2 friends pooled $2,000 of their own savings and turned it into a $30 million company by focusing on 'green-light activities'

Laurie-Anne King and Britt Baker co-founded financial-education company Dow Janes with an initial investment of $2,000. The duo's success can be attributed to their green-light framework, which focuses on activities that directly lead to revenue. After completing their Harvard Business School degrees, Baker joined a women's circle where she heard the same question repeatedly: "What should I do with my money?"

This prompted her to host informal money meetups, where women could openly discuss financial matters. The meetups revealed a high demand for financial education, leading Baker and King to create a program for 20 women at a founder's price of $1,000 each. With $40,000 in sales before even launching their business, the pair incorporated Dow Janes, named after the all-women investment club Baker's mother attended in the 1990s.

In nine months, they built their first product, The Million Dollar Year, a 12-step financial-literacy course developed in real-time with their founding cohort. Nearly seven years later, Dow Janes is on track to generate $30 million in revenue by 2026. The founders never took outside money and attributed their success to building a product customers wanted and a clear path to sell it.

Before designing the sales page for their first product, they conducted 20 customer interviews to understand what women wanted and needed from a financial-education program. They also spent months designing The Million Dollar Year, which has remained largely unchanged over the past seven years, indicating they got the fundamentals right from the start.

To sell their products, they used paid advertising on Meta and YouTube, leading potential customers to a free webinar where they could learn about the company's approach before deciding to enroll in a program. Baker and King advise business owners to give prospective customers a low-friction way to experience their expertise, such as through classes, consultations, demos, or introductory sessions, then make the next step to becoming a customer clear.