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 arduous. “I used to be very nervous, like I used to be anxious,” he recollects 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 crew tasked these two college students, together with about two dozen of their then-high faculty classmates, with an uncommon problem: Flip $1 into $100 in per week utilizing the entire sources at their disposal. They began the problem fearful of failing, then used their companies, networks and arduous work to show $1 into excess of $100 in per week. A documentary movie launched final month referred to as Study 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 economic system,” as Jordan put it, the place “what are you able to get for $1?” is a real query. The timeframe added strain: They’d roughly per week, layered on high 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-Help 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 huge household. So I stated, let me go to my primary supporters.” With that single greenback and her present relationships, she provided labor and creativity as a substitute of merchandise she couldn’t afford to purchase.

“Normally 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 sudden hit: Kool-Help 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 definately simply combine Kool-Help 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 kids’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 schooling and advocacy. 

“I wished to broadcast and produce consciousness to it, since you not often hear anyone discuss childhood diabetes or juvenile diabetes,” she says, including that individuals in her neighborhood have been “shocked” to study extra and “glad” she revealed the e book.

For Ramsey, the turning level got here when he realized that the $1 was much less essential 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 in the neighborhood. 

“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 the event 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 people 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 centered 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 automobiles have been icing over as we have been washing them,” he says, describing one of many busiest weeks of his life. By the tip 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 function now: “I really feel like one in all 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 schooling instructor and mentor who “goes throughout Decatur metropolis colleges” to attach with youngsters, pulling them apart to speak by means of “conduct points and actually simply stuff I used to be fighting.”

His enterprise, PeerPressure, was born out of private grief and unhealthy 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 lots of issues that I actually felt like I wouldn’t have completed if I wasn’t round these unhealthy buddies.” 

In his sophomore yr, with the assistance of academics, he turned that story right into a model. PeerPressure now presents 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 homeowners 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 below strain, which “created lots 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 a much bigger imaginative and prescient.”

The lesson has stayed with him. He endured years of “lengthy nights, lots of crying, lots of work.” These years helped him outline his function: “If I can change someone’s life by means of 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 arduous. “I used to be very nervous, like I used to be anxious,” he recollects 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 crew tasked these two college students, together with about two dozen of their then-high faculty classmates, with an uncommon problem: Flip $1 into $100 in per week utilizing the entire sources at their disposal. They began the problem fearful of failing, then used their companies, networks and arduous work to show $1 into excess of $100 in per week. A documentary movie launched final month referred to as Study to Earn: A Pupil’s Journey From $1 to $100 chronicled their experiences.