Bootstrapping Using Facebook Ads to $5M: Dow Janes Co-founders Laurie-Anne King and Britt Baker (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Britt, get us to the point where you launched Dow Janes. How did you get yourselves off the ground?

Britt Baker: It’s the fall of 2019. I have another job at that time that I decided was not my passion. I’d be going to dinner parties and cocktail parties and everyone would ask when’s the next Dow Janes meeting. I knew that Laurie-Anne had started an online business before. I called Laurie-Anne. She was about eight months pregnant.

Laurie-Anne is a total go-getter. Being eight months pregnant didn’t stop her. We had our first few brainstorming calls. We came up with the vision of Dow Janes. In December, we incorporated. In January, we outlined what we were going to build. We decided that we were going to pre-sell it. We bootstrapped the business. We each put a thousand dollars in.

My husband posted it on his personal Facebook page. We were hoping to get 25 people to sign up. We got 40 people from that single post. We had 40 people who were paying for this program. We built it over the next nine months. The program is called The Million Dollar Year. It’s a 12-step financial curriculum.

Sramana Mitra: What’s in the 12-step curriculum?

Britt Baker: The first step is about building a weekly money ritual. How do you spend finances each week? It’s about instilling new habits. The second step is addressing your relationship with money. This is a piece that most financial curriculum overlooks – the psychological and emotional component of money.

The third step is getting financial clarity. How much money do you have coming in and out each month? We have people do a tracking exercise where they track every dollar they spend. We have them write their emotion when they spend that money. That gets people to consciously pay attention.

Step four is figuring out where they are on this roadmap. It really matters that you do things in the right order. First is saving more than you spend. Then paying off your high-interest fund, saving an emergency fund, and then investing.

Five is setting up auto-saving. Step six is budgeting. Seven is spending in line with your values. Eight is building an emergency fund. Nine is learning all about credit and how that works. How do you increase your credit score? Ten is saving for retirement. Eleven is how to invest. Twelve is giving back.

Sramana Mitra: How much did these 40 people pay to sign up?

Britt Baker: I think it was $1,500.

Laurie-Anne King: Our first launch was a thousand dollars. We discounted it for our beta members.

Sramana Mitra: You had these 40 people who were willing to pay $1,500 for this program that you were going to build. You took the next nine months to build the curriculum.

Britt Baker: Right.

Sramana Mitra: What is the format?

Britt Baker: It’s all videos. Along with the videos, we have workbooks, spreadsheets, and templates. Everything is handed to them and they just have to work through it.

Laurie-Anne King: It’s built so step-by-step. Our instructions are literally, “Pause the video. Go to this website. Login.” We make it as fail-proof as possible.

Sramana Mitra: What platform did you use?

Britt Baker: We built it ourselves on WordPress.

Sramana Mitra: We’re talking about September of 2020 when you had this program launched?

Britt Baker: Everyone joined in February. We just dripped out the content.

Sramana Mitra: Did they pay upfront?

Britt Baker: We had two options – upfront or payment plan.

Sramana Mitra: So you had money coming in right from the beginning.

Britt Baker: Yes.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Bootstrapping Using Facebook Ads to $5M: Dow Janes Co-founders Laurie-Anne King and Britt Baker
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