Judy Reinford: How a Pet Photographer Built a Thriving AI Education Business with Zenler

See how Judy Reinford used Zenler to organise her photography education business, run AI art workshops, and scale from side hustle to full-time career

Judy Reinford has been a photographer since she was thirteen years old. Nearly fifty years later, she is still behind the lens — but the business around that lens has transformed completely. What started as a way to manage the chaos of running online photography classes has become the operational backbone of a full-time education business that spans online seminars, in-person workshops across the United States, one-to-one mentoring, and a mastery programme built around AI art creation.

She did not set out to become an online educator. She did not plan to build a course platform. She did not even fully understand what Zenler was when someone built her first site on it.

But here she is — on her Zenler dashboard every single day, watching the numbers, planning the next class, and running a business that no longer has any room to be called a side hustle.

A Career That Started at Thirteen

Judy's relationship with photography began in childhood and never wavered. She studied fine art at degree level, worked in fashion photography during the film era, and then spent years at Rodale Press — the publisher behind Men's Health and Prevention Magazine — where she learned Photoshop on the job at the exact moment it was first released.

From there, she moved into portrait photography, then newborn photography, and gradually found herself more and more drawn to animals. A trip to the zoo for her fiftieth birthday — determined to do something that felt like being ten again — produced some of her finest images and confirmed what she already suspected.

Animals were where she belonged.

"I just kept finding myself more interested in the pet at a portrait session than the people. And no offence to anybody, but I just love animals."

When COVID arrived, she was ready to make the switch permanent. Newborn photography during a pandemic was not an option. She pivoted fully to animals, started horse riding again as an adult, and threw herself into a new chapter of her career.

COVID, AI, and a Business That Found Its Purpose

COVID did more than close one door for Judy. It opened several others at once.

Stuck at home, she started teaching online — running classes for photographers through Zoom, sending out files and brushes via email, collecting payments through PayPal. It worked, but only just. Students could not find their Zoom links. Downloads went missing. Months after a class, people were still emailing asking where the recording was.

At the same time, Judy discovered AI image generation. She was drawn in by the creative possibilities — particularly for the kind of fantastical, painterly imagery she loved, and for something closer to her professional heart: memorial pet portraits.

"The average person contacts you the week the dog is being put down. They want those last photos. And it just didn't make sense to me as the only photos you're going to have."

What AI allowed her to do instead was take existing photos from happier times — even low-resolution cell phone images — and transform them into beautiful, large-format memorial pieces. A favourite beach. A field of flowers. A path in the woods. The dog, rendered in a scene that captured the life they lived together.

The platform she teaches is KREA — an AI aggregator that brings together multiple tools including ChatGPT, NanoBanana, Topaz Photo AI, and video models, all in one place. Pet photographers and portrait photographers alike have embraced it, and they rely on Judy to keep up with changes that seem to happen hourly.

"Things that used to take 100 hours, you can do in about 3 hours now."

Finding Zenler — Without Really Looking

In 2021, someone who builds websites for photographers told Judy he could set up a Zenler site for her. She had been managing her classes through PayPal, email, and Zoom — and the chaos of that system was consuming more energy than the teaching itself.

She agreed, largely because the promise was simple: everything in one place, and Zoom built directly into the platform.

"He said, Zoom is in Zendler. And I'm like, well, I don't understand — don't I still have to have my Zoom account? He goes, no, Zoom is in Zendler. I didn't get it at first."

He built the site. She was busy settling her mother's estate. A year passed before she really engaged with it properly. Her first class launched in December 2022, and she was hoping to make around $2,000 from it.

Things moved faster than that.

Growing Into the Platform

Judy's relationship with Zenler did not start with full understanding — it started with trust. She trusted the person who built the site, launched her first class nervously, and gradually discovered what the platform could actually do.

The second class launched in April 2023. Then things started to explode. She was travelling across the country teaching in-person workshops — Ohio, Florida, Texas — and using Zenler to manage every aspect of those events. Hotel links, venue information, maps, preparatory Zoom sessions, downloadable resources — all sitting inside the class page, accessible to every student who had registered.

