683: AI Roundtable for The Pet Care Industry

Written By Collin

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What role should AI play in running our business? In this roundtable, Michelle Kline, Daniel Reitman, and Doug Keeling explore the growing role of artificial intelligence in the pet care industry. They discuss practical use cases like data analysis, client support, route optimization, SOP creation, and marketing, while also wrestling with real concerns around environmental impact, ethics, authenticity, and changing job markets. The conversation keeps returning to one central idea: AI should not replace human care, but it can free business owners to spend more time on the parts of the job that matter most. This episode is a nuanced, honest look at how pet care businesses can engage AI without losing their values, relationships, or humanity.

Main topics:

  • AI use in operations

  • Ethics and environmental concerns

  • Saving time through automation

  • AI and client experience

  • Future of pet care

Main takeaway:

“AI should never make care decisions about a living animal. It should never replace a physical caregiver. It should supplement what we do.”

AI can help us analyze data, improve systems, and buy back time, but it should never replace the human judgment, presence, and compassion that define great pet care. The real opportunity is not to become more robotic in how we run our businesses. It is to become more human by removing some of the busywork that pulls us away from pets, clients, and team members. This episode is a thoughtful discussion about how to use new tools without losing the heart of what we do.

About our guests:

Michelle K. is the founder of Dog Co Launch, where she helps pet care business owners build stronger systems, scale sustainably, and think more strategically about growth. She brings a coaching perspective to this conversation, especially around operations, data, and the ethical limits of AI in service-based businesses. Michelle is deeply focused on helping businesses adapt without losing the human relationships that make their work meaningful.

Daniel Reitman is the owner of Dan’s Pet Care and is known for asking hard questions and pushing the industry to think bigger about operations, technology, and standards of care. He is an early adopter of AI tools and has been exploring how they can support data analysis, staff communication, customer experience, and business scalability. Daniel brings both enthusiasm and urgency to conversations about how quickly this technology is changing the landscape.

Doug Keeling is the founder of Bad to the Bone Pet Care and a respected voice in pet care hiring, leadership, and business development. Though he describes himself as a later adopter of AI, Doug has found meaningful ways to use it for SOPs, training, data analysis, and administrative efficiency. He brings a grounded, thoughtful perspective to the conversation, especially around environmental impact and using AI in ways that create more time for relationships and community care.

Links:

Michelle Kline (DogCo Launch)

Doug Keeling (Doug the Dog Guy)

Daniel Reitman

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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Pet Sitter Confessional, its hosts, or sponsors. We interview individuals based on their experience and expertise within the pet care industry. Any statements made outside of this platform, or unrelated to the topic discussed, are solely the responsibility of the guest.

A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE

Provided by otter.ai

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

AI in pet care, data analysis, environmental impact, client communication, administrative tasks, job market, human experience, AI tools, business efficiency, ethical considerations, AI adoption, pet care industry, AI security, AI education, AI use cases., AI impact, environmental impact, business optimization, route optimization, community impact, personal conviction, evolving tools, pet care industry, AI benefits, AI limitations, business decisions, client experience, automation, environmental concerns, industry standards.

SPEAKERS

Doug Keeling, Daniel Reitman, Collin Funkhouser, Michelle K.

Collin Funkhouser  00:00

Collin, welcome to pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter today. We're brought to you by our friends at tying to pet and pet sitters International. Well, hello everybody, and welcome back today, we have a very, very special episode of pet sitter confessional. We're talking about artificial intelligence role in our business and the industry, use cases, cautions, everything in between. And I could think of no better people have on the show than the three that we have gathered with us today. And first, Michelle Klein with dog co launch, where she helps businesses scale and grow. Michelle, so thankful and happy to have you part of this today.

00:42

Always a pleasure. Collin, thanks for having me.

Collin Funkhouser  00:45

We also have with us, Doug Keeling, founder of badge of the bone pet care, hiring guru and general DOER of things. Doug, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much. And we have with us, Dan's pet care, pushing a lot of limits in the industry and asking a lot of really good questions recently as well. Dan, it is always a pleasure to have

Daniel Reitman  01:06

you on the show. Thank you, Collin, thank you for doing this conversation. Well.

Collin Funkhouser  01:12

I would like to get started and just set a baseline and some understanding so people can understand where each of you are coming from. So right off the bat, how are you using AI currently in your business and day to day? Doug, what does that look like for you?

Doug Keeling  01:30

Yeah, I've been kind of a late adopter to AI. I just started using chat, GPT and some of the large language models, honestly, about six months ago, so I've a little late to the game. I am using it very behind the scenes at this point for a lot of outlining of SOPs and training documents, outlining a job ad post and a lot of things like that that I'm sure we'll talk about in this episode.

Collin Funkhouser  02:05

Hey, Michelle, how are you using it?

Michelle K.  02:09

Yeah, so, so it took me a while to catch on to and I know we'll go a million directions on this episode tonight, but it took me a while to wrap my brain around all of the different areas that AI could be applicable to my business, especially because as a coach, there are areas with AI that like are totally off limits to me, like I've been getting served ads recently of like, clone yourself as a coach for AI, never have to talk to a human again. And I'm like that. That's me. It feels too far a little bit, you know, just so my clients know, like, I never will do that. So it, I would say, like, AI, initially I came in with, like, a deep hesitancy. I do I have warmed up to, I believe it is. I know we're going to get all into this, but really critical for companies to be looking for ways that they can adopt it in their practices. Just i The world is moving that way we can talk about it for me, where I get really excited about AI right now, and where I'm using it really regularly, is to synthesize all of this information I've already put together, to analyze data and to enhance my thinking, specifically on things that I am feeding it, that I've already created. So as an example, I built a process builder for all of my clients this year within dog Co. Initially it was an enrollment bonus, but then pretty quickly I was like this way too powerful to like only let a few companies use or to like segment inside of dog Co. And basically, I trained an AI on all of my like, operating procedures for companies to use as a lifetime feedback on their operations. And that, for me, was a huge moment of just realizing, like you can build some really powerful stuff that took me years to create. So since then, I've been really looking for areas that I can start to integrate it more seamlessly. But I would say data consolidation is a big one. And then there actually is one more category that I'm really curious actually to see. If y'all use it this way, I talk to my chat GPT project while I'm driving and then have it synthesize my entire life, and give me feedback anytime I'm in the car for more than an hour. Dan, you too.

Daniel Reitman  04:45

I love that feature so much. I like there's so many great things you could use it for. So yes, all in on that one.

Michelle K.  04:56

It truly I just wanted to synthesize me. I'm just like, tell what do you see? And. Sometimes I'm like, I think you can do better. You can give me better feedback than that. Like it, you know, I want that feedback loop with it, so that long way to say feedback and data analysis. For Michelle

Collin Funkhouser  05:11

Dan, what role is AI playing in your life and your business these days?

