Photo by Mariano Friginal/Fresno Chamber | Isaak Thammavong (center) receives his Student Entrepreneur of the Year award last month from Fresno Chamber EOC Scott Miller, left, and Board Chair Nick Rocca.

Even before Isaak Thammavong was awarded the Fresno Chamber of Commerce’s Student Entrepreneur of the Year in April and launched his company MarketRaze in his sophomore year of high school, he had a passion for business and making a profit.

The hustle started with juice for Thammavong, 17, now a senior at Sanger West High School.

“When I was a little kid, I would always go to the dollar store and get a bunch of these six-packs of juices, and I would sell them for $1 each and make around $5 profit,” he said.

Born in Tennessee, Thammavong’s early years were marked by financial struggles for his family. After his family lost their jobs, they relocated to Southern California and eventually moved to Fresno when Thammavong was in sixth grade.

“We didn’t have a place of our own, so we stayed with my uncle,” he said.

Despite the frequent moving throughout the first part of his life, Thammavong remained determined to make money and connections.

At 15, Thammavong was already attending Fresno Chamber of Commerce mixers, where he would connect with business owners. While social media plays a crucial role in helping make connections, Thammavong initially viewed it as a distraction and didn’t use it.

That soon changed.

By his sophomore year of high school, with the rise of TikTok, he launched MarketRaze, a social-first marketing agency focused on organic content strategy. But the path to success wasn’t instant.

The focus included tons of market research, but Thammavong said the most important skill he honed was sales.

“If you know how to sell, you know how to do anything,” he said.

He also learned the importance of persistence.

“I didn’t sign my first client until six months in,” he said.

That first client — a pet-sitting company in Temecula — agreed to a $100-a-month social media contract. The results were worth the wait: Thammavong and MarketRaze helped them grow from $300,000 to over $1 million in annual revenue.

That early success taught Thammavong two lessons: his team could generate real growth for businesses and become successful, and they were seriously undercharging. After they raised prices, they began to take off.

MarketRaze now includes a fully remote team of 14 members from across the country, including alumni from Stanford, New York University and Princeton. One member is from Fresno.

Thammavong said leading a distributed workforce at a young age hasn’t been easy — especially given the challenges of the COVID era — but he credits his daily meetings and clear mission with keeping the team motivated.

While many digital marketing firms rely on paid ads and automation, MarketRaze distinguishes itself with an organic-first approach (free, non-paid content) — something Thammavong finds very important for a business today.

With his business ventures, Thammavong has rediscovered the usefulness of social media.

“Social media is where it’s at,” he said. “My generation, we know all about social media… that’s kind of why I felt pushing this business towards social media marketing was the move.”

In addition to MarketRaze, Thammavong also has companies called ClickWave, an email marketing firm, and a user-generated content agency in Los Angeles.

One of the biggest hurdles Thammavong has had to overcome in his young career is something he can’t control — his age.

When he was a high school freshman, he signed up for a sales internship and had to tell them he was a Fresno State student in order to get the position.

It’s also not easy running a business while still in high school. He would have to contend with announcements over the public address system while making cold calls during lunch.

Teachers offered their support in useful ways. David Campbell, a science instructor at Sanger West, would let Thammavong make calls in his quiet classroom at lunch. He overheard conversations with business associates about deadlines and making decisions.

“It is pretty amazing that someone that isn’t 18 yet is in charge of several people, running things and multitasking and still being a student,” Campbell told KSEE 24 for a video about Thammavong’s Valley Business Awards win.

With the stress of leading a business while still being a student, Thammavong started playing golf to give himself time to take his mind off work and school.

While technology has been beneficial for Thammavong, he said that the emergence of scam calls, which have led to people being mistrustful of unknown numbers, has also cost him a few clients.

Going forward, Thammavong aims to scale his marketing and UGC agencies to $3 million this year, grow strong industry connections and hit $100 million annually—ideally while working remotely from the Bahamas.