"Everything was set up as a class on Zenler. All the information that would be on the sales page, I would make a custom block and save it, and it would be on the class page."

She also started using it for mentoring. Each mentoring client has their own private class, with all their recordings stored in one place. No Dropbox folders. No email chains. No lost files.

And then she launched her mastery programme — a 12-month group experience with its own dedicated community space inside Zenler. It was the first time she had used the community feature, and it changed how she thought about what the platform could do.

"I was into communities hosted by another company, and I didn't really understand them — until I did it in Zenler. And I'm like, oh, I get this now."

The Feature That Changed Everything

If there is one Zenler feature that Judy keeps coming back to, it is the dashboard.

As a creative person, tracking numbers and metrics does not come naturally. But Zenler puts the data right in front of her every time she logs in — and she logs in every day.

"My favourite feature is when you log in as an administrator, it takes you to your dashboard. You're seeing your success. As a creative person, it's not usually something that creatives seek to look at on a daily basis, and Zenler makes you look at it."

That visibility — knowing whether this month is ahead of or behind last month, identifying which classes are selling and which are not, knowing when it is time to launch something new or send an email campaign — has turned her into a much more intentional business owner.

She has also discovered the value of cloning. Cloning a class to set up a new one quickly. Cloning an email and adding the date and topic in the internal name so she always knows when she sent it and what it was about. Small things that save time and reduce cognitive load.

The live Zoom feature has become essential too — not just for scheduled classes but for emergency situations, like the time she needed to call an urgent meeting with a class about a change at a workshop location.

"The ability to just schedule it right there in the class and not have it as a separate Zoom — and knowing it's stored right there in the site. I love the live Zooms."

What Would Happen Without Zenler

Kevin asked Judy what effect it would have on her business if Zenler disappeared tomorrow.

Her answer was immediate.

"Oh my god. Don't let that happen, please. I guess I'd have to figure out how to start all over from scratch. Because I don't want to go back to Dropbox and WeTransfer and Zoom links and emails — where's the brushes? And all that nonsense where things are scattered all over the place."

That is not a throwaway answer. It is a genuine reflection of how central Zenler has become to everything she does — the organisation of her business, the delivery of her courses, the storage of her recordings, and the confidence she has that students can always find what they need.

"All they've got to do is remember me, and then go to my website and remember which email they used. And they're good to go."

Support That Makes the Investment Worth It

Judy has found the support around Zenler as valuable as the platform itself. She attends Allie's Thursday live support sessions regularly and describes them as genuinely helpful for working through specific problems and discovering features she had not known about.

She is honest about the Facebook group being more mixed in its results — sometimes she finds the answer she needs, sometimes not. But the combination of the Thursday sessions, the training materials, and the support structure gives her confidence that she is not on her own.

"Having the seminars and the support makes the investment in the site worth it, because you're not like, okay, they took my money, now what. You have people to help you."

She contrasts this directly with other platforms she uses for her AI teaching, where there is no email address, no response on Discord, and no sense that anyone is available.

What Is Coming Next

Judy's calendar for the rest of 2026 is full. She calls it a slow year — last year she had seventeen flights in a short period of time. This year she is staying closer to home, but that still means:

An online class on 18th April — Cell Phone to Masterpiece — taking a low-resolution image start to finish through the AI and Photoshop workflow to produce a printable memorial piece.

An in-person equine mastery workshop at the end of April and beginning of May, with one spot remaining, in Lovettsville, Virginia — three days of AI art creation, painting techniques, and mixed-media finishing on canvas.

A sold-out puffin photography trip in Maine in June, with an inquiry page already live for next year.

An in-person mastery class in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in the autumn — three days covering AI tools, Photoshop painting techniques, and canvas embellishment.

An October mastery class at her studio in Pennsylvania.

Online classes scattered throughout.

And a class already planned for Charlotte, North Carolina in January.

What She Would Do Differently

Judy's honest answer to what she would do differently is that she would have engaged with Zenler sooner. She paid for a year before she really used it — and once she did, the business started to move.