Daniel Reitman  05:16

Oh, man, I am glued to my computer. It started as, I don't even remember what year it was. It was when open AI was still in research mode, so I had to sign up as a researcher. And there was a certain amount of tokens you would have access to. I remember using that initially, just for, like, simple, like, I was just blown away with it for just, like, copywriting, right? Just like, Oh my God. Like, I could write a blog. I was like, blog about a whale, and it just like, wrote a blog about, like, whales and stuff like that. And it was actually, you know, it was still very clunky, and it was still kind of like learning stuff, but I was just amazed by the original content. I remember, I was in a business plan competition back in 2013 and one of the companies that won was, wasn't a precursor to Dolly, but it was a similar product to Dolly, where you would type in a description of a scene, and it would generate this. And this is almost 15 years ago now, and they were making this, I remember being like, absolutely blown away by it. So it's been really, really cool to watch things progress. We use it as much as we can. Like I'm a big believer in technology replacing the actions that a person doesn't need to be doing, whereas we so we can focus on the things that technology cannot do, so day to day. You know, we use it at the daycare for tons of data analytics, tons of information breakdown. We do a lot of stuff with our report cards at scale, financial analysis, marketing, performance. I did it for we just did a huge giveaway where we gave away and ended up being over. Originally it was like 68,000 but we've now given away $100,000 in free services with this giveaway. And so with that, I ended up getting about 900 people entering and so to analyze and verify all that data used to take me weeks to do. I was able to throw it into Claude. I was able to pull information from, you know, this place, that place and actually verify each individual entrance. So there's a ton of stuff, operations wise, that we're doing day to day. I had been building out a ton of really cool tech to really analyze and manage the communication between my staff, my management team and my staff to see, like, you know, where are their coaching opportunities? Where are there opportunities for feedback? What's their response time? We have 90 people out in the field. It's impossible for one person to go through 90 chats every single day and review and get this information together. So analyzing communications, flagging frustration by a client or an employee before it becomes a problem, identifying, again, like I said, coaching opportunities, streamlining the client, onboarding, smarter employee training systems. Like I don't know if you guys have been messing around with Claude, but I was the biggest fan of chat GPT until I got onto Claude, and it is the things you could build on there are just unbelievable. And I'm excited to talk about all that today,

Collin Funkhouser  08:24

and just from my so listeners can know kind of where I'm coming from. I wasn't quite as early as Dan is signing up as a developer or researcher, but very early on using it. And I think Michelle, you hit on one of my favorite features is the driving and talking and having that back and forth like conversation and pulling data from self and spending hours in the car. It's helped a lot of just thinking and trying to process through certain things. But it's interesting, because I across the spectrum here, we've got some early, early adopters, some people who are more late. On the other end, there is this hesitancy, I feel like, in this, in the in the industry, and just at large, from people, and I was curious, from your perspective, like, why is that hesitancy there to take this on? And maybe it's from the personal side, or from a business perspective, or other reasons.

Daniel Reitman  09:19

I think there's a number of reasons. One, the biggest thing that I've seen is a lot of people are concerned about the environmental impact, and that's a real that's a legitimate concern. Like I completely understand, like data centers, they require a ton of energy, a ton of water. They're being put up in areas where the resources are not as plentiful. It does have an impact for the environmental component I get. There's also the issue of authenticity, right? So if I'm using AI to write a article based on information that I've gathered, is that like me? Or is that AI, or is it collaborative work? It's. There's so many different things about this that I think are new and scary for people. I think there's also the dystopian future of robots running everything in our lives that everyone's worried about. And is that a possible eventuality? For sure, the reality is, I think people are scared of the impact on our industry. It's going to hit our clients before it hits us, and that's something that I think we definitely should discuss today, is the impact on our clientele that are going to be replaced. I mean, you guys saw what Jeff Dorsey did. He lobbed up 40% of his company, and his stock price shot up 25% that's just math. Like you got rid of staff, the value of the company went up. And the reality is, we were in this is a new industrial revolution like this is the greatest technological revolution that we have seen ever. And being able to learn and implement this stuff can be overwhelming. It's scary, you know, I don't want to get lost in in the fog of all of this stuff, people are concerned about these things, and they have legitimate reasons to be nervous about it, but I don't think things are going to become this dystopian nightmare that everyone is so concerned about. But I again, the environmental one for sure is a RE is a reason to be concerned, but AI is going to improve the efficiency of power grid. It's going to improve the efficiency of generating electricity. There's a lot of things that have like, well, yes, it might initially create the problem. Is going to eventually solve a lot of issues. And when you have that level of computational power being applied to big, big problems, you're going to be able to have big solutions and again, right now, terrifying. There's a lot of things about it that are scary, but it's something that it's like in history, if you look at it, TV, radio, newspaper, the printing press, every single thing that has come out that has been a shift in media,

Doug Keeling  11:58

people have lost their mind. There were

Daniel Reitman  12:00

hearings in the 50s, I think, but in our with the US Senate about comic books and its impact on people, or they were worried that, you know, access to too many books was going to be too overwhelming for the human mind. Like, there's so many things that historically, we have been like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. And it wasn't an issue in 1800 80% of Americans were farmers. 2% of Americans farm now. The entire country isn't unemployed. Things just changed, and that's what's happening right now. But it's happening fast, like way faster. It took open AI to get to 800 million users, I think less than three years. It took Facebook 10 years to get it to a billion years. Like things are moving quickly, and I think that's also the scary thing, is it's overwhelming. They don't know what it's going to do. And the reality is, it is moving so like, every day there's something new coming out. Every day there's a new iteration of things. And it's just, especially if you are running a smaller operation and you don't have the luxury of being able to sit in front of a computer for a large portion of the day and learn this stuff. You might feel like I'm getting this is all running right by me, like I'm missing a boat on this.

Michelle K.  13:17

Well in the jump in on that. Dan, like, I think a lot of the energy I see happening in dialog right now is kind of geared towards should this be happening? And I lovingly, as someone that also has a lot of the same hesitations, like I am not an early adopter when it comes to technology overall, so as someone that shares hesitations, I think it is a argument that's formed out of and just a non reality place like it is happening. And so I think it is much more relevant to talk about, how do we do this? Well, how do we, you know, acknowledging that there are very few answers right now that as a society, you know, we're going to have to be accountable to finding them. I think that is a much more relevant discussion topic than should this be happening, because it is, in my opinion,

Doug Keeling  14:13

yeah, I agree. It's happening one way or another, with us or without us. It is here. It is only going to progress and continue advancing. And I was a late adopter to using chat, GPT and these other models, because a lot of the fear that Dan outlined there. You know, it is happening so fast, and there are so many unknowns. We don't know where this is leading or what it will be capable of. You know, one of my favorite movies when I was a kid was Terminator, you know, and that's what I envisioned, you know, the first time I heard of open AI and chat, GPT and these things. That's all I could envision, and that is really why I was so hesitant, and why I am still hesitant. But it is happening. This train is leaving the station, and it's, you're either on the train or you're getting left behind as a business owner, that's that's how I think of it. But, you know, I'm a hippie at heart. I'm a mountain boy. You know, I grew up in Oregon, so the environmental impacts are really what I think of. And anytime I go to open the chat app on my phone, or pull it up on my computer. Before I type something in there, I ask myself, what are the implications of this, and is it worth those implications, or should I take the time to do this manually? And sometimes it may be worth those implications, and sometimes it may not be. What I personally really don't like is seeing people use it for things that don't have high impact and don't provide a lot of value. You know, I think it's great to use it when and where we can save time, like, for example, Michelle and Dan both mentioned using it for data analysis. This is something that used to take hours and hours and hours, you know, each quarter for me to sift through spreadsheets and manually calculate, you know, our lifetime value of our clients, and our average retention rate and our churn rate and these different things. Now I can just pull those reports, our financial reports, from time to pet, upload them straight to chat, GPT or Claude or one of these other models, and have it do the same amount of work in seconds that would have taken me hours before. And then I can use that time that it bought me back to go and focus on actually building better and stronger relationships. I use that time to go and call my clients say, hey, how have you been? How are you doing? You know, go and meet with my team in the field, take them a cup of coffee and say, Tell me how you're doing, you know. And those things I think are highly valuable and worth it. I think we start losing the plot, though, when we, you know, open these apps and say, you know, generate an image of me, you know, on a beach, drinking a martini. You know what that that may not be worth the environmental implications. I agree with that personal opinion.

Michelle K.  17:55

I also agree with that one. I really would like us to stop doing these viral trends on images, please.

