How These High School Students Turned $1 Into More Than $100

When Darrick Ramsey first held the only greenback invoice he’d been given, nervousness hit him laborious. “I used to be very nervous, like I used to be anxious,” he recollects in an interview with Entrepreneur. 

Alexis Jordan had an identical response: “For me, I used to be very nervous,” she says. 

In February 2024, a documentary movie group tasked these two college students, together with about two dozen of their then-high college classmates, with an uncommon problem: Flip $1 into $100 in per week utilizing all the assets at their disposal. They began the problem afraid of failing, then used their companies, networks and laborious work to show $1 into excess of $100 in per week. A documentary movie launched final month referred to as Be taught to Earn: A Pupil’s Journey From $1 to $100 chronicled their experiences.

Each Ramsey and Jordan initially grappled not simply with the maths, however with the truth of making an attempt to construct one thing in “this financial system,” as Jordan put it, the place “what are you able to get for $1?” is a real query. The timeframe added stress: That they had roughly per week, layered on high of faculty, sports activities and different commitments, to show $1 into $100. “We had different stuff to do, so it was very time-consuming,” Jordan says. 

How Jordan flipped $1: companies and Kool-Assist pickles

As soon as the shock of the $1 problem wore off, Jordan went on to the group she knew finest. “My technique was, the place do individuals give probably the most cash?” she says. “So for me, I used to be raised in a church; my church is sort of a massive household. So I mentioned, let me go to my primary supporters.” With that single greenback and her current relationships, she supplied labor and creativity as an alternative of merchandise she couldn’t afford to purchase.

“Often what I did was I cleaned their yards, I cleaned the church,” she says, describing how she exchanged companies for donations and funds.

Then she layered on a selfmade snack that turned an sudden hit: Kool-Assist pickles.

“It’s bizarre,” she says. “However lots of people purchased them. All people purchased them, like everyone was going loopy over them.”

She defined the method merely: “You get the pickle jar, you pour out the pickle juice and then you definitely simply combine Kool-Assist packets and sugar with it, after which pour it again and let it ferment within the fridge for like a day or two, after which after that you simply put them in a Ziploc bag and also you simply promote them.”

With cleansing work for native small companies and a snack that turned heads, she surpassed the $100 goal.

The place she is now

Greater than two years later, Jordan, 19, runs a enterprise referred to as Blended Threads LLC, which facilities on childhood diabetes, a situation she was recognized with in fourth grade.

She wrote a youngsters’s e-book, Why Did Diabetes Decide Me, chronicling her struggles and the way she overcame them. She is now engaged on a second e-book, this time a chapter e-book. She’s additionally a keynote speaker, turning her lived expertise with juvenile diabetes into training and advocacy. 

“I wished to broadcast and produce consciousness to it, since you hardly ever hear anyone discuss childhood diabetes or juvenile diabetes,” she says, including that individuals in her group had been “shocked” to be taught extra and “glad” she printed the e-book.

For Ramsey, the turning level got here when he realized that the $1 was much less necessary than the relationships he already had. He was a part of the CEO program at his highschool, and this system had taken college students to tour companies locally. 

“We had a journal, and I wrote down every enterprise proprietor, their title and their contact,” he says. When the $1-to-$100 problem arrived, he requested himself: Why can’t I simply attain again out to those guys to see in the event that they may also help me?

He recorded a easy one-minute video for these contacts: “I attempted to maintain it actual quick and easy, explaining, hey, my title is Darrick Ramsey. I talked to you within the CEO program earlier than. I’m simply questioning in case you had any recommendation or if I can stress wash your automotive or element it for you,” he says. 

He had purchased the facility washer earlier than the problem with cash from an hourly job.

The response was overwhelming. “I type of overbooked myself with all of the those that we had met and all of the individuals they know,” he says. “I actually obtained to see the group coming collectively. It was simply nice.”

He targeted first on stress washing and later added automotive detailing as demand grew. “It obtained to the purpose the place I needed to stress wash within the chilly, needed to stress wash within the rain; we had the automotive element within the freezing chilly, like vehicles had been icing over as we had been washing them,” he says, describing one of many busiest weeks of his life. By the top of the problem, he’d far exceeded the goal, incomes $2,065. 

The place he’s now

Ramsey, 20, was born in Decatur, Alabama, and moved between Chicago, Atlanta and Alabama earlier than settling again in Decatur. He struggled “academically, financially” in class, which formed his objective now: “I really feel like certainly one of my life’s functions has been making an attempt to assist the youth with what they do finest, and maintain excelling,” he says. He’s a bodily training trainer and mentor who “goes throughout Decatur metropolis colleges” to attach with children, pulling them apart to speak by way of “habits points and actually simply stuff I used to be battling.”

His enterprise, PeerPressure, was born out of private grief and dangerous influences in center and early highschool. After a detailed pal died the summer time earlier than ninth grade, he says, “I used to be peer-pressured into doing quite a lot of issues that I actually felt like I wouldn’t have performed if I wasn’t round these dangerous mates.” 

In his sophomore 12 months, with the assistance of academics, he turned that story right into a model. PeerPressure now presents stress washing, cell automotive detailing, home washing and automotive mild work, constructed over “about 4 years” and expanded by way of work with “many enterprise house owners inside our group and out of doors of our group,” he says. 

His greatest problem was inside

Ramsey says that he was his personal “greatest enemy” solely as a result of he didn’t actually imagine in group or household on the time. Educational and monetary struggles left him feeling remoted and underneath stress, which “created quite a lot of self-doubt” throughout that week.

Reaching out to individuals modified that notion. “They began displaying me that I wasn’t alone,” he says. “Then I began to see an even bigger imaginative and prescient.”

The lesson has stayed with him. He endured years of “lengthy nights, quite a lot of crying, quite a lot of work.” These years helped him outline his objective: “If I can change any person’s life by way of educating and mentoring, then I really feel like I’ve fulfilled my objective,” he says. 

This text is a part of our ongoing Younger Entrepreneur® sequence highlighting the tales, challenges and triumphs of being a younger enterprise proprietor.

When Darrick Ramsey first held the only greenback invoice he’d been given, nervousness hit him laborious. “I used to be very nervous, like I used to be anxious,” he recollects in an interview with Entrepreneur. 

Alexis Jordan had an identical response: “For me, I used to be very nervous,” she says. 

In February 2024, a documentary movie group tasked these two college students, together with about two dozen of their then-high college classmates, with an uncommon problem: Flip $1 into $100 in per week utilizing all the assets at their disposal. They began the problem afraid of failing, then used their companies, networks and laborious work to show $1 into excess of $100 in per week. A documentary movie launched final month referred to as Be taught to Earn: A Pupil’s Journey From $1 to $100 chronicled their experiences.