She is also aware that there is more she could be doing with the platform. SEO on her course pages is something she has largely skipped and wants to address. Selling her artwork directly through the site is something she is thinking about. And the community feature is still relatively new territory that she is only beginning to explore.

But none of that diminishes what she has already built. A photographer who started teaching occasional online classes, hoping to make $2,000 from her first one, is now running a full-time education business with a national touring schedule, a 12-month mastery programme, a growing community, and a dashboard she checks every day.

"It's definitely not a side gig anymore."

What Business Owners Can Learn from Judy Reinford

Judy's journey offers a set of lessons that are as relevant to photographers as they are to any creative professional building an education business.

Solve the chaos first. Before Zenler, Judy's business was held together with PayPal, email, and Zoom links. Getting everything into one place did not just save time — it changed the entire experience for her students.

Use the platform for in-person events too. Most educators think of Zenler as a digital delivery tool. Judy uses it to organise everything for her physical workshops — hotel links, maps, venue details, prep sessions, downloads — and it works brilliantly.

The dashboard is a business tool, not just a metric. Seeing your numbers every day changes how you make decisions. Judy checks hers daily and uses it to decide when to launch, when to email, and when to pivot.

Stay relevant by teaching what is changing. Judy built her education business around AI precisely because it is evolving so fast. The people who need her most are the ones trying to keep up. That combination of expertise and timeliness is what keeps her classes selling.

Trust the platform, then grow into it. Judy did not need to understand everything about Zenler on day one. She started with what she needed, built from there, and kept discovering new features as her business grew.

"I know it wasn't really designed for photography seminars. But I'll tell you, it's perfect for them."

Connect with Judy Reinford

🌐 Education Platform: https://education.judyreinfordphotography.com

🌐 Portrait Website: https://judyreinfordphotography.com

🎓 From Cell Phone to Masterpiece — Live Class: https://education.judyreinfordphotography.com/courses/from-cell-phone-to-masterpiece-live-april-18th

📘 Facebook Business Page: https://www.facebook.com/judyreinfordphotography

👥 Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1694960040755793

▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JudyReinford

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/judyreinford

FAQ

Who is Judy Reinford? Judy Reinford is a professional photographer, AI art educator, and workshop instructor based in the United States. She has been a photographer since the age of thirteen and now teaches pet and animal photographers how to use AI tools to create memorial art, paintings, and large-format wall art from existing photographs.

What does Judy Reinford teach? She teaches AI-assisted art creation using KREA, an aggregator platform that combines tools including NanoBanana, Topaz Photo AI, and video models. She also teaches Photoshop editing and painting techniques, and runs workshops on turning cell phone images into professional-quality memorial pieces.

Who does Judy Reinford help? She helps pet photographers, animal photographers, portrait photographers, and anyone interested in using AI to create artwork from photographs — particularly memorial pieces for clients who have lost a beloved animal.

Why is Judy Reinford's success story important? Her story shows how a working photographer with no background in online education or course platforms can build a full-time teaching business using Zenler — and how using the platform for both online and in-person events makes it even more powerful.

Why did Judy choose Zenler? She was introduced to it by someone who builds sites for photographers in her industry. The promise of having everything — payments, course delivery, Zoom sessions, downloads, and recordings — in one place solved the exact problem she had been struggling with.

What Zenler features have made the biggest difference for Judy? The dashboard, live Zoom sessions within classes, the ability to clone courses and emails, community spaces, custom blocks for in-person event information, and the all-in-one structure have all been central to how she runs her business.

What is Judy's favourite Zenler feature? The dashboard. She checks it daily and uses it to track her progress against monthly goals, identify what is selling, and decide when to launch new classes or send email campaigns.

What is Judy working on next? Online seminars, in-person mastery workshops in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, a puffin photography trip in Maine, and ongoing development of her 12-month mastery programme and community.

What can other business owners learn from Judy's journey? Organise your business before it organises you, use your platform for in-person events as well as online delivery, check your numbers daily, teach what is changing in your industry, and trust the platform enough to start — then grow into it.

Categories: : Success Stories