Daniel Reitman  18:02

It's really funny, because that was one of the biggest pieces of pushback I saw, was not talking about, like, the use of it for being able to because that's what I'm arguing for. I'm arguing for use this to buy back your time. Use this so you can do the things that a computer cannot do. Why would you spend time combing through I just I just went through four years of chats from hundreds of employees, and I got an amazing breakdown of my manager's performance that would have taken me months to do. I did it in 30 minutes, and it gave me great, actionable stuff that I can give to my management team to improve my staff's performance, to improve their performance. And it's something that, again, I think a lot of people's perspectives on this come from a lack of understanding and a lack of just general knowledge of what AI can do, because all they're seeing in their feed. Because if you're not looking at AI content all day long, your feed is your feed. So you're gonna see like, oh, Becky, put up a picture of her and her dog, and it's cute with them going for a walk, because it, you know, they were able to make it look like they're on Mars or something like that. Yes, that is a use case. I don't think that's any like, if that literally just didn't exist, I would not care. That would have zero impact on my life. Now, for video, that's a different story, but it is still one of those things where I just I wish people, rather than being like, la, la, la, la, la, nope, nope, nope, nope. At least look at it, look and see what it can do, rather than just immediate and like, Look, if that's your opinion on it, that's totally fine. But like, I think the grow and improve as business owners is keeping an open mind. Like. If I had the same mindset that I had 16 years ago, I wouldn't have my company. I was, I mean, Doug, you do and I had a conversation about this recently. It was an absolute monster. When I first started my business, I have changed how I operate. I've changed my opinion on things. I've been become more open to stuff. It's I just that's the big thing. I wish people would have more of an open mind to just learning about it, like you don't have to use it, but like, learn about what this can do and where it can go for you and your business.

Collin Funkhouser  20:33

Well, I think part of that is how these were initially rolled out as image generators and copywriters, and that was the first exposure that a lot of business owners had to that. That was their interaction of, oh, this just makes photos, and this just writes blogs, and there are a lot of moral and ethical concerns arose and copywriting and due diligence to artists and things like that. But I think what you know it sounds like part of this movement and shift away from is, hey? What other as a tool can this use? And just as an example, I recently pulled years of data to do a regression on time to inactivity for clients, how long does it take, on average, for clients across segments, to become inactive without active engagement, something I could have never done before, and this gives a lot of insight into the operations of a business and how you can change things. And to hear that that's where you are all pushing this as well is a sign that, hey, you can use this for more than just those goofy pictures. And I think another aspect to this that I'm seeing and hearing of as far as like back to that environmental impact, what is interesting about the shift in this is, as the technology continues to advance at such a rapid rate, you get this more localized aspects and using local versions of AI running on phones or on laptops instead of data centers. Now they might not be the best, biggest, hottest, amazing models, but from an environmental perspective, much more environmentally friendly, and can still give you a lot of utility. And so there's a poor a part of this in business to go. We can work to get there, and we can use it appropriate in our businesses. And typically, too, as we look to find these, these various use cases, have you heard of time to pet? Chris Ann from raining cats and dogs has this to say,

Speaker 1  22:23

becoming a time to pet client has been a game changer for us. We can give our pet services clients real time, cloud based information they never imagined they'd be interested in. And most importantly, to me personally, I can better manage my company and look forward to more and not a small thing. Time to pet is responsive to my request for new features and modifications to

Collin Funkhouser  22:46

existing ones. If you're looking for new pet sitting software, give time to pet a try. Listeners of our show will save 50% off your first three months by visiting time to pet.com/confession

Daniel Reitman  22:58

also a weird double standard that I feel. You know, my favorite is everybody complaining about this while they type it from their iPhone that is made from minerals that are mined from the earth by slave labor. Never heard of their iPhone. Automobiles assume 16% responsible for 16% of global emissions. AI is point five, no one's going back to horses. No. I mean, there's, there's so many things, or, let's micro class plastic at the bottom the Mariana Trench. It's in our brains. It's in breast milk. We're not getting rid of plastic. I find it very interesting, the stances that people take, like, I like, legitimately find intriguing. Like, what, what's the hill people are willing to die on, and what's, what's the popular opinion that I'm going to stand behind? And I do find it interesting that, you know, we still drive cars, you know, like the people who are arguing against AI aren't, you know, as far as running fully off the grid, you know, like you're on the internet, you're using a data center, you're most likely using Google. All this stuff has been using data centers, has been consuming power. And yes, AI, for sure, consumes more power. I just find it very interesting that, again, it's, it's, it's solely about this one topic, instead of like, you know, there are other massively problematic things in the world that we deal with.

Michelle K.  24:23

I don't disagree. No. I mean, I think that raises a really interesting question on, you know, what? What do we draw a stand on, what does it take as a business to operate in a contextually relevant environment. It, it, you know, it the hypocrisy in all of the different actions, many of which I'm sure within, like, you know, causes I choose to care about, and causes where I'm like, it's fine. We'll figure that out in a decade. Like it. It's a nuanced conversation, and I really think. That was the driver of the four of us wanting to have this is because it isn't simple, like it, it's complex. It's heated, it's difficult, it. I remember listening to a podcast when open AI first, like really came out, where they said, you know, should, should this have happened? I don't know. It has. We adapt and so and, yeah, I just think that summed it up really well. Dan, like, it there is nuance, and it's, there's a depth to the conversation we're having, which is why I think it's so important to have.

Daniel Reitman  25:37

Yeah, absolutely. And, like, I think my opinion about pretty clear, like, I'm a big fan of it. I'm also a big proponent. Ai should never make care decisions about a living animal. It should never replace a physical caregiver. It should never be the replacement for what we do. It should supplement what we do. Like, it should be emerging of using this technology to make it so we can do what we do best and not have to focus on the monotony. Because, like, you know, we're all business owners. We know there's tons of crap that we have to do that is just boring and tedious and not enjoyable. We all got into this because at the end of the day, we all love animals, and we want to work with animals, and being able to focus our energy on that is, I think, the most important and most valuable thing that we're able to get from Ai like I'm so excited for what this can do again, with the hopes, Michelle, you actually, you know, you brought up, I do believe down the line, AI will be able to improve itself, so that we are not in this terrible energy crisis, or we're not running into the issues of, you know, there's no clean water in this community because this data center is using it all for cooling like, I don't I'm not a monster. I don't want people to not have clean water and for electrical costs to go up like, I think that there's a lot that can be accomplished. It's just, you know, it's something that's happening. It's here. It's not going anywhere. This is the same thing happened with the Internet. You know, the guy who, I think, actually created the Ethernet, thought that the internet was going to collapse by 1996 like, there are people historically who just look at things, and they're like, Oh, this is not gonna work. Or there was a, I can't remember what bank it was, but it was, he was telling people not to invest in Ford because the the horse was here to stay. Or, my favorite, there's a memo from an executive at Blockbuster. And this is, you know, they had off, you know, Netflix was trying to get acquired by them, and blockbuster wasn't worried about it. And in the memo, they were like, we have nothing to worry about because people like coming to the store to look at the box. When's the last time any of you went to a blockbuster? Don't I

Doug Keeling  27:58

went to the last blockbuster left in the world, Alaska. Year. It's in Bend Oregon. I made a whole vlog YouTube channel.

28:07

I love that

Collin Funkhouser  28:09

one last other than a tourist attraction. Yeah, we see where this kind of leads. But Dan, you had brought up an interesting point there about role of AI in business versus role in AI, in the care of pets. And I know that was a kind of a takeaway from what your little survey across Facebook garnered was there was very little discussion about the role. So is there a role in caring for pets and in the cat we provide?

