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

When Darrick Ramsey first held the single dollar bill he’d been given, anxiety 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 a similar reaction: “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 college classmates, with an uncommon problem: Flip $1 into $100 in per week utilizing the entire assets at their disposal. They began the problem afraid 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 known as Learn to Earn: A Student’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 build something in “this economic system,” as Jordan put it, the place “what are you able to get for $1?” is a real query. The time-frame added strain: They’d 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: providers and Kool-Assist pickles

As soon as the shock of the $1 problem wore off, Jordan went on to the community she knew finest. “My technique was, the place do individuals give essentially 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 stated, let me go to my primary supporters.” With that single greenback and her current relationships, she supplied 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 do-it-yourself snack that grew to become an sudden hit: Kool-Aid pickles.

“It’s bizarre,” she says. “However lots of people purchased them. Everyone 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 you then 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 cleaning 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 known as Blended Threads LLC, which facilities on childhood diabetes, a situation she was identified with in fourth grade.

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

“I needed to broadcast and produce 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 ebook.

For Ramsey, the turning level got here when he realized that the $1 was much less vital 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 pressure 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 folks that we had met and all of the individuals they know,” he says. “I actually received 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 received 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” at school, which formed his objective now: “I really feel like certainly one of my life’s functions has been attempting to assist the youth with what they do finest, and preserve excelling,” he says. He’s a physical education teacher and mentor who “goes throughout Decatur metropolis colleges” to attach with youngsters, pulling them apart to speak by means 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 buddy died the summer time earlier than ninth grade, he says, “I used to be peer-pressured into doing loads of issues that I actually felt like I wouldn’t have executed 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 strain washing, cellular automotive detailing, home washing and automotive gentle work, constructed over “about 4 years” and expanded by means of work with “many business 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. Academic and monetary struggles left him feeling remoted and beneath strain, which “created loads 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 a much bigger imaginative and prescient.”

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

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

When Darrick Ramsey first held the single dollar bill he’d been given, anxiety 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 a similar reaction: “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 college classmates, with an uncommon problem: Flip $1 into $100 in per week utilizing the entire assets at their disposal. They began the problem afraid 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 known as Learn to Earn: A Student’s Journey From $1 to $100 chronicled their experiences.