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

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

Alexis Jordan had an analogous 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 every week utilizing all the sources at their disposal. They began the problem frightened of failing, then used their companies, networks and laborious work to show $1 into way over $100 in every week. A documentary movie launched final month referred to as Be taught 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 truth of attempting to construct one thing in “this economic system,” as Jordan put it, the place “what are you able to get for $1?” is a real query. The timeframe 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: providers and Kool-Support pickles

As soon as the shock of the $1 problem wore off, Jordan went on to the neighborhood she knew greatest. “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 huge household. So I mentioned, let me go to my primary supporters.” With that single greenback and her present 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 providers for donations and funds.

Then she layered on a selfmade snack that grew to become 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 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 kids’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 wished to broadcast and produce consciousness to it, since you hardly ever hear anyone speak about childhood diabetes or juvenile diabetes,” she says, including that individuals in her neighborhood had been “shocked” to be taught extra and “glad” she revealed 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 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 can assist 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 strain wash your automotive or element it for you,” he says. 

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

The response was overwhelming. “I sort of overbooked myself with all of the those that we had met and all of the individuals 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 automotive 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 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” at school, which formed his function now: “I really feel like one in every of my life’s functions has been attempting to assist the youth with what they do greatest, and hold excelling,” he says. He’s a bodily training instructor and mentor who “goes throughout Decatur metropolis faculties” to attach with children, pulling them apart to speak by means of “conduct points and actually simply stuff I used to be scuffling with.”

His enterprise, PeerPressure, was born out of private grief and unhealthy influences in center and early highschool. After an in depth buddy died the summer season earlier than ninth grade, he says, “I used to be peer-pressured into doing a number of issues that I actually felt like I wouldn’t have performed if I wasn’t round these unhealthy associates.” 

In his sophomore yr, with the assistance of lecturers, he turned that story right into a model. PeerPressure now affords strain washing, cell automotive detailing, home washing and automotive mild work, constructed over “about 4 years” and expanded by means of work with “many enterprise house owners inside our neighborhood and out of doors of our neighborhood,” he says. 

His largest problem was inner

Ramsey says that he was his personal “largest 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 below strain, which “created a number 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, a number of crying, a number of work.” These years helped him outline his function: “If I can change someone’s life by means of educating 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, anxiousness hit him laborious. “I used to be very nervous, like I used to be anxious,” he remembers in an interview with Entrepreneur. 

Alexis Jordan had an analogous 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 every week utilizing all the sources at their disposal. They began the problem frightened of failing, then used their companies, networks and laborious work to show $1 into way over $100 in every week. A documentary movie launched final month referred to as Be taught to Earn: A Scholar’s Journey From $1 to $100 chronicled their experiences.