These High Schoolers Were Tasked With Turning $1 into $100 in a Week. One of Them Made Over $2,000.

When Darrick Ramsey first held the one greenback invoice he’d been given, anxiousness hit him onerous. “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 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 per week utilizing all the sources at their disposal. They began the problem petrified of failing, then used their companies, networks and onerous work to show $1 into excess of $100 in per week. A documentary movie launched final month known 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 mathematics, however with the fact 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 stress: That they had roughly per 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-Assist pickles

As soon as the shock of the $1 problem wore off, Jordan went on to the group 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 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.

“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 do-it-yourself snack that turned an sudden hit: Kool-Assist 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 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 known as Blended Threads LLC, which facilities on childhood diabetes, a situation she was recognized with in fourth grade.

She wrote a youngsters’s e-book, Why Did Diabetes Choose 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 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 group had been “shocked” to study extra and “glad” she printed 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 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 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 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 stress 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 folks they know,” he says. “I actually received to see the group 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 automobiles 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 objective now: “I really feel like considered one of my life’s functions has been attempting to assist the youth with what they do finest, and maintain excelling,” he says. He’s a bodily schooling 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 buddy died the summer time earlier than ninth grade, he says, “I used to be peer-pressured into doing plenty of issues that I actually felt like I wouldn’t have performed if I wasn’t round these dangerous buddies.” 

In his sophomore 12 months, with the assistance of lecturers, he turned that story right into a model. PeerPressure now gives stress washing, cell automobile detailing, home washing and automotive gentle work, constructed over “about 4 years” and expanded by work with “many enterprise house owners inside our group and outdoors of our group,” 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 imagine in group or household on the time. Educational and monetary struggles left him feeling remoted and beneath stress, which “created plenty 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, plenty of crying, plenty of work.” These years helped him outline his objective: “If I can change any individual’s life by instructing and mentoring, then I really feel like I’ve fulfilled my objective,” he says. 

This text is a part of our ongoing Younger Entrepreneur® collection 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 onerous. “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 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 per week utilizing all the sources at their disposal. They began the problem petrified of failing, then used their companies, networks and onerous work to show $1 into excess of $100 in per week. A documentary movie launched final month known as Study to Earn: A Pupil’s Journey From $1 to $100 chronicled their experiences.