feel like there’s any other myth or stinking thinking or propaganda that you give yourself.

Let me know, and let’s talk about it.

Because I’ll be back for another episode—441—next week.

And I’m going to keep it up all summer.

Sometimes they take the summers off. I’m pretty sure I’m keeping it up this summer.

Yeah. My birthday is coming up in July.

Let me know if you guys want any specials on anything.

Is there any kind of thing that you’ve been wanting in Jump Consulting? Is there a way that I could offer you something?

Let me know.

But I’m going to keep coming back again and again and again.

On this podcast—slow and steady wins the race. And that’s exactly what happens in your own business.

Don’t believe in this stinking thinking.

Pay attention to who you hang out with.

Pay attention to who you ask advice from. It blows my mind—

How many people ask for advice in these Facebook groups—

And listen to the advice—

Of some people in these Facebook groups who literally—I’m going to get really crass right now—

I’m going to be very Bella—they don’t have a pot to piss in.

And they’re sitting there giving out their opinion

And people are lapping it up.

Be careful of who you follow.

And make sure that they’re living the life that you aspire to.

Otherwise, you could do yourself a really big disservice.

Guys, I care about you. I sincerely love you.

And this has been another episode of Bella in Your Business. Remember: when life gets you down, always keep jumping.