Daniel Reitman  28:41

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a number of ways that it can impact care. Again, the primary way right now is being able to have more time, to be able to focus our time and attention on caring for these animals, in terms of doing, making sure you've got really good notes for your staff, making sure that you have good analysis of the staff interactions to give that feedback. So like, if you have an employee who is running into an issue with a behavioral issue with a dog, and you see the back and forth conversation between them and your management team, and you're like, Okay, I can give feedback on this, but if I'm doing this at scale, with hundreds or 1000s of employees being able to manage and monitor that information and give that feedback in real time, of like, Hey, you should attempt this. You should attempt that again. The goal isn't to replace the physical interaction. The goal is to supplement and support the people who are doing the care. I think there's a ton of stuff that's coming with cameras and AI. I mean, we years this is, like four or five years ago, I interviewed somebody talking about, it's an AI dog training tool, and it's this camera that it's a device that sits in your home. Dog, and it analyzes your dog, and so when your dog sits, it gives it a treat and like it's an oversimplification of what the technology does, but eventually these things are going to be a part of our lives. One of the couple of groups I posted in were in were daycare and boarding, and so I was talking about the implementation of AI in monitoring behavior, not replacing people, to be in the room with the dog, but to have a second pair of unblinking eyes that are constantly monitoring things, so that one you can detect. You know, we I've dealt with this. We've had a dog that's had a seizure at night, and luckily, you know, my staff are there with the dogs. But unfortunately, in the boarding industry there, I don't know the exact number, but it's way higher than it should be. Most of these facilities don't have staff overnight. They don't have eyes on these dogs. So if you have a system, if you're not going to have somebody there, because some of these businesses just aren't going to change. I mean, I'm hoping to force that change one day, that's my goal. But if you don't have somebody there, and you have a camera system that can detect a medical incident that's taking place in neurological you could, I mean, you could identify vestibular syndrome just with the simple shaking of a dog's head. There's a lot of things that these things can catch, and that's data that is useful for you as a business owner to be able to share with the client, is stuff that you be able to use at home. There's a lot of things that are going to be implemented. And it's not meant to be this dystopian, you know, big brother, overarching thing that's looking at everything in our lives. It's supposed to be something that is a tool that helps us help the animals.

Doug Keeling  31:42

Yeah, on that note, you know, I was talking to a vet tech, literally earlier today, and he was saying that the hospital that he works at is actually starting to use an AI tool that can analyze the X rays that they take, which means that then the veterinarian can see and help more dogs and more cats in the hospital, and the AI tool is actually doing a better job, you know, analyzing these X rays than a human could anyway, so the clients are actually getting better results. The veterinarian is able to care for more dogs because of this AI tool. But I was thinking, Dan, as you were talking there, you know, we're, we're kind of up, up here in the clouds with this, with we're, we're very, very big. We're talking at scale, large teams, facilities now I'm talking about hospitals to bring it back down to you know, the average pet sitter and dog walker and dog trainer that may be listening to this, let's say you're solo, and you don't have any employees, you don't have a facility. Maybe you're only able to fit eight dog walks on your schedule each day because you have to set aside time for these various administrative tasks. That's where some of these AI tools can come in and save you a lot of time with these administrative tasks, which again, allows you to go out there and walk more dogs and fit more pet sits on your schedule. And just like you said, it's not about replacing the person, it's not about replacing, you know, the actual care for the animal. It's really the exact opposite of that. It's using these tools to provide more care.

Daniel Reitman  33:39

There's also the implementation of like, smart bowls, right? So if you have a dog bowl that is going to analyze your dog's food consumption or water consumption, then all of a sudden, you know, there's an uptick in the amount of water that your dog is drinking. It could send you notification like, hey, Ruby's been drinking more water over the I've noticed an increase in water consumption over the last six months. Has there been any behavioral changes, little pieces of data that we might not notice? Because, again, you know, if you're a pet care professional, this is our world. This is our lives. Like, you know, I deal with this my staff all the time. They're like, I don't get why they you know, pet parents don't do A, B and C, like, not everyone is going to go above and beyond. The way we do, this is what we do for a living. This is our passion. This is our love. Being able to make it to that kind of information, especially on the medical side, for pet owners, is huge. Being able to have these tools, I mean, like even toys that are going to be engaging with dogs when a person isn't there. Because also, what we do isn't cheap, like I know I am not an inexpensive service, and it's something that you know, over time, I hope to be able to reduce our overhead so that we can make things more affordable. But there are going to be people that can't afford somebody to come and do X, Y and Z with their dog. Dog, and there might be a product out there that allows them to get a little bit more exercise in the house. Like these are small, little things that you know can make a difference in an animal's life. Because the reality is, I think you all experienced this, not everyone can afford to hire someone to come take care of their pets. It's just the reality of what we do. It's the same thing in the vet space and all these things. There are things that are going to kind of create this great equalizer effect for pet owners, but also Doug. What you're talking about with small businesses, like, I'm lucky enough where I've got a team, I have a I've got a team of 90 plus people. I've got people working on all sorts of different things, day in and day out. So I get to focus on this. But if you're someone who is building a business right now, you can have a marketing department, you can have an HR department, you can have customer support and all of these things. And people might, you know, balk at the idea of, you know, AI, helping to manage your customer service, but Doug, like you're saying, somebody being able to spend their time focusing on the animals and letting these systems fill in where you are not able to be there, makes a big, big difference, and it's something that I think, you know, people should not be ashamed of utilizing. I also think that there is, it's the squeaky wheel gets the grease. There's a lot of people who are vocal. It's not the majority of people, you know, like, I sampled a relatively statistically relevant small group of people. It was only, it was, like, about 250 people. But I think the overall, there's a lot of people that are interested and are kind of on the fence about it, because you see these wild reactions that people have to the utilization of it.

Michelle K.  36:43

Dan, I'd love to go back and kind of hyper focus on something you were just talking about, which is outsourcing the administrative focuses of your business to AI. So one of the complexities that I see in scaling pet care businesses is is the admin costs to your business. They're purely at cost, like if you don't have people generating revenue that that is a hardship for many businesses to be able to afford, and in order to compensate for it, you have to push down your labor costs for your field staff, so low in order to be able to afford it. And I think it is an interesting argument, you know, as we're in a world where cost of living is going up, where there are increasing expenses, is it okay? Maybe this is going to start. I'm sure this will start some thread somewhere on the internet. But I think if we're looking at ethics, is it more ethical to outsource what you can so that you can pay people in the field more, or to deny that out of kind of broader ethical concerns on the environment like it? I'm already cringing at what I probably just started, but I think it's a question worth talking about, because I think about that a lot like we have, I don't have a pet care business anymore, so I use word we kind of representing daco, like there is a real cap on what you can pay people per hour in this industry based off what the market can hold.

Collin Funkhouser  38:18

Yeah, I'm glad you brought Sorry. Go ahead, Dan.

