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

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

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

In February 2024, a documentary movie workforce 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 every week utilizing all the sources at their disposal. They began the problem afraid of failing, then used their companies, networks and exhausting work to show $1 into way over $100 in every week. A documentary movie launched final month referred to as Study to Earn: A Scholar’s Journey From $1 to $100 chronicled their experiences.

Each Ramsey and Jordan initially grappled not simply with the maths, however with the fact 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 time-frame added strain: That they had roughly every week, layered on prime of college, 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-Support pickles

As soon as the shock of the $1 problem wore off, Jordan went on to the neighborhood she knew finest. “My technique was, the place do folks give probably the most cash?” she says. “So for me, I used to be raised in a church; my church is sort of a large household. So I stated, let me go to my primary supporters.” With that single greenback and her current relationships, she provided 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 home made snack that turned an surprising hit: Kool-Support pickles.

“It’s bizarre,” she says. “However lots of people purchased them. Everyone purchased them, like all people 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-Support 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 just 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 guide, Why Did Diabetes Decide Me, chronicling her struggles and the way she overcame them. She is now engaged on a second guide, this time a chapter guide. She’s additionally a keynote speaker, turning her lived expertise with juvenile diabetes into training and advocacy. 

“I needed to broadcast and convey consciousness to it, since you hardly ever hear anyone speak about childhood diabetes or juvenile diabetes,” she says, including that folks in her neighborhood have been “shocked” to study extra and “glad” she printed the guide.

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 identify 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 will help me?

He recorded a easy one-minute video for these contacts: “I attempted to maintain it actual brief and easy, explaining, hey, my identify is Darrick Ramsey. I talked to you within the CEO program earlier than. I’m simply questioning if you happen to had any recommendation or if I can strain wash your automobile 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 form of overbooked myself with all of the those who we had met and all of the folks they know,” he says. “I actually acquired to see the neighborhood coming collectively. It was simply nice.”

He targeted first on strain washing and later added automobile detailing as demand grew. “It acquired to the purpose the place I needed to strain wash within the chilly, needed to strain wash within the rain; we had the automobile element within the freezing chilly, like automobiles have been icing over as we have 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” at school, which formed his function now: “I really feel like one in every of my life’s functions has been making an attempt to assist the youth with what they do finest, and hold 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 “conduct 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 good friend died the summer time earlier than ninth grade, he says, “I used to be peer-pressured into doing a variety of issues that I actually felt like I wouldn’t have accomplished if I wasn’t round these dangerous buddies.” 

In his sophomore yr, with the assistance of lecturers, he turned that story right into a model. PeerPressure now affords strain washing, cellular automobile detailing, home washing and automotive gentle work, constructed over “about 4 years” and expanded by work with “many enterprise house owners inside our neighborhood and outdoors of our neighborhood,” 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 consider in neighborhood or household on the time. Tutorial and monetary struggles left him feeling remoted and beneath strain, which “created a variety of self-doubt” throughout that week.

Reaching out to folks 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, a variety of crying, a variety of work.” These years helped him outline his function: “If I can change anyone’s life by instructing and mentoring, then I really feel like I’ve fulfilled my function,” 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 one greenback invoice he’d been given, nervousness hit him exhausting. “I used to be very nervous, like I used to be anxious,” he remembers in an interview with Entrepreneur. 

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

In February 2024, a documentary movie workforce 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 every week utilizing all the sources at their disposal. They began the problem afraid of failing, then used their companies, networks and exhausting work to show $1 into way over $100 in every week. A documentary movie launched final month referred to as Study to Earn: A Scholar’s Journey From $1 to $100 chronicled their experiences.