From Content Consumer to $10M Content Creator with Blake Rocha (mrfourtoeighth)

0:00Hey guys, Eric Su here. So the following is a clip from the Leveling Up Founders Mastermind that happened in Beverly Hills. And you're going to hear from some amazing founders, some amazing marketers and investors. And this was a private event that happened. So again, you'll get a preview of it. If you want to learn more, you can go to levelingup.com slash founders. Once again, levelingup.com slash founders. And without further ado, enjoy the clip. What I am really good at is teaching people how to build brands and build personal brands that actually make money. I think that one of the biggest problems that I see and I talk when I speak with a lot of people that have personal brands is that they don't know how to monetize it correctly.

0:37And so today I'm going to dive deep into a few of the different sales funnels that I've used using TikTok, Instagram, and a couple of different social media platforms that have allowed me to make tens of millions of dollars. Without further ado, let's dive in. Oh yeah, my name is Blake Rocha and I go by Mr. 4-8. All right, so who am I? I'll give you guys a little bit of a background on me. A couple years ago, I was pretty much a nobody. I'll be honest with you, leading up even before March of 2020, I'd always been an entrepreneur at heart. I'm sure that a lot of you guys in here have always had that entrepreneurial spirit and felt like you were meant to build something or do something more.

1:10And I never knew what that was. So I tried everything, everything that I can remember in fifth grade mowing lawns, sixth grade jailbreaking iPhones, seventh grade e-commerce. So I was doing pretty much everything I could to try and make a buck. And I really enjoyed being an entrepreneur. When I got to college, I was really undersized. I went there to play college soccer. And within the first year or so, I realized that I was really sick. like super, super sick. I was about 115 pounds. I was like super undersized and underweight, and nobody could figure out what was wrong with me. I go to a doctor one day at Cedars-Sinai here in Los Angeles with my mom, and I remember this very vividly.

1:46They told me what they thought that I had a liver biopsy done. They're like, man, it's not looking good. And to make a long story short, I was told at 20 years old that I had a life-threatening liver disease, and my life expectancy see was about seven to ten years. And this was probably the biggest impact on my life ever. And I'm telling you guys this, not to have you guys feel bad for me, but it really changes the trajectory of where I'm at today. When that kind of happened, I went down a dark path, right? Started drinking, smoking, doing a lot of drugs and stuff because I was just like, man, I don't even, when I was a 20-year-old kid, when you think that your last day on earth is going to be in the next 10 years, you have two options, right?

2:20And one is to leave a good impression on this world and go build something and the other is to go down the path of let's take the shortcut and end it early and so I was going down that path until I pretty much ended up hospitalized and right around the same time somebody a good friend of mine was like hey man like I see something in you I want you to build something you have this good energy about you turn this motherfucker around go do something that is that is worthwhile and that's what I did and so I decided I was like I'm gonna finish college I was going to school for international business.

2:51I ended up getting my master's degree, working every job I was selling. Up until March of 2020, I was selling used cars. I worked at Wood Ranch Barbecue and Grill, if anybody's ever been there. It's a good barbecue joint. Howdy, howdy. But yeah, so that's what I was doing. And then COVID happens. And I just recognized there was something that hit me. I was like, man, this is an opportunity where the whole world is standing still. Everybody is taking a break. And this is my time to go fucking build something and go as hard as I can. So up until that point, I was in$55 ,000 of debt, got laid off from that job.

3:22I'd never created content before. I think I only have a Snapchat and like a Twitter that I would just go creep around on. And today I'm in a position where, yeah, I've got 1.7 million followers on social media. I founded multiple seven and eight figure companies in multiple spaces too, in the real estate space, in the stock market space, in the crypto space, in the online creator space. I own a$20 million self-funded real estate portfolio on Airbnbs and I'm a seven figure Airbnb host. So all this shit has happened in the last three years. It's gone very quick. And so I just want to break down a few of the strategic things that I've done that should help you guys understand how I've been able to do this and how you can do it as well.