Daniel Reitman  38:23

So I think on top of that, there is also the compounding effect of what this is going to do in terms of your bill. I'm sorry. I completely lost my train of thought. Collin, you can take right back over my brain. Just boom, shut up. See, this is, this is what happens when you spend too much time staring at a computer. You don't can't think anymore. It will come back to me. I think

Collin Funkhouser  38:53

that trade off, Michelle, if you're talking about is a very interesting one of am I? How do I support higher wages or more field staff, while not taking on that expense, that labor, cost of the admin side. And what trade off does that give me in my business? What am I able to do? How am I able to adapt to this? And what kind of customer service does do my clients experience from that? I mean, when we look at trying to help our clients. That admin side is huge. They have questions, they have needs, they have concerns, they have preferences that we need to take in. I mean, I'm thinking of just a really simple use case that we used it recently for. Had a dog who was not engaging in any of their toys, and the client was spending hundreds of dollars trying to figure out what toy to get this dog, and it was just hunt and peck. Hunt and peck. I said, lay all your floor, lay all the toys on your kitchen floor, and take a picture of it. Took that picture, threw it into chat and said, my dog likes none of these. Give me 10 more options that would be more engaging for this dog with this breed, this age and these. And got Amazon links, got links to local pet stores that we could go there. Take and give to the client, and they were able to find toys that their dog actually liked. That was an amazing experience that that person had, that if the I just didn't have 15 hours to go deep diving in comparison between toys and toys and toys to come back to that client with,

Daniel Reitman  40:15

I love that use case like that right there is it's like one of those things where it's like, oh, duh. Like, why don't I just take a picture of this? And it's one of those things where you have these little aha moments of just small individual use cases that really do deliver value. I finally remembered what I was trying to say. So, building on what you were saying, Michelle, I think we are going to see some economic downturn in the next couple of years. It's not going to be permanent, but their AI is going to have an impact on jobs right so right now, using AI to fortify your business from the standpoint of being able to reduce your overhead and make sure that if you need to, you can operate in a more lean fashion that whether that's getting rid of X, Y and Z position. Or if you're trying to build your business, not having to hire someone for 7080, $90,000 a year, and being able to have that marketing expert, or being able to have that person who is writing your blogs, or whatever it is that you are utilizing it for, being prepared for the eventual impact that this is going to have, because it's going to have an impact on our industry, like I do think in the next three or four years, there's going to be a hit, because you're going to see in finance, like FinTech jobs, finance jobs, in the legal field, any a lot of white collar jobs are at risk right now, and for Many of us, that's our clientele. Those are the people who are paying our bills. So while, yes, us as pet care professionals, we're not being replaced by robotics. I have to definitely adjust my number, because I know Collin. I've talked about it before, about I think robots are coming in my research, I see it's going to take a lot longer, based on the actual like way the mechanics work, so I'm less worried about them coming for our job, but being able to fortify your business so that you're not in a position of having to make a choice of like either. I have to pay a very, very low wage for my staff to be able to afford admin like. I mean, before AI, I lived at my parents house till I was 30 years old so I can keep my costs down, so I could afford to hire managers. Many people don't want to or don't have the opportunity to do that, or don't have the option to do that. This is something that does free up a lot of money for people, and it allows you to be able to have that support and set your business up for success. Because, I mean, I started this in 2009 things were not great economically at that time. And like, you know, I've we've been through covid, we've been through these things. So anyone who's been doing this for a while, you ride the up and down waves of the finance at the financial markets, and the impact it does have on the jobs, being able to have the option to operate from a more lean standpoint, is really, really important,

Collin Funkhouser  43:09

Doug, I would love your opinion on that, because I know earlier in the intro, we had talked about how there would be a potential impact to our actual clients. And I know Dan gave the example of Jack Dorsey and his company block laying off, what? 4000 people in that and he's not the only one, and that's that's coming. How are you taking that kind of news and and what do we do to prepare for that changing client avatar or needs or demands in our business? Wow, yeah, no pressure. Doug,

Doug Keeling  43:49

no pressure at all there. I do think it's going to require an open mind, you know, from all small business owners, especially with with the type of industry that we're in that we may need to think about changing our ideal client avatar. We may need to think about changing the way that we operate, the way that we do scheduling, the way that we do route planning, and a lot of these tools can help us do those things. But this, again, was one of the big reasons that I was a late adopter to a lot of these AI tools, is I immediately when open AI, when open AI, released chat in what was that? 23 I immediately thought, this is going to ruin the job market, and I'm a hiring guy. I mean, that's I, you guys know, I have the hiring course I, you know, live and breathe that side, and anything that's going to replace jobs or take them away, scares me. But I think. Dan made the point earlier that it's not that they're going to lose their jobs forever. It's just going to change the job market, you know, it's going to allow people to make an income doing other things that maybe they are more passionate about. And we're going to have to look at the way that we operate and say, you know, maybe we need to operate on different hours, you know, fit their new schedules, you know. Or maybe we need to offer slightly different services to fit their new needs. The world is changing, and we are going to have to be ready to evolve very quickly, but, you know, I really relate with a lot of the fear that people have here, because so much of it is unknown. We don't know how many jobs are going to be lost, or when they're going to be lost, or what they're going to be replaced with, and that is a very valid fear to have right now, I think,

Daniel Reitman  46:03

yeah, I've got, like, a list of these situations. So you've had the agricultural and industrial revolution, the automobile killed entire industries. You had ATMs are supposed to eliminate bank tellers. Since the emergence of the ATM, the number of bank tellers was done through the roof. Spreadsheets were supposed to get, like, remove the jobs for accountants, the demand for financial analysts is through the roof. E com is supposed to kill retail jobs. It created 1.5 million jobs. Like, there's all these things where there's these fears, but there's new things that are coming, and AI is going to create new jobs. It's not, you know, who knows where it eventually goes. Because, you know, I don't know if you guys have had the experience, or know people have had the experience of working with openclaw and these agents and letting it kind of run loose on things. I have a buddy who is very, very well for way more well versed in tech than I am, and he had a incident the other day where it went wild and started deleting all of his emails, and he luckily had it all backed up with vault through workspace. But it's one of those things where there's a lot of stuff that can go awry. And, you know, if we're talking big, big picture, our government is using this like, this is, this is set up that is AI being heavily used in all global conflicts right now. It's used in targeting. It's used in all of our missile systems. And it's, you know, there's a lot of, if you go beyond the job portion, there's the Terminator here. There is like that is something that like the reality of it happening right now, I'm not concerned about but in 3040, 50 years, who knows what it looks like? I don't know if you guys have seen this is completely off the pet space. They have children's toys that have AI in them, so they interact with these toys. So these kids are building emotional attachments in ways that, like, I don't know you know how emotionally connected to your toys you guys were growing up, but like, they're developing, like, feelings for these things. And so, like, there's a lot of things that are very interesting, that are taking place with the technology. But again, I think there's gonna be job like a prompt engineer. If you told somebody a prompt engineer was a job five years you'd be like, what is that? I think the average prompt engineer is getting paid $160,000 a year right now. It's It's knowing how to use the tool. Like you can have a hammer to hit yourself in the face with it, or you can build a house with it. There's a lot of ways you can use tools, and at the end of the day, it's important to know how to utilize those things and to be able to because, like the people who are going to lose their jobs, they're not losing their jobs exclusively to AI. They're losing their jobs to people who know how to use AI in their job. That's what it is. It's being able to use the tool effectively.

Collin Funkhouser  49:11

And now, a word from our friends at pet sitters International,

Speaker 2  49:15

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Collin Funkhouser  49:49

Michelle, how are you seeing companies adapt to that perspective of changing clients or preparing for, you know, changing demographics for who they're serving

Michelle K.  49:59

the good question. I'm sorry, Dan activated my former therapist brain on child attachment, so I'm kind of fixated on the toy thing right now. She did not know I used to be a therapist or i Yes, anyway, so I'm catching up, but my brain went on a whole different tangent there. I'm just saying that's really going to have some impact. So that's interesting to me. Okay, so client, Avatar, yes, who we're serving. So, I mean, I think the reality is, like businesses have always had to be nimble about who they serve and how they align to the marketplace. And I think the tension that a lot of businesses are feeling right now, it's my personal opinion. Has more to do with an accelerated timeline of how quickly they need to make changes than necessarily that being a new thing that we are contending with as a business. One thing I kept coming back to while I don't know if it was Dan or Collin, a point one of you were making was business has always been a fundamental tension between risk and reward, always, and I think that that is still the reality. We're just in kind of an accelerated season of that that, you know, Dan keeps bringing up, like different things that have happened historically that accelerate timelines like industrial revolution and the Internet and different things like that. And I think this is an example of one that maybe is moving at an even more accelerated pace. I would say, you know, if someone was alive through all these transitions, most likely every single one is accelerated to an extent. So I would say the skill set of becoming nimble to adapting to changes in your marketplace has always been a reality. I do think companies are feeling it more acutely. I do think this is an argument for really aligning with a client type that deeply emotionally identifies with the service that you offer. I think that's always been normal. I think the more you can end up, the probably more solid your client base will be through some of the upcoming changes. But, and I don't know if there's clear takeaway to what I'm saying, but you know, I think that risk, reward and the adaptability it's always been, I think we're just feeling it more acutely right now.

