Content Marketing, Real Estate, and Digital Courses: How Blake Rocha Built Wealth in His Early 20s

0:0010 years ago, I made the decision to build my personal brand that was elevated, yet approachable, and reflected who I was, not just what I did. I created my website with ShowIt because it's true drag and drop freedom so you can easily build and update your site. Plus, their real human support team, game changer. Wanna try it for yourself? Head to jasminestar.com forward slash show it for a 14 day free trial and first month free when you subscribe. Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, a place where we talk about business, we talk about mindset, and today we're gonna be talking about the expansion of wealth, diversifying what you do with your money and doing it in very interesting ways.

0:37I have to tell you that the guests I bring on the podcast, I know them in a personal capacity. I was sitting in Beverly Hills and it was a mastermind. And I had given a presentation and in the back of the room, I casually meet this kind of young guy. And I think, oh, like maybe he's like, what does this guy do? I talked to him for like 30 seconds before he hits the stage. And I'm like, whoa, I put a chair in the back of the room and I'm like, I need to listen to this guy. talk. He talks about building wealth in alternate ways. I thought it was very interesting, but not only are we talking about that, we're going to be talking about the nature of his business and how he markets his business.

1:15So we get to learn about his business and then as like a little bonus cherry on top, we're going to talk about what you can do with the money that you make from that business. Let's go. Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, Blake Rocha. Thank you. I'm so happy you're here. That was a really good introduction. Let it be known too, before we go too deep. When you spoke on stage, and I don't have a ton of speaking on stage experience. I've spoken a few conferences, but I put together my slideshow like the night before. And when I saw you speak, I was like, you're kidding me. I'm like, please, God, I hope there's a lunch break in between.

1:45So they forget what they just saw. Because you're so amazing on stage. And thank you for having me on the podcast. I'm excited to share whatever I can. Yes, yes. Okay. So the The podcast is the business of your business. And then we get to talk about how you market that business. But normally, I save the origin story for the middle of it. Because most podcasts are like, so tell me your origin story. And I just think that that's pretty yawn. I'm going to say, though, that you became a millionaire in your early 20s. And then you bought a hotel when you were very old at 26 years old. I have been following your journey on social media since we met.

2:17It's about a year ago. We've known each other about a year. I've been watching your content. I'm carefully, you know, assessing what it is you do. I find it fascinating. So before we get into the origin story, I really want to go back to something that really resonated with me. And it was this idea of watching your mom work. If we can start there, because I think it kind of lays a framework for like the deeply rooted passion that you have for helping people in the different situations. Sure. Yeah. You know, I don't, I come from a city called Visalia, California. It's in the middle of nowhere. Farm town doesn't smell very good.

2:47My dad worked at the prison for 25 years at Corcoran State Prison. It's high level maximum security. And my mom worked at Costco for 35 years. The day that she graduated when she was 18 or 17 from high school, she got a job at Costco and she stayed at Costco until I was able to retire her a year and a half ago, two years ago. It's funny. Yesterday, my dad, my brother, and I were all crying about this because Mother's Day is coming up. And so we just filmed the... I told my mom that I needed my dad to come fix the hot tub and my brother to help and we filmed the mother's day video for her on the beach just telling her you know how much we appreciate her and how much we love her because she's the emphasis and the driving force behind all of this my dad as well but you know there's things that you don't appreciate when you're young because you don't know any different you know you don't notice what's happening i just knew that my mom took me to school dropped me off lunch if i needed it picked me up from school and never missed a game what i look back on is my mom went to bed at 11 she woke up at three o 'clock to go to work at 3 30 every single day you know five days a week for 25 35 years whatever it was you know at least since I was born that takes sacrifice you know there's times where she you know I look back and my mom bought me things when there was things that she wanted to buy for herself and we didn't have money you know I feel like as a son that absolutely just loves their parents and can you know appreciate what they've done giving back to them is the joy that I get from it.

