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 group 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 every week utilizing all the 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 every 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 mathematics, however with the truth of making an attempt to build something 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: They’d roughly every 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: companies and Kool-Help 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 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 mentioned, let me go to my primary supporters.” With that single greenback and her current 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 companies for donations and funds.

Then she layered on a home made snack that turned an surprising hit: Kool-Aid 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-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 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 kids’s e book, Why Did Diabetes Pick 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 needed to broadcast and convey consciousness to it, since you hardly ever hear anyone discuss 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 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 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 might help me?

He recorded a easy one-minute video for these contacts: “I attempted to maintain it actual brief and easy, explaining, hey, my title is Darrick Ramsey. I talked to you within the CEO program earlier than. I’m simply questioning when you had any recommendation or if I can pressure 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 sort 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 centered first on stress washing and later added automobile detailing as demand grew. “It received to the purpose the place I needed to stress wash within the chilly, needed to stress wash within the rain; we had the automobile 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 goal 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 maintain excelling,” he says. He’s a physical education teacher and mentor who “goes throughout Decatur metropolis colleges” to attach with children, pulling them apart to speak by way of “conduct points and actually simply stuff I used to be fighting.”

His enterprise, PeerPressure, was born out of non-public grief and dangerous influences in center and early highschool. After an in depth buddy died the summer time 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 achieved if I wasn’t round these dangerous pals.” 

In his sophomore 12 months, with the assistance of lecturers, he turned that story right into a model. PeerPressure now gives stress washing, cellular automobile detailing, home washing and automotive gentle work, constructed over “about 4 years” and expanded by way 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 underneath stress, which “created a number of self-doubt” throughout that week.

Reaching out to individuals modified that notion. “They began exhibiting 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 goal: “If I can change someone’s life by way of instructing and mentoring, then I really feel like I’ve fulfilled my goal,” he says. 

This text is a part of our ongoing Young Entrepreneur® collection 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 group 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 every week utilizing all the 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 every week. A documentary movie launched final month known as Learn to Earn: A Student’s Journey From $1 to $100 chronicled their experiences.