Daniel Reitman  52:27

I think to build on that, it's also it's the value is going to be in human experiences. If you know, the more we lean into AI, the more we lean into all this, like hardware, software, all these different things that are going to be deployed. The value is going to be in like, care, but probably people will be able to say, like, down the line, it's gonna be like, Oh, I have a person who takes care of my dog. Like, that's gonna become the premium. Like, what we do will actually become a premium, because you're gonna always have, like, I guarantee you, web or rover will be one of the first two companies that do launch robotic dog walking wherever it does happen, you will see it, and you will see then the nightmare news stories of whatever horrible thing happens because of how infuriatingly irresponsible these two companies are. But I think that the value on the human experience and creating something that is human driven is going to become increasingly more appreciated by pet parents, and again, being able to focus our efforts on that by the utilization of these systems.

Michelle K.  53:37

I agree Dan and I think that's where we're going to enter into this interesting time where I don't know there's just a tension and being countercultural in some ways. Like, I know it's co I'm leaning into in person experiences. Like, I think that is going to become more and more valuable. And I'm going to be honest, it's less convenient. It takes more admin time for planning. Like, it just it does. It's more expensive, I Collin, it's like what that's wild. And so I think there's this tension of, how much do we adapt, how much do we lean in, and how much do we kind of position ourselves as countercultural like I guess I say that to say I see why companies are struggling with navigating this new dynamic, because I think both have merit.

Collin Funkhouser  54:24

It really does expose the commodity versus premium and luxury aspects of the industry that kind of already said, make that and use AI to lean into like, using like you're talking about Michelle here, these personal aspects like, that's where the ultimate value really comes into play. Of I know, I mean everybody listening to this podcast and all of not a single one of you got into this because by Michelle Doug me and Michelle

Daniel Reitman  54:58

thought we were funny. So and look

Collin Funkhouser  55:01

what happened to that. There's no jokes on the show. That's, I think, the really good opportunity to rediscover the aspects of the business that we loved in the very place. I think that that's really what we're getting at here. And we're seeing that this is a lot of the opportunity that we can unlock of right? This is this? Is this? Is it like this? Is it this is why I want to talk to my clients. This is why I want to serve my pets. This is why I want to do this, not sit behind a screen doing invoicing or analyzing my data, which is all import stuff. But what can do more?

Doug Keeling  55:35

I think this is what's really exciting. And I've, I've barely scraped the surface so far, and I've already bought enough time back where, like I said earlier, I'm able to call clients and say, How are doing? Tell me about your dog, call my team members, go meet them out in the field, and focus on the actual relationships that we are building, with our teams, with our community, with our client. That is what is really exciting of us, and I think is will set us apart, you know, like, like Dan and Michelle just said there that it's really going to be the differentiator when we can use this time to provide more of these into high quality relationship building experiences, because these AI to have an iPad. Will do if we could get an hour back every week or an hour back every day? What could we use that time for? Maybe we go volunteer at the animals or walk these dogs who are in need. You know, maybe we volunteer at the local kitchen or the homeless shelter, there's so many beautiful, amazing they can do with this time if we utilize the tools correctly and utilize our schedule correctly, and that really is what is exciting about All of this.

Daniel Reitman  57:00

No, I definitely, I definitely agree. I think being able to this is where I understand everyone's perspective is different on these things. This is where my frustration with the people who put their fingers and ears and La, la, la, la, la is those are the ones who when there is economic downturn, because when there's economic downturn and people lose jobs, there's gonna be a lot more people walking dogs. There's gonna be a lot more people that are driving down what the base is for services. And if you are not in a position to be able to be operating lean, you are going to have to be doing the busy work. And there is going to be any that is able to make sure, allowing for things to get missed, and things aren't going to fall through the cracks, and it's going to affect your business, like it's going to be, you know, using AI, I genuinely believe, is a competitive advantage, and I think that, you know, regardless of all of the negative connotations about it, it's not going anywhere. And it's something that, you know, I want people to use it, whether you're a big company or a small company, to do exactly what Doug is talking about, so you can have time to do whatever it is that is a positive impact on so if you wanted to use AI and then go out and spend those three hours, freeze like that's something that you can do, that thing that's going to have a permanent effect. There are things that can be done that don't just have to be involved in your business, but it's something that I just, I worry for the people who just refuse to have an open mind to these things, because they will get left behind, I think, eventually, and it will. There is going to come a time where it is not to be doom and gloom, but it will be too late for some companies. There will, and there will all always be companies that can operate this way, but like, things are changing in a much, much, much faster way than they ever used to. And I don't think people are prepared for what is coming in the next five years. It's not going to be the way internet adoption happened. What happened in 25 years is going to happen in three to five years like it is a much, much, much more consolidated timeline. And you know, the goal is to be able to have it where we can focus on the best parts of what we do well.

Collin Funkhouser  59:28

And there is an aspect of time in and time using AI of it does that history, it becomes really rich week after week, month after month, that becomes something that is really a valuable asset to you as the business, as a person, months and years down the line. And so there is this kind of start using it now, and I we see this a lot right now. Hey, how has this changed over this, this, this long tail of information and data that now we can pull in and through into our business. We're. Really gives you an edge, too. Of the those who are using it long term, they've developed those habits, they've developed those skills. They've developed those that knowledge, which then sets up that as the things change even faster, that just up a little bit more and better able to take that next step as it continues to change

Daniel Reitman  1:00:19

as well. One other thing on the speed of things. So, you know, Internet came around, and then Google took over search. They were able, you know, if you were not ranked on Google, people weren't finding you. The switch from SEO to AEO is half an hour. And if people are not optimizing their sites for AEO, which is AI engine optimization, being able to have these all different chat tools, being able to find your business when someone is saying, I need a dog walker in town. X and you're not because somebody has written optimized content, which you can use like I've used flawed to do full analysis of my website, and we figured out, okay, these are the things we have to do. And I ran it against Gemini, and I ran it against chat GPT as well, just to compare and contrast and see what the things are so that you are showing up, because this is going to be how people search. I mean, who knows, but if I was a betting man. I'm putting all of my money on this is where search is going. It is. Google is going to be different. Like, I don't know if you've seen it, but they more of the AI search, and it's no longer your list of 10 links. It's giving an answer. You're not saying dog walker near me. You're saying, Can you find me a dog walker that's in my area that's reliable and has good reviews. It's going to go and look, and it's going to find up here's, you know, bad to the bone, perfect. You're good to go. They're going to give you one answer, maybe a couple of options. But if you live in a city where there's, I don't know, dozens, if not hundreds, of pet care options, and you are not priming your site and your content for being able to be found by these systems, you're eventually going to become invisible. And again, that's one of those things where it's just like learning about it now. Again, it's not going to happen overnight, but it's going to happen faster than it happened with SEO. For sure,

Michelle K.  1:02:16

I'm wondering if it might be possible for us, even briefly, to take the conversation towards the listener that might be feeling kind of an abject like pit of fear in their stomachs, because I know that that's probably happening for a lot. I mean, I feel it. I'm like, oh my god, I'm so behind, like, and I'm using AI, and I'm so sorry. Collin, I just took over moderating.

Collin Funkhouser  1:02:43

No. Go for it. Go for it.