4:18And just like in my heart, I feel so good knowing that like, I can now take care of them. It's like, you know, you don't have to worry about clocking in anymore. And you know, the funny thing is, I had them retire for about a week. And then I saw how bored they were. And I'm like, you know, let's get you working in the business. And now it's turned into a, get back to work, you know, I'm glad your Netflix series is over. But now we have a hotel to run. We have 18 Airbnbs. We're rapidly expanding. It's a$30 million portfolio. And the amount of, Jesus, to try and rehire her, I told her, I'm like, mom, you better never leave because you get the keys to everything.

4:54You know what I mean? That's right. Yeah. So that's right. All of that comes from maturing, looking back, realizing how amazing we had it, even though we didn't have a ton of money, we had a ton of love. And it only motivates me more and more and more to go play this game of business. win and give back to the people that took care of me and put me on a pedestal to be successful. I'm so glad we started here because on the show, we always talk about like, what are we doing it for? And when we go back, what every, I'll just be real, what listeners aspire to do and be is a version of you. But what I need people to hear is that we might be the versions of your mom, right?

5:38And it's like, your mom would wake up at three o 'clock in the morning and she has to be like this is what I got to do and she doesn't see the future she doesn't know that her son's gonna buy a hotel or have a 30 million dollar portfolio before he's 30 like they don't know that we don't know that and so I want to say thank you for starting there because wherever we are in the journey there's like a mad appreciation for that and maybe one day our babies are the ones who say like let me hire you come yeah come build the empire with me so thank you thank you dude thank you for starting there okay so now that we have that and everyone's like dang I need to know who this kid is.

6:09Not kid. You're not a kid. I always say young man, this dumb, pretty young fellow. Talk to me about your business. What's the business? When I'm in the elevator with you, we're going down four floors. What do you say? How do you describe your business? Yeah. So I think it's two prong. One of them is the real estate side of the business. And it started with a business model called rental arbitrage. Actually, let me back up a little bit before that. So I had started some pretty successful online businesses during COVID. They were two of the largest online investing communities in the world. Hundreds of thousands of members and people just you know sharing back and forth you know their thoughts on investments trading real estate crypto whatever it was i just gave them a platform and and made quite a bit of money doing that and then i began investing in real estate i was still living at my mom's house and in a room much smaller much much smaller than this and i had i owned 20 properties i just started i was like i had this opportunity where you know before kovid got laid off had to move back in with my parents was living in a two bedroom with six people.

7:07And my only option was to move back home and thank God, you know, another blessing. They were like, come back home. It's so funny. All these people, you know, online want to grief you and give you a hard time about, you know, leaving your hometown as a superpower. Okay. It is, but also going back home and being able to save some money and not throwing it all away because I was making millions of dollars from zero to millions of dollars very, very quickly. Okay. So I want to pause here because we have a tendency brene brown calls it gold-plated grit we look back at something that was really hard and we're like okay well we did this one thing and then we move on i'm like whoa whoa whoa i want to know so you get laid off you move back home you're gonna reclaim the story and say moving back home is a superpower you start building a community you get liquid cash and instead of doing what a lot of people might do spend that liquid cash and be like i'm living the high life Miami, which you now say now, but let's, let's, let's, let's pause there.

8:00I don't want to get to the end of the story quite yet. So you're there and you decide to do something different, which is I'm going to take this cash and I'm going to do, I'm going to invest into assets that produce passive income. Amen. Because at the end of the day, creators, I know if you're watching this or listening to this, understand this, you have a, you have a lifespan of about two years on average, maybe even less. I like to compare it to being a rapper with a one hit wonder or a number one draft pick that has two ACL surgeries. You don't know when nobody's going to engage with your content anymore.

8:31And so to add into the story a little bit, you know, the way that I was able to grow these communities is I began posting on TikTok. One video never showed my face and I woke up to 800 ,000 views. And that's what's, you know, infinitely scaled this business at a time where trading and investing was kind of just getting popular a little bit, but I was just a little bit before that. So my best skill set is not real estate. My best skill set is not trading. My best skill set is I think that I'm one of the best organic marketers in the world. Yeah. And I wholeheartedly believe it. I know how to tell a story.

