Aaron Chavez's resume reads like that of an accomplished businessman: founder of a national fundraising website, owner of a successful consulting business and author of a blog with 2.8 million followers.
What makes Chavez stand out is this: He is a 19-year-old from Dinuba, Calif.
After earning $20,000 in one month through his social media consulting business, Chavez decided to drop out of his freshman year at Reedley College to focus on his entrepreneurship.
Since then he has turned his attention to his latest project, Sevenly.org, a for-profit company that raises money on behalf of nonprofit organizations. The site has taken off like wildfire since Chavez and his 26-year-old partner from Southern California launched it last month.
It's selling 50 to 60 T-shirts a day, each week featuring a different shirt and benefiting a different charity. Seven dollars from each $24 shirt sale benefits a new charity each week.
It's not unusual for someone in their late teens or early 20s to start a business; Fresno State's Lyles Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is full of young business owners.
But to be so successful with several business at such a young age is uncommon, said Eric Nasalroad, who was Chavez's instructor at Reedley College and who also teaches at the Lyles Center.
"He's the kind of guy who starts big businesses that will grow," Nasalroad said of Chavez. "That's very rare."
Chavez's social media know-how plays a big role in his success. Sevenly was set up to go viral, using Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools to spread the word.
"That's what's making it blow up big time," he said.
Faith-based Start
Chavez was raised by devout Christian parents, spending his teen years in a home surrounded by orchards on the outskirts of Dinuba. His own faith inspired him to start the Facebook-based blog "I'm Proud to be a Christian" while a 17-year-old senior at Dinuba High School.
Interest in the page exploded. He now has 2.8 million Facebook followers who respond to the Scripture quotes he posts and add their own inspiring messages.
While still in high school, Chavez researched everything he could find about social media and launched his consulting company. He got his first customers by cold-calling online jewelry companies and other types of businesses. He taught them how to set up Facebook pages and how to use them to market themselves.
The business took off.
Most of it was done by phone, so his customers didn't know his age.
Chavez dealt with the occasional bumps of running a business while still living at his parents' house with three siblings, ages 8, 5 and 6 months.
He often would retreat to the pantry for a quiet place to make a consulting call -- a challenge in the bustling household, said his mother, Denise Hernandez.
"I'd be like, 'Aaron, clean your room,' and he's on a business call," she said.
After earning $20,000 in one month, he decided to drop out of Reedley College during his first semester. He wanted to squeeze as much business as he could out of Facebook and Twitter while they still were hot.
He told his parents and Nasalroad, his teacher, that he was dropping out. Initially, they were upset. But when Chavez shared just how well his businesses were going, they supported his decision.
It "absolutely is the only time" he would agree with a student's decision to drop out, Nasalroad said. His mother still hopes Chavez will return to college.
Since then, Chavez has teamed with Dale Partridge, 26, of Corona, who started an in-home fitness-training business when he was 17.
Partridge went on to start other businesses, including Identity Conference, which hosts workshops and conferences for Christian entrepreneurs. Partridge met Chavez through the conference.
Rhymes With Heavenly
The pair launched Sevenly, a play on the word heavenly, on June 13.
It sold 870 shirts in its first week, raising $6,135 for International Justice Mission, an organization that fights child prostitution and other human rights abuses.
As of late last week, Sevenly had raised more than $10,700 for nonprofits and had more than 50,000 unique visitors.
The site combines the social media smarts of Groupon with a business model similar to international retailer Tom's shoes, which donates a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair sold. "This way, they can get a cool T-shirt and they're donating money as well," Chavez said.
Social media has paved the way for Sevenly to take off. It was promoted on the "I'm Proud to be a Christian" page where millions saw it.
Sevenly also prominently displays a "like" button for Facebook, another button that will send a message to Twitter followers and buttons linked to other social media gadgets.
And plans are in the works for a woman who has a daily YouTube video blog to promote Sevenly to her 100,000 followers.
"Before, people might spread the word through email or word of mouth," Chavez said, "but now people have their Facebooks, their Twitters and YouTube channels, and everybody's talking about it."
The nonprofit groups push Sevenly out to their existing Facebook fans and email lists.
Irvine-based Free Wheelchair Mission earned more than $1,800 when it was featured in Sevenly's second week. That money paid for more than 30 wheelchairs for children in developing countries, said the organization's marketing associate, Michael Strawsburg.
The amount raised may be small in comparison to Free Wheelchair Mission's multimillion-dollar budget, but Strawsburg said the awareness it raised is invaluable.
Their page got nearly 200 new fans that week, compared to the typical five or 10 fans in a normal week, he said. "We have a real strong base here in California ... but we still haven't got the word out to everybody," Strawsburg said.
Chavez and Partridge hope word of the site will spread. They're reinvesting their $2-per-shirt profit into Sevenly. The rest goes to pay an artist and toward the production process.
Sevenly opened a warehouse in Riverside last week and hired three employees.
Chavez now splits his time between his parents' home, an apartment in Riverside near Partridge and a condominium in Dinuba that gives him a quiet place to work.
He hopes to someday sell 1 million shirts, raising $7 million for charity.
"Selling a million shirts," Chavez said, "that would make my life."
The reporter can be reached at bclough@fresno bee.com or (559) 441-6431.