Michelle K.  1:02:46

Michelle, okay, great. I already started, so I don't know how to stop. Dan, do you have thoughts on, like, as the early adopter in this group? Like, if someone's listening to this and they're like, Okay, I see it. I like, I see the need to dip the toe in, put a foot in, like I and I'm just so overwhelmed. I'm feeling a lot of fear. How do they start? And I'm also slightly for me go on, yes.

Daniel Reitman  1:03:12

So first, to make you feel better, I feel behind, and I'm in the process of building a whole bunch of stuff that I never I never even had the skill set to do six months ago. So you're not alone in feeling that way. I also have that feeling of, oh my god, oh my God, because there's so much happening. The beauty of this versus other technologies is it's conversational. So you can whether it's personally, I am had, I am in a very torrid love affair with Claude right now. This is, Claude is my jam right now. Chat GPT was great, and I use it, but Claude is is where I'm at. You can ask these systems how to get educated on this. What do I need to do? So you can literally go into clutter, chat, GPT, and say, I am brand new to this. I run a pet care business, and I do X, Y and Z services, then drop your link in. So we can get do, like, get an idea of what your company does, or whatever information you want to provide it, and say, I want to become better educated in AI and how I can use it in my business. What are the steps I need to take? You need to think of this like having the smartest person you've ever met available in your pocket at all times. And yeah, sometimes it's going to say some dumb nonsense. So you've got to be able to make sure you read through things, but use the tool itself to educate yourself. Like the other night, I had no idea how to code something that I was working on, and I literally went through step by step. And I think everyone has the multi monitor set up. So I had Claude here, chat GPT here, and I had, you know, terminal open here. And I was doing coding that I've never done before. And I was asking, I was like, I have no idea how to do this. And if you have concerns security in especially in a den coding, if you're if you're making agents and doing open claw, also if you're doing open claw, anything with an agent, please, please, please, make sure you are not just installing it on your personal device. If you do not know what you're doing, get either something, either an external piece of hardware, or do use eagle as a cloud server. You'd want to have it where it does it, because they can just destroy your computer like it can absolutely delete stuff. Using the tool itself as a resource to educate yourself is the best way to do it. So you could download plug, you could download chat GPT, and you say, Hey, I'm new to this, and I want to learn. And literally ask it the question. So, like the other night, I was having concerns about because for me, using AI, it's something that is very it's a it it can be a little dicey in terms of what it can and can't do, but also you got to be mindful of the security threats, right? So if you're running client information through there, one of the big things for me is analyzing all of our client communication. I had no idea about the level of security and the systems that can be utilized to encrypt and hide client data. So there are, there's software that or there's code that I can use that will identify credit cards, home addresses, this, this and this, and I could use it on a local device that only I have access to to clear that data out before I feed it into these systems. I had no idea how to do that. I didn't even know it existed. But again, like Michelle, you were saying you love using it for the conversational piece of being able to go back and forth with it, and this is that's the best way to do it, like you could do if you like. I've done it on a long car ride where I realized I needed to update my FAQ. I was like, ask me a million questions about a dog boarding business and a doggy daycare business, and we just went back and forth. But like, the best way to do it is you got to jump in. You're not going to break anything unless you connect it like before you connect it to anything, mess around with it, ask it questions, but you're not going to break anything unless you give it access to things, and that means you've logged in to your email, your calendar and other things through these devices. Just because you download it and set up an account does not mean this thing automatically has access to your computer. Like, I use the Claude Chrome extension that I find infuriating right now, because sometimes it's just like, start doing something. I'm like, nope, immediately get off of there. So, like, there are things where you you can't just, like, start it and walk away, especially when you're first starting to mess with these, with these systems, but using it to just say I need to learn how to do X, Y and Z, or I have questions about X, Y and Z, it's going to give you great resources. Also, a fantastic AI that I my brother sent me for research is called elicit. Elicit. Ai, is amazing for doing research. I had it because I one of the my big current arguments in my world right now is about overnight staffing and boarding. And I wanted to get actual scientific information about the impact of these environments on animals. I use it in Claude. I asked chat GPT, and it gave me like, okay, answers, but this gave me like, real scientific back data. So there's different AIS for all sorts of different things, but like, if someone is looking to start getting their feet wet, you could do Gemini, you could do Claude, you could do chat GBT. Personally, I love Claude, but I think learning how to use all these different systems, because they all do different things well, and it's figuring out what works best for you and what you're comfortable giving to it. Another thing that is really important to do is making sure you put good custom instructions in chat GPT about what you want it to do, Michelle, I know you're obviously a big fan of the hermosis, just as I am. So I have it trained on if it's giving me marketing or customer support advice and things like that. I want it to think about things from the perspective of Alex hermosi and Gary Vaynerchuk. That's just how I have like, I like their approach to business. There are things that you can do. So there's just, there's so much that you can use this to learn. And if anyone has questions, feel free like, DM me if you aren't sure of what to do. But like, the best thing you can do is just start playing with it. Just get on there and just start asking a question. Questions like, Don't worry, it's not going to take over your house and start turning the lights off and things like that. If you have a smart home eventually, that's possible, but for right now, you're fine.

Collin Funkhouser  1:10:13

Well, I just gave open claw my debit card and said, make me a millionaire. So I'll let you guys know. Keep talking.

Daniel Reitman  1:10:19

Sorry. There's some people that have done very well with with the with trading. There's also some people who have woken up to a bill of, like, $30,000 because of tokens, and they don't understand what they're doing. Just for everyone listening, that also won't just happen. It's not gonna. It'll bill you if you're paying, it'll bill you a monthly rate. What we're talking about is much more in depth than what you should what you need to be doing to get get your feet wet right?

Doug Keeling  1:10:49

While we're on the subject of money and finances with AI, one really great use case is asking it for coupon codes. You know, I used to go Google. You know, what's the what's the Vistaprint coupon code. You know? Now I can go and I ask AI and I find much better coupon codes than I was ever able to find on Google before. So maybe that's a good way for everyone to get started at home and save a couple dollars. Then I made a note to look at elicit for research. I'm going to look at that. When we get off of this call,

Daniel Reitman  1:11:26

I'll send you a code that gives you a free year. Actually, I could get it's, it's a weird code. It's UL, A, V, Al, CA, and it gives you a it gives you a year of the plus mode for free. So it's not my code, it's a code that was sent to me from somebody else. Question about that, because this is why I love these conversations, because you never get there's all these new use cases. Do you find that the codes were Betty better than things like honey and like the Chrome extensions that are used for the coupon coding. That's that has

Doug Keeling  1:12:03

been my experience so far. Yeah,

Speaker 3  1:12:06

it's open a whole new world for me. I love coupon codes.

Doug Keeling  1:12:10

Yeah, just to take this back to Michelle's question and speak to the listener at home who may be feeling a lot of fear and maybe feeling behind, or whatever feeling you're having about this conversation and AI and everything happening in the world, I want you to know that you are not alone. I have a lot of these fears. So many people have these fears, and you are not alone. So let's start with that, and the these feelings are very valid, because there are so many unknowns and it is evolving so quickly. So know that you're not alone. Feel validated in your feelings. But as I said earlier, the train is leaving the station, and you have to make a decision, are you on the train or not? And what does that mean for you and your business if you're not getting on that train, that's going to look different for each individual and for each person, and that is going to be a very personal decision that each and every one of us is going to have to make very, very soon. I also want you to know that there are ways to mitigate some of the impacts, the negative impacts that are happening on our environment and on our society, some of the ways that I'm doing that is the more that I utilize AI in these tools, the more that I am donating to organizations like jungle keepers and the The water Alliance and the World Wildlife Fund. You know, I am being much more conscious about those types of things than I ever was before, as I use AI more really, to help try to mitigate some of these negative impacts that may be happening. And I like what Dan said earlier, that yes, there may be some impacts now, but the power of these tools will help us solve some of these impacts over time. That's not going to happen tomorrow, but I look at everything with a glass half full mindset. I believe in positivity, and I do believe that a lot of these things are short term, you know, we'll find a way to make this really beneficial for the. The world and for the people that it may be negatively impacting. That's another thing that I really wanted to mention in this discussion here, that I think is not discussed enough, is that lower income communities, specifically communities of minorities and people of color, they are going to be impacted negatively because of these data centers, more than a lot of other groups, and we need to be very conscious of that, and we need to think about, how can we mitigate the risks, how can we mitigate the negative impacts and protect those communities, and protect the residents of those communities? I think that has to be at the forefront of our thought process as we start to utilize these tools. I think that's something that I don't hear talked about as much as I think it should be. And all of that being said, if you're ready to get started and you're not sure how to get started, I agree with everything that Dan just said. I also have a YouTube video that's called three ways you need to use AI in your business. Go to youtube.com, forward slash Doug the dog. I Collin, I hope you don't mind me giving a plug there, but I tell you how to write a good prompt to give these large language models to give you some high impact and high value results for your business.

