Convos with Course Creators: Feat. Dog Trainer, Janna Markir

We’re kicking off the "Convos with Course Creators" series with a powerful conversation featuring Dog Trainer Janna Markir, owner of Janna’s Pack K9 Training. Janna takes us behind the scenes of her journey from service provider to online business owner, sharing how she scaled, found her niche within the dog trainer world, and leveraged Instagram to drive growth.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• Why the online course industry is booming (expected to hit $60 billion by 2025!)
• The pivotal moments that transformed Janna’s dog training business
• How she found her niche with reactive and aggressive dogs—and why it matters
• Smart strategies Janna used to get her first clients, including free pack walks and innovative Instagram marketing
• The truth about “tips and tricks” content—and why doing your own thing works better
• How to balance authenticity with authority in your social media marketing
• Key takeaways for confidently connecting with your ideal client and refining your messaging

Are you a service provider dreaming of scaling into the online course world? This episode is full of inspiration and actionable advice to help you turn your expertise into a scalable course or membership offer.

➡️ Follow Janna on Instagram @JannasPack for expert dog training advice and insights into her program.

🎉 🐕 Difficult dog? ...Work with Janna!

Use promo code "SNCTRAIN", to book a free consultation with Janna, or use the same code to take 50% off the DIY training program (which includes access to Janna via a private Facebook Group and 2x monthly group calls!)
➡️ https://jannaspack.podia.com/foundations-training

Stay tuned for more episodes in our Convos with Course Creators series, where we spotlight inspiring entrepreneurs scaling their businesses with online courses.
 
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Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

Can you even fathom the number 60 billion. We have a hard time fathoming these big numbers, which, you know, I think it was one of the reasons we're so hard on ourselves when it comes to social media and how we can have thousands of people looking at us and feel like we're not moving the needle at all, but 60 billion. 

So a million. Is a thousand thousands, right? Sorry, I don't, I don't want to talk down to you, but like 16 billion is a massive number. And that is why the online course industry is expected to be valued at in 2025. Apparently the online learning.



Industry has been growing exponentially like 10% year over year or something. 

It is a huge industry. And the reason I'm talking about it is because it's a pretty natural progression for a service provider to want to become a course creator. That is what I did. Right. I started as a service provider with a social media management agency. We scaled that up. We brought on more team members and I quickly realized I could serve way more people.

Bye. Teaching a woman to fish, right. Instead of giving a woman a. A fish.

 Since a lot of my listeners are interested in possibly becoming a course creator, or maybe you already are a course or membership creator yourself. I'm introducing this small series called convos with course creators. 

If you see a shiny new client's episode that starts with conversations with course creators, and then someone's name.  That means in that episode, we are interviewing a successful course creator about how the ideated, their course, how it came to be, how they've scaled it, what got them to where they were, what made them so successful? 



Things like that. And my hope for this series is that, of course, as always, you have actionable takeaways, but also that you can see that you have this within reach as a possibility. If you want to become a course creator, you absolutely can. 

And I'm going to introduce you to a bunch of successful course creators. Who are people just like you.

With that. I present the episode

 MyThreads is inundated with small business owners. It makes sense because that's what I post about and that's who I follow and I follow people that talk to small business owners. That's all small business owners. And I saw someone on there who was sort of venting. We're talking a newer business owner.

Maybe you can relate to this in your first two minutes. three to five years who goes online and finds all this information that is high level and mindset y and doesn't actually give a step by step, play by play on how to do things. And my marketing brain was saying, yeah, I mean, that's the case, right?

You pay someone to give you the step by steps. Free information is typically a little bit more high level, but because I have this platform, Because I have this podcast and the opportunity to give you what you want, which is how to and how are other people doing it? And what does it look like behind the scenes in other businesses?

I've invited a guest here today. This is Jana Markir, who is the owner and lead trainer at  Jana's Pack K9 Training, dog training company that she owns. She's one of my clients, and we're going to talk to her about the explosive growth and success that she has had on Instagram, where she started, where she's going, and what changed.

Hi, Jana.  Hi, Jenna. . I surround myself in Janas It's like my whole life. That, that sounds incredibly hard to say all the time. Janus Pak canine training. Yeah. So I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina. I've been in business now for just over a year.