9:05I know how to sell. I know how to do all of that. And I just continue to hone in on my craft. But for two and a half years, I didn't show tell anybody who I was online. I was this online moniker, Mr. 428. I was teaching people about investing. I was teaching people about a little bit of real estate. And I didn't want anybody to know that at the time I was this 23, 24 year old kid that they in their mind have some picture of Tony Soprano, you know? So I was afraid to kind of like let people know who I was, but there came a pivot point where I was just no longer. I want to pause here for a second because somebody's listening and like i don't want to like over glaze the fact that you built a strong online following not using your physical appearance just my voice and so for anybody who has excuses what you use as an excuse people like blake are using it as a reason so i just want to pause there and like have like the sanctity of that okay it's it's great and there's you know there's pros and cons to those things you see all the anonymous accounts on twitter and at some point if you do get into like the coaching and and that you know that side of the industry and business the anonymity stuff has to go away because they have to know who they're talking to and buying from absolutely but at the time the anonymous person who's really good at investing and trading was like you know we're putting the bat signal out and they're like who is he yeah you know so it was added to the lore okay so i started with section eight real estate met a good friend of mine who we still work together on a lot of projects and he was a section eight real estate investor.

10:36Low income housing, government subsidized, and I didn't know anything about real estate, but I needed to get in because I didn't see another way out in terms of acquiring assets. I'm just learning about taxes. And the learning curve that I went through from 23 to like 25 was unbelievable. It was straight up. Because the first two questions you start asking when you make quite a bit of money is, do I really have to pay 55 % of my money to the US government? Ooh, yes, son. Welcome to that reality. And because before it was like, my mom's doing TurboTax. Right, right, right. I'm like,$40, I got a kickback.

11:16Yes, yes, yes. Go buy some beers. And so like, now it was, you know, how much money do I owe to the government? And how much income do I have coming in if this business goes away? If my Instagram gets banned, if my social media gets shut down. And so when I got into the real estate side of things, I just went feet first. I used a mentor and I still lean on mentors consistently. Amen. But what's interesting is I don't pay for mentors, which is interesting. I know a lot of people, especially people that are in the education industry, and I'm going to put you on blast. They're always like, you know, I paid$180 ,000 for my mentor last year because they're trying to get you to pay for something that they're selling most of the time.

11:58And there's nothing wrong with paying for mentors. I just like the idea of being scrappy. And so my version of being scrappy is you can create a circle of advisors around you when you have a unique skill set that you can offer to them and exchange value and build a real relationship. So then all of a sudden, you don't have this board of people that you guys all meet at the same time. But I know that if I wanted to buy a business, I could call Cody. If I knew that if I wanted to build a tiny short-term rental property, which I had never done, a little yurt or something, I'd call my buddy Rob. and so you just start having these people that you kind of acquire like but then equal proportions they know that if they wanted to reach out for a skill set you have absolutely got it so you need to have that skill set you need to identify what it is pretty early and for me early on it was the content creation because there was this this gap between people in their like mid-30s and above that wanted to be a part and wanted to tell their story but they just couldn't get the tiktok thing yeah they just couldn't get the they just couldn't get it got it and I can tell the story pretty easy and so I just knew that that was my leverage point got it and then so from long story short went from section eight real estate didn't like my returns stumbled into Airbnb learned that you could rent a property and sublease it on Airbnb which I didn't need to do but I wanted to do because none of my other family members and friends that were asking me for help they couldn't buy properties so this was like okay i'm going to learn this skill and then i'm going to get a bunch of these properties to prove that it works and as i'm doing that i'm going to buy some airbnbs as well and what it turned into was okay wait i'm gonna pause i'm gonna repeat back what i think i just heard you start leasing properties to list on airbnb sure yeah so so you would find a property that's on Zillow for rent, maybe in this neighborhood.

13:49Okay. You'd approach the landlord and you say, hey, there's a professional pitch involved. There's a lot of scripts that we follow now with emails and VAs and things like that. But essentially, you're trying to get their written and legal agreement to allow you to sublease their property as a short-term or a mid-term rental. So it's no different than if you've ever rented a property before. You just need their permission to sublease the property. So if the rent is$3 ,000 a month and you can charge$450 a night and rent it out for 21 days, that's like$9 ,000. You can arbitrage that difference. The profit margin between the 9 ,000, your expenses and your lease is money you can take home.

