BRITT WILLIAMS, CO-FOUNDER OF DOW JANES
Britt Williams Baker and Laurie-Anne King are the cofounders of Dow Janes, a community that empowers women about their financial situation with the help of trusted experts.
Dow Janes started in Britt’s living room, after noticing the great gender disparity in investing, Britt set out to start an investment club for women. She soon realized most of her girlfriends weren’t really in a position to start investing, they were still paying off debts or saving up money. Britt decided to invite Laurie-Anne as a guest speaker to teach a workshop on budgeting. Instead of teaching about classic (and dull) accounting exercises, Laurie-Anne focused on how women can live and spend in alignment with their values so that they can feel in control of their money.
Both Laurie-Anne and Britt noticed that although all the women at the workshop wanted to budget, none of them had actually stuck with it. And so Dow Janes was born!
I had the pleasure of speaking with Britt and asking her about Dow Janes, how it came about and what obstacles they had to overcome. We talked about how, as women, many times we are conditioned/socialized to steer clear from discussing money and how to push back against that and take an active role in our finances.
How did Dow Janes come about? What initially sparked the idea for the first investment club?
A few years ago I had been getting questions from friends a lot of time about ‘how do I invest?’ so I started this circle in the Bay Area, where I just taught them the basics of investing (assets, stocks, bonds, asset allocation). I realized in that first session even though everyone said ‘this is amazing and I can't believe I hadn't learned it before’ that they were also not ready to invest. They hadn't saved the money they needed to invest. So I realized I was jumping a little far ahead and what we needed was basic financial education. So we jumped back and did a budgeting lesson, where I brought my friend Laurie-Anne to lead it. After that session everyone had these big ambitions to budget but no one did anything. Laurie-Anne and I realized that with personal finance you need accountability. It is so easy to put it in the back-burner and never do it, even though you know you should. And so what we wanted to build was a program with accountability, with basically like hand holding to get you to take the steps you need. We also wanted to break it into bite sized pieces, really small steps along the way so that people don't feel overwhelmed or daunted and they can actually feel like they can take action. So we built the program which is called “Million dollar year,” the idea behind the name is that we teach you skills so that you will eventually have a million dollars, so that you can eventually build towards that. We start with the emotions behind money: your relationship to money, your money story, everything that has been ingrained with how you think about money, which often comes from the people who raised us. So we start there and clear that up to find what you want your new relationship to money to be before we even get started. And then we jump into the nuts and bolts, beginning with tracking your money, learning where your money is going and everything beyond that -- auto-savings, budgeting, planning for retirement, investing… basically everything you need to know personal finance related. The accountability piece that is built in is that we have them commit to do an hour a week on their finances and tell them exactly what to do. And then they tell us if they’ve done it or not, if they didn’t we send them a message reminding them. So there’s that human piece of just keeping them honest.
The Dow Janes founding duo: Laurie-Anne and Britt.
What were some of the obstacles you had to overcome when starting out? And how has COVID affected DJ?
We had the idea in October and then launched the business in January. We did a beta launch with friends and family and had 40 women sign up -- they signed up before we had even built it, it was kind of a test. We built it as they were in it, a step each week (there’s a 12 step curriculum as a main component). So we launched in January and then COVID hit, but nothing changed about our business model, it was all online to begin with. And then more people were at home, having to deal with their finances. So we have just grown tremendously this year. We just focused on our beta users the first four months, and then we started selling it in public in May using Facebook ads. We have grown from 40 customers to 400 customers in four months. I think COVID has people reflecting on their finances.
How are you funding DJ?
We don't have any venture funding, we self-funded.
Check out the Dow Janes website for their free financial training.
Many times entrepreneurs start working on their new ventures as side-hustles, are you dedicating 100% of your time to DJ?
Pretty much. I had been doing another job where I was an admissions consultant for people applying to MBA programs, and I’m working with my last set of clients right now. And I’ll be retiring after this round so that I can be focusing 100% on Dow Janes.
How would you like Dow Janes to evolve?
We want to reach 1000 women by the end of this year. Next year our goal is to expand our program. Million Dollar Year is just about the financial basics: literacy and understanding and getting your feet under you. Next year we want to launch a program called Elevate, about building wealth. Not just helping women to get their feet under them and get out of debt, but actually build wealth for their families, to give back, etc. There is such a wealth disparity between men and women, between people of color. We have a bigger portion of people of color than I thought we would just because we are white and our messaging is white, and I am so grateful for the diversity.
Are you targeting a specific location for DJ users?
All over. Mostly all over the US. We just started expanding internationally, we have some women from the UK, Canada and Australia. But mostly the US. And our average age is 39 -- which is also older than we thought we would be targeting. And we have a lot of women who hit a point, one woman said this yesterday: “I knew it was time to adult.”