I've been working with dogs since 2001. , and over the last year, I've been focusing now on, , behavior, behavior cases, you know, difficult dogs, reactive dogs, aggressive dogs, and, and the highly anxious dogs, did you find your way into that niche because of like passion or because there was a hole in the market?

 What made you steer more towards the more difficult pups?  When I got started with my own dog as a first time dog mom, I was was blessed with, , the dog that I didn't exactly want, but you need kind of thing. And she was quite difficult herself. , , we spent about a year. Working with a local, really popular trainer, , that had really great, you know, Google reviews and, , at a really great facility nearby and just doing traditional like rewards based treat training, obedience. 

And my dog was great there, , for the most part, and then behind the scenes at home, we were really still struggling with some really intense behavior issues like , handler aggression, resource guarding, , you know, she, she couldn't be away from me without just like screaming in her crate.

 It was just kind of a nightmare to live with her and I couldn't have people over because I couldn't trust her around other people in the absence of like my trainer or being at the facility. , 

and I had this whole vision for, for being a dog mom and having a dog. And that's why I got one. And  we couldn't do any of it. And I was just so  broken hearted all the time because I couldn't trust my dog. And like, I remember I'd go to, I went to brunch with a friend at one point and I was covered in like bruises and bite marks. 

, and she joked, she was like, you could never be a hand model. And I was like, no, I couldn't like, it was like really bad. It was, it was, it was dangerous, frankly. After about a year of all of that, we were at the training center still for about 10 months total. And we were spending about two to three days there.

We were spending even more time there. Cause then I was doing demonstrations with her at the center in obedience, like treat training land. for like other owners and starting to coach and mentor other owners there alongside me who were  struggling  but the the staff was struggling to connect with and communicate with and get them to understand what they needed to do and so they asked me to start doing it because we were getting it and it was just like this slippery slope into me becoming a dog trainer 

I started exploring the advice and studying the work of some other experts outside of that style of dog training and explored a whole different type. And about a month later, my dog was just like a totally different dog.  

. As you jumped into this, where were your initial clients coming from? Where were you finding people? Ah, so I I went on meetup.

And I started a local community peck walk for free for, for, you know, difficult reactive dogs. And I had a few people show up there who, , kept coming back week over week for help.  And then I decided to start, , leaning into, marketing on Instagram. And,  I wanted to start boarding and training as well, and I hadn't yet.

And so I reached out to one of the people who was going into the pack walk and I offered to train her dog for free. , because I needed someone who trusted me enough and, and all of that, ultimately, to, to let me have their dog in my home and, and to work with them behind the scenes and just all of that is, I offered her free training and I started documenting it on Instagram. 

  , that's pretty much where it started, aside from just like some light tips and tricks and like low key education that I had been posting before. That's really what kicked it off. Those are such savvy decisions. So finding a community of real humans that you can connect with out in public, I think sometimes we get so caught up in the massive numbers, right?

  We want thousands of views and we want trillions of followers, but  10 people willing to meet up with you in your neighborhood and then some of them converting to clients,  that's huge. And then you have an impact and then you grow your personal network. Right. And I think too, for a lot of service providers, We do need some kind of social proof, right?

I think that's something a lot of people struggle with right away. It's like, I don't have anything to show yet. And it's like,  maybe going online first, isn't the best place to get that, right? Maybe it is going out to your neighbors and your family and just  finding the people who maybe they don't need a full six week dog training package, but.

Maybe they do, who knows, right? And just like starting to find someone who needs help and helping them. , and conveniently, you have a smartphone with a camera that you can document it. And now you have some kind of social proof to show.  And it can be messy if you don't really know what you're doing.

But that for me always feels like a good first step, I think, for someone that's like, I don't know where to start, because I do hear that a lot in the online space. And I felt that way myself at first, I started my Instagram, probably You know, three or four months, like, subtly before this actual, I, oh, I, I need a dog to train.

Okay, I need to find humans to connect with, and like, started really doing that.  And one of the first, one of the first steps inside my program, Magic Marketing Machine, is we say, , bring the outside in. , it's okay if your entire universe doesn't exist. on this app. This should complement what's already happening in real life and vice versa, right?

You are one holistic business. So meet someone and bring them over to your Instagram. Find someone on Instagram and bring them out into real life. I really liked one thing that you said. You kind of threw shade a little. Which I love you said, I started documenting this process on Instagram, not just doing the normal tips and tricks.