14:27So we have students and - This is just like, it's just blowing my mind. It's music. This is why when I started following your content and learning that that was your business model and how you were structuring it, I'm like, I have to talk to him about the business of the business. And to me, this is fascinating. And I want to pause here and just like highlight that you said there were people in your family who wanted to do this. And you said, I think I can do this. I'm going to prove that it works. And in the process of you proving that it works, you started creating content around that. Right.

14:56Because, I mean, the truth is I didn't need to have rental arbitrage properties. At some level, all I needed to do was acquire real estate, you know, deduct it from my taxes using a cost segregation study and basically kill four birds with one stone. Yes. no tax like eliminate my taxes get a cash flowing asset and build this airbnb business and i was still teaching investing at the time then i was just kind of falling out of love as you do every two years as a like 20 something yeah 20 guys like live it i'm like in stocks i'm like so 2022 so i just started you know i had a really strong personal brand and that's one of the big differences that I see with people that can kind of move laterally in this space is I focused on building a personal brand and not just like a brand around my business so that people can follow whatever I'm interested in.

15:51So there was a time where I was interested in buying a laundromat, knew nothing about it, was just doing due diligence and sharing my journey. And I had about, you know, a thousand people asking, hey, like, how do I buy a laundromat? And I'm like, I still don't know. But I did know this Airbnb stuff before I began teaching it and already had a, you know, multi-million dollar portfolio. I just shared the journey late as opposed to early. And I was like, hey guys, you know, I know that I'm always talking about investing and this is a big part of my investing life that I haven't shared. I'm making, you know, a couple thousand dollars every day, like, or every other day on Airbnb and on VRBO.

16:28And you don't need to own the properties. I own a few, but you don't need to. nuclear. I'm talking like within, I immediately knew with, you know, thousands and thousands of people reaching out that there is a demand for people that wanted to know this. And there wasn't a lot of people talking about it at the time. There was like two or three people. So then I began the transition of education and really going all in on short-term rentals, the business side of it and the education side. Okay. So at that, at this point in time, when we're talking about the business of your business you have two arms you have the airbnb rentals that property portfolio and you have the education of it can you describe the education process of like how did it get started what did it look like and then what does it look like now the education the building the yeah because you're like you're like okay so this is in the business world it's like product market fit you're getting thousands of people saying i want to know more about that it is like an entrepreneur's dream right you are just like oh this is a proven business yeah now i just need to make a business around the questions yeah so then what what do you do like you're like how do i get started what am i going to start here the good news is i had created like three shitty courses before this in like the investing space so i knew dude i just love this i want to pause here because friends like he just said he created three courses that didn't work like we're talking like sell sold like a cup like eight thousand dollars worth with like over a million followers and so like the numbers just don't add up.

17:54That's the antithesis of product market fit. So he's coming into this and like most people will be like, oh, I got burned. This is not about me. I'm not a good course creator, but that's not the story you told yourself. I just am trying to clock the way that your brain is thinking because now you're like, okay, I had experience creating a course and now you have all these like thousands of people. And so your first study is to create a course. Yeah. Well, I knew, I knew early on from starting the subscription community that online education is the highest profit margin business by a quarter mile.

18:22It's something that I'm wildly passionate about because I went to school and got my MBA and I felt like I left and I knew more. I knew as much when I got there as when I left because I had already started 20, 30 businesses by the time I was done with my MBA. Like a million failed businesses from fourth grade all the way through was a part of a bunch of pyramid schemes. Like I'd done the gambit. I was just a hustler. I knew that the education space was something that I wanted to really get into, but I didn't want to be a false prophet. And so that's why I really think that the Airbnb thing clicked with other people was it was noble.

18:56It was, here's me. I've now like come out of the Instagram closet and said, hey, I'm Blake Rocha. I'm not Mr. Four to Eight, even though when people see me around now, they all still say, Mr. Four, Mr. Like nobody says Blake. But I let people know who I was. I was very transparent with my portfolio. I said, I own these properties. You know, these are properties that I rent. Here's how I did it. Here's how you can do it Are you interested in learning and before I knew it I just began building up this wait list like that was the best way I was like What's the engagement thousands of people? And and i'm knowingly putting putting in this wait list at this time I knew I didn't want to do low ticket.

