As most seniors gear up for next week’s graduation, their former Redwood classmate Julian Aceves recalls the moment in sophomore year when he first knew he was going to opt out of finishing high school.

“I’m sleeping through my class one day as usual,” Aceves said. “My teacher comes by and says, ‘What are you still doing here?’ and at that point I just said, ‘You know, that’s a good point.’”

Because he successfully passed the California High School Exit Exam as a sophomore, Aceves was legally able to leave Redwood. In the middle of his junior year he decided to do just that. He said he is now living on his own under complete financial independence in Beverly Hills and is in the process of starting up an entirely new web-based company he calls LM Leverage.

“It’s a marketing company. I do advertising online for myself as well as clients,” Aceves said. “Then for those clients I don’t just do marketing, I do a lot of advertising. In addition to that I also do a fair amount of web development and programming.” 

Aceves paved the way to financial success by getting involved in online affiliate marketing, a business that essentially acts as the middleman between various companies and Google for advertising.

“Affiliate marketing is really just a cash machine,” Aceves explained. “You put in X amount of money for your cost to click, you get a conversion rate, and you just make sure your earnings-per-click are higher than your costs-per-click.”

Aceves said he has always been interested in web-based enterprises. He first started experimenting with web design and development when he was 13-years old before moving on to various marketing enterprises.

“I kind of had an eye for design so I just went around and learned by trial and error,” said Aceves. “Then I sort of stumbled across pay-per-click advertising by accident.”

Aceves said his curiosity for the business continued to grow, eventually motivating him to attend his first Affiliate Summit conference in Boston when he was 15.  At this conference, Aceves first began networking and making connections in the industry.

“Just pursuing those [opportunities], I was lucky enough that a few of them happened to make large amounts of money relatively quickly,” Aceves said. “From that point I was pretty much hooked.”

During his sophomore and junior years of high school, Aceves would work night and day to establish himself in the affiliate marketing business. Throughout the school day, his peers and teachers would constantly notice him drinking energy drinks, dozing off in class to make up for lost sleep, and even making phone calls from his desk.

“He wasn’t a good student, although he was very smart,” said Chemistry teacher Millie Hackworth. “But knowing he was bright and he was distracted and pursuing other things in life, it was great, more power to him. Not every kid has to get great grades academically.”

Eventually Aceves was making enough money that he didn’t have to worry about his lack of high school or any higher education. He said he is not disappointed with his decision to leave in the slightest.

“To be honest, I’m not really a fan of the high school scene, the college scene either,” Aceves said. “I’ve always believed the system is very rigid, it’s very strict. All of the information that anyone could ever want is out there, you just have to have the desire to pursue it.”

Additionally, the relationships Aceves said he has cultivated over the past year provided him hands-on business opportunities that could have never been offered to him in high school.

“The beauty of my industry is that I get to network with so many people, and also being so involved in the nightlife here in LA, working with promoters, and everything with the clubs and the parties,” he said. “I really am networking with some fantastic people and I honestly feel like I’m getting a much better social experience surrounding myself with a much better crowd then I would be in either high school or college.”

At 18, Aceves said he is one of the youngest people in his industry, and has already risen to the point where he is his own boss and handles his own employees.

“It’s making a lot of calls,” said Aceves. “In addition to that it’s a little bit of programming here and there, a little bit of web development and design, handling employees, and that’s pretty much it.”

Now that he is financially secure and in control of his own future, Aceves says that he has begun to pursue his passions, which include traveling, snowboarding, and creating through development and programming.

Even though Aceves claims that he hypothetically never has to work again because of the financial security he has acquired, he says that he may never stop trying to innovate his industry.

“I enjoy creating things, that’s what I’ve done with programming and developing,” Aceves said. “I always enjoy pushing the limits of what’s possible, that’s kind of been my challenge.”