I think what you mean by that is when people think I have to make content, the first thing that comes to mind is tips and tricks. It's like low hanging fruit. Is that kind of what you meant where you didn't want to just do that? what I kind of meant by that is I, and this,  I don't know if it's shade in your industry or mine, frankly, but you hear a lot about how to get started on Instagram and it's like, go see what your competitors are doing to see what they're working.

No,  no, don't. I know it's like, and it's like, oh man, that leads a lot of people in my industry to doing what. I've discovered to be kind of  shady and what I consider to be a shady practice, which is, you know, leading people to think that any tip or trick alone is going to be enough to, to get you over the finish line on something big and serious, like reactivity, aggression, or, or severe anxiety.

, there's just a lot of noise like, Oh yeah,  You need to, you need to post three, the, the little tips and the checklists and it's like, all of these quick grabs and you see what other people are doing in my industry and that's what's working for a lot of people is,  kind of, in my opinion, I don't know, whether it's predatory or they just don't know any better, right?

Well, I have, , lots of opinions on it, obviously.   This concept of well that's what's working because as soon as someone tells me, I'm going to be on a soapbox for a second here, but like as soon as someone tells me what other people in their industry are doing and then I say don't look at them, do your own thing, be like Janna, create your own series of following yourself along, like you did something different than other people, didn't take that much work, didn't take that much brain to come up with.

Like, you can do it. Everyone has access to this. You just need to be open to seeing things differently. So as soon as you tell someone not to look at what their competitors are doing, they then argue. This is, I've been in this conversation a trillion times. They then argue, but it's working for them. And then I argue, How do you know that?

Because one, they're telling you they could be lying. Two, you see their numbers. You do not see their sales, right? You do not see their lifetime customer value. You do not see them necessarily closing in the DMs. , you don't actually know that. We just use that as, like, You don't see them confidently selling usually either. 

That's, I think, a big thing I see in my industry.  , and I, and I feel for trainers, right? Because it's a precarious situation to be in, to like sell to people that are struggling and going through hardship. Like you're, it's very much like being in a health or wellness kind of space.

, it can feel icky, but when you know that you have something really good to offer and you're confident talking about it and you're willing to like distinguish yourself apart from. Everyone else , I don't know if you know me, but I'm not the person in my industry trying to make friends in my industry, like that's my kind of vibe , the people who F with me do right and the people who don't don't and I'm cool with that because that's not why I started a business was to make friends.

I really did start this business to help people. 

When you have something good  you should stand on that. And if you  aren't ready for that, right? I think maybe it's worth going out into the world and getting some experience and just showing people what you can do, you know, because you copying other people too,  doesn't guarantee that that's giving anyone any more information about you.

Like there's 10, 000 trainers you could work with.  Why would you want to work with me if I'm doing the same thing as everyone else? True. You want your industry differentiators. All right. So I promised the people some like step by step. So can you tell us a bit about the things that you've implemented on Instagram?

Because you've had some major sales come through from Instagram, some major launches, some rollercoaster moments. So what has been working for you?  Absolutely. , so what has been working for me is, is. Sitting down and looking at what Differentiates me. What am I doing differently? And when it comes to my work with my clients What are the unique things that are actually propelling them forward that no one's told them before  what are the real?  The real juicy bits the real aha moments essentially because I think when it comes to  my marketing what's been most effective is the authority side of it and really learning how to speak directly to the person who's looking for a dog trainer to stop difficult unwanted behavior and get on a better track to love life with a calmer dog.

And when I started speaking directly to them,  and speaking to not just the pain point, but leading them towards the solution.  Softly consistently, like, Hey, it doesn't have to be that hard. And Hey, the way you're doing it, if it was going to work already would.  And when you're ready to like, have it be easier.

I'm here. I feel like so if we if we broke down like all those items we broke down those steps that's like basically all the different templates in magic marketing machine it's like okay now make them feel this now make them feel that and so it feels like you've really taken on those bits of marketing psychology and at the end of the day, it's messaging, right?

And we worked on that for a minute, even the, like, the way that your face looked when you said the result and you, , said that elevator pitch, which we work on a ton in the program. It was like, oh, she's so clear at saying what she does and the result her clients get. I wonder why that's so good.  I really, really spent a minute on that because  picking the one person was hard.

I'll say that. I think, I think that's the first step is. And that was really , one of the big groundbreaking moments for not just, you know, my content, right, but, but my business overall was when I started speaking to one person very confidently and decided that it's going to resonate with some, but not all, and that's fine. 