3:57Yeah, last year I was able to bring in more money. I probably shouldn't put this side in here. I kind of look like a dickhead. But I was able to bring in more money than most of the CEOs and the biggest companies in the world. And many times I was doing this per month. And it was all just cash take home. So here's the facts that you need to know. You do not need millions of followers to make millions of dollars online. I know that a lot of you guys here are coming from different backgrounds, whether it be SaaS or whether it be e-com or agencies. But for those of you guys that are interested in building a personal brand, and maybe even this applies to your regular brands as well, you don't need millions of followers.

4:27I'm telling you, between myself and I have a pretty silent business partner that we basically collaborate every single day for the past couple of years, we've been able to do a little north of about$35 million in sales directly and with most of the time having under 100 ,000 followers on Instagram. You just need the audience to do three things. They need to know you, they need to like you, and they need to trust you. And so that process along the way is what I want to talk about today. The other fact is that if you wait to post until you have something that is worth posting or that you think is worth posting, then you have missed the boat on probably the biggest opportunity to make money in this space.

5:01And the reason why I say that is my one regret is that I wish I documented more of the early process, the very beginning, talking about the lessons, talking about the losses, the first early wins, how small they were, because the amazing thing about having a personal brand is that people like following a journey. They like following a story. And so when they don't have a story to follow and they just see, hey, I'm Blake Roach and now I own$20 million of real estate, how am I able to relate with somebody that is in the position that I was in just a couple of years ago? I can't. It's very difficult.

5:30So what you need to do is be documenting the whole process. I encourage you to don't be embarrassed by it, because at the end of the day, when you get down the line and you want to potentially enter into the creator economy and sell products or anything like that, this is where the really big bucks are made. This is where the multiple eight figures can come from. So the problem that I see is that most creators do not know how to monetize themselves. They are waiting for brand deals. They get all these followers. They are hoping that sponsors come around. They're going to partner with other creators.

5:58They're waiting for affiliates. Somebody send me free stuff and they're excited about it. They're happy about it. They have a$15 ,000 or $20 ,000 a month and they're like, holy shit, I didn't know you could make so much money online. I'm here to tell you that there is people making friends of mine that will do 70, 80, 90 million dollars in a year just from having digital products and just from having a personal brand. So there is an endless amount of money out there. And the other thing that I've learned along this process is that there's a lot of niches out there that people didn't believe could get so big and make so much money that are really generating a shitload of profits.

6:32So to me, this is too boring and it's quite frankly a very stupid strategy. So the solution is you need to create a business around your content. A lot of you guys, it seems like there's a lot of people that have physical products. I'm in the digital space and I absolutely believe in the digital space because if you go digital, you can build something once and sell it forever. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to stick with it and sell it literally forever, but you've built something once and you can market it and create content around it drive traffic to it and ultimately have these funnels that are making you money without you having to work all the time.

7:00Because the one thing that I did learn from that being sick, being in the hospital and kind of having to deal with the idea of mortality is that like I want to build a lifestyle around a business around my lifestyle and not a lifestyle around my business. You know what I mean? So I know what I want to do. I want to be able to spend time with my friends and family. I want to be able to travel. I want to be able to go surfing and snowboarding and all these activities that I like. And that's what makes me happy. So I need to build something around that. And this is where the solution is for you guys to build digital products and to create these types of funnels.

7:32If you understand how to funnel the right way, and most people don't know how to do this, you can make a shitload of money. So the biggest thing, essentially, what I'll get into in a second is give value. And you have to do this daily. And if you can do that, if you give people enough value, then you have the opportunity. You've now been given access by the people that are consuming your content to sell multiple times a week. The other point that I want to make is the biggest transition that I ever made in my life that made a difference on my pocket size was transitioning full-time from a content consumer to a content creator.

8:02I'm going to say that again. The biggest change that I ever made in my life that's made the most impact on my wallet has been transitioning from a content consumer to content creator. When I consume content now, it is only for the purpose of inspiring me or giving me ideas to create more content. because if you look around, in fact, there's probably people in the room right now checking Instagram and Twitter. I see you, Eric. No, I'm just joking. Everybody's addicted to consuming, so I want to inspire myself to keep creating. Maybe I only have a short window of time, and so that's what I want to do.