19:32I said hey, it's going to be a couple thousand dollars My information that i'm sharing is you know It's it's taken me years now to figure this stuff out and i'm going to you know value my time at this at this dollar amount because I include coaching and things like that. Long story short, build up this wait list pretty big, have a mediocre launch. And I ran a one-man show until I brought in one guy that helped with sales just a little bit. But till this day, it's still a one-man show. I do all the content. I write all the copy. I do run all the webinars myself. I create the sales pages. I've done it all by myself, which has resulted in tens of millions of net profit.

20:13you know. So I want to clock here again for people who are saying, well, I'm going to need a team or I'm going to need to do this. It's like you already were running businesses. So your time is limited. And yet you make the decision to say, I'm going to do this and figure this out on my own. So for those people who are watching and listening, it is possible. And here is proof. And so then you start doing this. Now, I want to be very clear. You came from the subscription world. You had experience with that. You had created courses, so it wasn't new for you. When you built up this wait list and you were running the webinars, were you running it to a subscription or were you running it to a course?

20:50It was all to a course. I basically no longer promoted. I let my community know, hey guys, because the community had a lot of coaches and people in it. So it was self-sustaining. I just let them know, hey guys, I'm taking a step away and I'm going to really pursue this thing I'm passionate about, which is the Airbnb thing. so this was just I didn't have webinars until about a year and a half in this was strictly to I think at the time it was vsls okay and then I handled the sales calls on all the on the launch by myself what was the cost of the of the offer like the cost of the time was forty five hundred or five thousand dollars okay somewhere around there it's been like three years I think it's coming up on three years now so yeah and and over time I increased the price and because I increased the value like by tenfold.

21:34Yeah. The biggest thing that I always see with people, you know, if you're considering getting into the education space, number one, make sure that you're an expert because somebody's going to check you one day and you will get clapped. If you're lying about what you're doing, if you don't have what you say that you have, it becomes immediately apparent to a lot of people. And number two, don't compare your product and your launch and your offering and your website and your everything to what I have now. because when I started, or to other people as well, it becomes like, well, she's making a million dollars a year because she's got 200 ,000 on YouTube.

22:09Well, if she didn't start YouTube three years ago, she wouldn't be making a million dollars. Thank you. Yeah. So it's all about more like ready, or what do they say? It's like ready aim fire or fire ready aim. I think it's fire, but just have a little bit of an idea of what you're doing and then ready aim, but get it out there. everyone's just dragging with everything that they do. I'll do it later. I'll film this later. I'll write the script. I'll, you know, get my first property. I mean, the amount of, after handling a lot of these sales calls myself over the years, which led to a much higher conversion rate, but a lot more workload for me, the amount of, you know, times I've just heard excuses about why somebody can't get started, as opposed to reasons why people are like, Let's talk here.

22:55What are the top three reasons that people don't get started, that you've heard? Because you were in the dirt. My wife, my wife, number one, is a lot. I hear that all the time. Oh, yeah, you know, my wife kind of handles the money side. And so I don't know what she would think. And, you know, we've got our 401ks tied up. You know, it's typically if you have a partner not making the decision on behalf of them, which I understand, but it's also at some level, and I'm not the best at relationships either. But it seems like people in marriages and relationships should have already talked through what their goals were with finances and what risks they wanted to take.

23:34Because a lot of times it seems like the two parties are on two different pages. One's more conservative and one wants to take the risk. And most of the time they're at a place where they're on the hamster wheel. So that's number one. Number one. Number two would be I just don't have the money. there's I'm seeing more and more people right now that are just in so much credit card debt and so just in such a crappy place and it's it's difficult I the only answer that I have to them and I just try and lead I'm not like hey you're not a good fit for this program like in a mean way but the truth is they're not right because it takes money to make money not just with my program but with was getting started in real estate right you know we're getting into real estate it takes money.