But just being able to speak about all of the things to that one person that they need to know to make a choice that's going to be good for them, that they're going to feel good about, has been so helpful.  Without as much hard selling, right?  And without having to Do the tips and the tricks thing that I know isn't helping, 

 Sure there's tips and tricks as it relates to my program, right?  That would help them know. Oh, okay. If that works, what else she got, you know, kind of like you do, right? You see that all in your content? I mean, I've, I've followed you and watched you run your own program on your audience for months and months before I was like, okay,  all right, I'm in  , I want my clients to feel that committed to, , something about my program that's really changed since joining magic marketing machine is seeing how effective it can be, like how effective a funnel can actually be right from the second, you know,  You know, you follow along to just the way that you say it again, and you say it again, you say it differently.

And then you say it with a hat on and like,  you know, and like, all of the things I think about so many pieces of your content that have  connected back to your program. I'm like, okay, now I see. Wait, was that my joke? The hat on? That was your joke. Yeah. You have a post like that.  Oh, right. I remember.

That's funny. Mm hmm. And like, without being, like you said, without being slimy has always been something that's really appealed to me. , I've always felt really very much so, like I wanted to follow an approach that felt good for me. And to do that, I needed to start figuring out who that one person was.

Because that's what, that's what, that's the only way it works. Yeah. Yeah. And I heard that advice, honestly, for a century before it really dropped in how literal it is. Like that is, I literally mean today in the, the workshop this morning that we ran for, , Magic Marketing Machine members, someone was filling out a template and they said, it makes you feel frustrated or depressed.

And I was like,  Feel one feeling at once. Am I frustrated or am I depressed? Literally  choose and speak to one person. And if the depressed person reads this and it doesn't hit, that's okay because it's going to hit home so much deeper for the frustrated person.  So, and, and you establish like, it makes sense that you would want a more quote unquote feminine.

marketing and sales strategy because you have a values based business and your values are important to you and you have sensitive subject matter because your people are in turmoil and so it makes sense that you wouldn't want to feel like you're prodding pain points and shoving them through a funnel.

You want to welcome them in, make them feel safe, like you said, make sure your customers feel comfortable with you so you can help them in exchange for money.  Exactly. Since also starting to expand like my money mindset, which I know isn't directly in magic marketing machine, but it, it is.

When you start to really get comfortable with  the messaging and you start to get comfortable with the type of client that you're speaking to, you start to realize that this is going to be the type of client you're serving over and over and over again. And, and you quickly build Repertoire with that type of person.

And you start learning how to even hone in on it harder and harder. Like with every client that joins, you figure out how much closer you are to actually.  speaking to your ideal client. And then once you see the numbers start to turn and all like, okay, great. Let me double down. You know what I mean?

 That is such honestly, like go back 15 seconds. Listen to her say that again. I feel like you said that so clearly, and that's such a good point. And it also illustrates like, you're not going to get it right the first time you're You're gonna keep chipping away at your messaging, getting it stronger and stronger, meeting more people.

It's not even about creating it, it's about watching the people come in and interacting with them, making it stronger that way, and really honing the practice of listening to them.  Yeah.  It was hard for me too, I'll say that because , like I am my last client, like I am my client, I am my ideal audience, right?

Because I was, I was that person, but I'm no longer in that place. And so psychologically, it's harder for me to to speak the same language. And so even for me, it's only been several years since I was struggling with a really super difficult, nasty dog. But to just go back to, , the market research and be like, okay, what are people saying to me right now?

Because that's what I need to be saying if I want to be helping people solve those problems.  And those problems very well may be different from how I would have described them, right? And, and particularly now, three years into the industry, which isn't that long, but it's just long enough to shift, the way that I would articulate myself or something in it. 

100%. ,  Jenna, people can work with you virtually, right? Yes. My program is available fully online across the world, . So where should we go to find out more about your program?  



You can go directly to my Instagram at Janice pack





that's J A N N A S P A C K at Janice Pack. And if you're interested in finding out if the program would be a good fit for you, I'd be happy to do a free behavior assessment and consultation and just reach out to me with the code from the show notes. And then for anyone who'd like to sign up from there.

I do have a 50 percent off coupon. Awesome. Thank you, Jenna. You're welcome. Thank you so much.