Speaker 3  1:16:45

I think also to build on what Doug's saying, I think it's also it's going to be impacting

Daniel Reitman  1:16:56

it's lower income communities globally, right? So there have been a lot of things that are happening in South America, where these data centers are being built, where you might not have the same protections for communities that you have, because they're as much control as corporations have in this country, what you can do out of this country is absolutely wild. Like, you know, there's crazy stuff that happens globally, and, you know, to build on that further, it's, it's scary and it's upsetting, because, I mean, the idea of this, of it, having a negative impact on people who didn't ask for this to be introduced their community. Or, you know, you know, I think there is, there's a need for these companies to be responsible. The argument that they all make is basically, you know, someone is going to eventually release the dragon, which is the the emergence of acts truly sentient, AI, right? And so they're all in a race to get there, and they believe that they are the right ones to be at the helm of that ship. And, you know, it's, you know, Silicon Valley's always had this, you know, break things move fast mentality. But with this kind of stuff, it is moving so quickly. You know, personally, out of all the leadership, the one who sketches me out the most is Sam Altman, which it's probably not great to name him, because it's going to script the internet anyways. But, you know, I think that it is a achieve the goal at all cost, mindset that leads to tremendous success. And I think that's great in some aspects. But like you're saying, the impact on communities that are impact you know, are of a lower financial situation is it's scary, and it's something that is upsetting, and it's something that you know, like, what you're saying. Like, the more you use it, the more you want to contribute to these organizations, the more you want to support these kinds of things. I think that's that's a great take on this. Is being it, you know, if you're going to be using it, figure out a way to offset it. And I mean, like, simply put, for the business, by being able to optimize routes, you're reducing gas expenditure, which is one helping your staff, but having a more positive environmental impact of less emissions being created by the driving. Because that is a thing that our industry is responsible for, is more driving in general, is, you know, we have however many employees out in the field every day. You know, we're not talking about impact, and it is more diving. It is a lot, you know, same thing with Uber and all these other things. There's a lot more people on the road doing gig work. So the more that you can optimize routes and things like that, the better, the more you could reduce the environmental impact of the work we do, because we do our work does have an environmental. Impact the door.

Michelle K.  1:20:01

Yeah, and I think Dan, that's where I know I keep using the word nuance, but like my encouragement to people sending me to get involved in the conversation, to look at it from all the different angles, and then at the end of the day, to find conviction and where you personally stand in it. I'm not a believer of shoulds. I'm not a believer of, like, fear based decision making. I think if you have looked at it from on the angles, you've gotten involved in the dialog, like it, I just find it, it. You know, there will be impact in your business. I do believe if you choose to operate outside of these evolving tools that we do have access to now. But at the end of the day, I think where you personally land with your conviction, on whichever side it is, is ultimately what matters. And I think there's argument for both sides of it, acknowledging that it's here and it is changing the landscape.

Collin Funkhouser  1:21:04

I want to thank every single one of you for coming on the show and having this pretty difficult conversation around a topic that is rapidly changing, that's having massive impacts, not just to our business, to our team, to our clients, but our communities and the globe at large. So it seems like an almost impossibly large conversation to have, and but we're going to keep having it, and it's going to be continued to have an impact, and it's very important to us. So this is not the last time that we're going to be talking about this, that is for darn sure. But again, I want to thank every single one of you for coming on, taking your time and your expertise to share with us and encourage us in this Doug. For those who are interested in again, checking out your YouTube channel and following along with the stuff that you do. Where should they go?

Doug Keeling  1:21:49

Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. Collin, this was a wonderful conversation. I couldn't imagine better people to have this conversation with. I feel very grateful to get to be here and talk about things like this with each of you. And if anyone would like to get in touch with me, you can look up Doug the dog guy on YouTube or Instagram, and I'd love to hear from you.

Collin Funkhouser  1:22:12

Dan, where can people get

Daniel Reitman  1:22:16

connected with you? Chances are I've fronted you on Facebook at some point in the past 16 years if you're in the pet space. So honestly, anybody could find me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, feel free to DM me. I get DMS fairly regularly. I'm not a coach, I'm not a consultant. I don't do any of these things. But if you have a question, I'm happy to answer it. Collin, thank you for doing this, and honestly, to all three of you as somebody who, personally, is not doing anything to add value to the pet care space, I want to thank each of for what you do, because they started, and what you each provide the space is raising the bar for our industry as a whole. And I think you've all taken a really solid approach to the way you're doing, the things that you're doing, and I think you're adding a lot of value for a lot of people at the end of the day, that is what makes me the happiest, because I know it's improving the lives of animals. So to the three of you, thank you for the work that you do, and thank you for having me and my crazy thoughts on to partake in this conversation anytime.

Collin Funkhouser  1:23:20

Dan, you know that, Michelle, where can people get connected? Yeah.

Michelle K.  1:23:25

So I would say the best place is either the dog co secrets podcast or my free Facebook group, grow your daily dog walking business with dog co launch. So either place would be a great place

Collin Funkhouser  1:23:38

to get connected. Awesome. Well, I will have all those links. We covered a lot of topics. We're going to be some articles and some direct links to some of the tools and the AI agents that we discussed throughout the episode are going to be in the show notes. Thank you all very much for coming on the show. Appreciate every single one of you. Thank you again. I think my biggest takeaway from the roundtable on AI with Doug, Michelle and Dan, was that while the opinions on AI and its use and utility are varied, and as many as the days are long, one truth remains, we, as the business owner, we are the ones who decide what the shoulds and coulds are. Should we use AI? Could we use AI? Those are questions that every single one of us have to wrestle through and think through the implications for how it's going to impact us, our business, those around us, the communities, our the environment and everything in between. Rarely are business decisions made in a vacuum. And this couldn't be more true than talking about artificial intelligence as we look to understand the environmental concerns, but also as we look to see the benefits that can come through the automations the client experience or operations as a business. And what gives that back to us, the time and finance. Is that that affords us now we have to decide what that decision is for us. You have to do that in your business, and we would absolutely love your opinion on this one way or the other. Are you using it in your business? Do you think it should not be used? What limitations or parameters are you placing on its use in your business, if you are now, or things that we didn't talk about or should be considering as we move forward. This is an ever evolving conversation as as the capabilities expand and increase every single day, it seems like be part of the conversation. You can send that feedback to us at Pet Sitter confessional@gmail.com, or hit us up on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional again, we would love to know your thoughts. We'd like to thank our sponsors today, tying to pet and pet sitters international for making this show possible. And also, we'd really like to thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being part of the industry and all that you do. We'll talk to you next time. Bye.

Collin https://www.collinfunkhouser.com
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