24:17Don't assume that this is going to be some wholesaling or some, you know, co-hosting thing. It takes a little bit of money. So I was just trying to point them in the direction of some of my favorite, you know, creators like Robert Croke, who talk a lot about budgeting and like taking control of your financial situation, like doing a budget, getting your shit together, automating your investments, like taking these baby steps. So spouse, I don't have enough money and I don't know anything about real estate. And I'm like, hello, I'm going to teach you everything about real estate. Everybody comes, 90 % of people come with no background in real estate and you don't need it.

24:54I had none when I got started. I found a mentor, they literally held my hand. And so that's how I've tried to imitate my program is let me handhold you with my team through this process. So by the end of it, you can go do it by yourself. So if you're listening and you fall into any one of the categories, is my partner. I don't have money, which means you just need to first set a budget. And then third is I don't know how. What we're finding here are the three common patterns that you might not be ready to uplevel or that somebody is not ready to uplevel in your business. So when we think about this from a marketing perspective, you're putting out content that first addresses like before we hop on the call, make sure that you're having a conversation with your partner.

25:33Make sure your spouse is on the call. Yeah, that's a good thing. You know what you're talking about? Closer to be like, not a conversation. Have the partner on the call. Let's get to the decision now. And then also making sure that you're financially ready. And then lastly, it's like stop using excuses of not knowing how when we have this thing called Google. Okay, I want to talk a little bit about how you've created content and you've used it as a backbone. And I want to specifically drill down on a lot of conversations hovering around whether or not TikTok will be banned, whether or not it will change ownership.

26:03And then people complaining there's two sides of the party. Well, it's an infringement on U.S. government. You know what that means? And then also there are small business owners who are saying, wait, I built my business on TikTok. And if TikTok goes away, that directly impacts my business. And then recently I had seen that somebody stole or took down your Instagram account. Can we talk about, number one, what social media means and then understanding that you build a business not on, like your business is not Instagram and your business is not TikTok. Those are the vehicles. I want to talk about what happened with your Instagram account, what is currently happening and like the nature of what that looks like from a marketing perspective.

26:44Sure. Okay. We can start with the Instagram. So Instagram is the primary source of driving traffic to the education programs. Yeah. Even though you have a larger following on TikTok, yeah? Yeah. The TikTok following doesn't mean anything. Dude, you heard it here. I could not agree. I don't think that TikTok following moves. It doesn't. I mean, if you can go, I got 1.2 or 1.3 million followers on there. If you go look at my most recent post, I think one of them had like 90 ,000. The one before that had 12 ,000 views with one comment. I went live the other day for like the first time. I never really gone live on TikTok.

27:15I had like 37 people watching. Yeah. I have 1.2 million followers. Yes. And the reason is from my understanding and just my experience on TikTok because I'm an avid TikTok user. I love it. That's right. I'm addicted. I'd never, not one time in the history of being on this app for four years have clicked my following and went and watched my videos of the people I follow. No. I just go on there and I watch the 4U page. The 4U page, exactly. And I engage with stuff that I like so hopefully it brings it back to me in the future. So that's why I've always looked and I knew this from the jump. I figured this out very, very early, which was the, this is how I just jumped over everybody in the education space for the investing side of things early is that I recognized I just needed to be on the For You page.

28:01That's it. So the way that I did it was I would test out different copy that I would write for different video series ideas. And when one of them would click or one of them would hit and that would go from like average views or 8 ,000 views and then one gets like 1.2 million, I would turn that into a video series because I knew that people were going to engage with it and want to see part two. So I'd always end them with life from part two. So freaking smart. Yeah, and it worked. It does work. And then I like, you know, it was like peaks and troughs and like bringing on new customers in the business for the subscription side, but the peaks were high.

28:33Yes. And the troughs were low. Yeah. But it didn't matter because it would be like, we went from 20 ,000 MRR to like 75 ,000 in a night. In a night. Yeah. You know, and that's monthly recurring revenue. So my thoughts on tiktok are you know followers don't matter. I haven't engaged with believe it or not I don't know anything about tiktok being banned. I don't watch any news stuff It doesn't matter to me. Like it really doesn't matter to me. I built my original business on that I don't lean on it anymore. I understand how powerful instagram youtube podcasts books like there's other mediums My email list is probably 580 000 people.