Jasmine Star (00:00:00) - Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, a place where we talk about business, we talk about mindset. And today we're going to be talking about the expansion of wealth, diversifying what you do with your money and doing it in very interesting ways. I 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 a what does this guy do? I talked to him for like, 30s 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.

Jasmine Star (00:00:50) - So we get to learn about his business. And then as, like a little bonus cherry on top, I'm 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, the Lake Rosa. Thank you. I'm so happy you're here.

Blake Rocha (00:01:00) - That was a really good introduction. Hey, let it be known to 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've 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 is. I hope there's a lunch break in between so 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.

Jasmine Star (00:01:26) - Yes, yes. Okay, so the podcast is the business of your business. And then we get to talk about how you market that business.

Jasmine Star (00:01:35) - 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 Yun I'm gonna 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. It's about a year ago. Yeah, we've known each other for 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 different situations.

Blake Rocha (00:02:15) - Sure. Yeah. You know, I don't I come from a city called Visalia, California.

Blake Rocha (00:02:18) - It's in the middle of nowhere. Farm town doesn't smell very good. My dad worked at the prison for 25 years at Corcoran State Prison. It's, you know, 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, you know, until I was able to retire her a year and a half ago. Two years ago. You know, it's funny, yesterday my dad, my brother and I were all crying about this because we, you know, 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 is the emphasis and the driving force behind all of this.

Blake Rocha (00:03:05) - My dad is 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, drop me off lunch if I needed it, picked me up from school and never missed a game. When I look back on is my mom went to bed at 11. She woke up at 3:00 to go to work at 330 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.

Blake Rocha (00:03:53) - And 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 starting to get back to work. You know, I'm glad your Netflix series is over, but now, you know, we have a hotel to run. We have 18 Airbnbs. We're rapidly expanding. It's a $30 million portfolio. And the amount of she's us to try and rehire her. I told her, I'm like, mom, you better never leave because you got the keys to everything. You know what I mean?

Jasmine Star (00:04:30) - So that's right.

Blake Rocha (00:04:32) - Yeah.

Jasmine Star (00:04:32) - So that's right.

Blake Rocha (00:04:33) - All of all of that comes from maturing, looking back, realizing, you know, how amazing we had it, even though we didn't have a ton of money, we had a ton of love.

Blake Rocha (00:04:42) - And it's only, you know, 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.

Jasmine Star (00:04:54) - 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? I'll just be real. What 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? And it's like your mom would wake up at 3:00 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 going to buy a hotel or have a $30 million 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.

Jasmine Star (00:05:32) - And maybe one day our babies are the ones who say, like, let me hire you, come, 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 or this not kid. You're not a kid. I was young man. Young man. This this dapper young fellow. talk to me about your business. What's the business? When I'm in an elevator with you, we're going down four floors. What do you. What do you say? How do you describe your business?

Blake Rocha (00:05:55) - Yeah, so I think it's two prong. One of them is, you know, 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.

Blake Rocha (00:06:20) - 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 have this opportunity where, you know, before Covid got laid off, had to move back in with my parents, was living in a in a two bedroom with six people, and 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. Yes. It is not throwing it all away because I was making millions of dollars from zero to millions of dollars very, very quickly.

Jasmine Star (00:07:05) - So I want to pause here because we have a tendency. Brené 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, whoa, whoa, I want to know. So you get laid off, you move back home, you're going to 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 in Miami.

Blake Rocha (00:07:32) - And my.

Jasmine Star (00:07:32) - Baby, which you now say now, but let's, let's, let's, let's pause there. I 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.

Blake Rocha (00:07:42) - I'm going to invest into assets that produce passive income.

Blake Rocha (00:07:45) - 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 life span of about two years is 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. That's right. And 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, 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.

Blake Rocha (00:08:37) - Yeah, and I wholeheartedly believe it. I know how to tell a story. I know how to sell. I know how to do all of that. And I just continue to, you know, hone in on my craft. But for two and a half years, I didn't show it, tell anybody who I was online. I was this online moniker, Mister 4 to 8. 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.

Jasmine Star (00:09:13) - I want to pause here for a second because somebody is 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.

Blake Rocha (00:09:24) - Voice.

Jasmine Star (00:09:25) - 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.

Blake Rocha (00:09:34) - 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 I spoke to that. Absolutely. But at the time, the anonymous person who's really good at investing and trading was like, you know, putting the bat signal out. And they're like. Who is he? You know, so it was it added to the law. 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.

Blake Rocha (00:10:11) - Low 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, you know, it's it's the learning curve that I went through from 23 to like 25 was unbelievable because straight up, because the first, the first, 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 U.S. government?

Jasmine Star (00:10:42) - Yes. Welcome to that reality.

Blake Rocha (00:10:45) - And because before it was like my mom's doing TurboTax, right? You know, I'm like $40, I got to kick back.

Jasmine Star (00:10:51) - Yes, yes, yes.

Blake Rocha (00:10:52) - 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 to the real estate side of things, I just went feet first.

Blake Rocha (00:11:09) - I used a mentor and I still lean on mentors consistently.

Jasmine Star (00:11:14) - Amen. You know.

Blake Rocha (00:11:15) - And 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 to my for my mentor last year because they're trying to get you to pay for something that they're selling most of the time. But and 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, 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 know, 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. Yes. You know, if I knew that if I wanted to build a tiny short term rental property which I had never done, a little a yurt or something, I'd call my buddy Rob.

Blake Rocha (00:12:04) - And so you just start having these people that you kind of acquire.

Jasmine Star (00:12:07) - Like, but then equal proportions. They know that if they wanted to reach out for a skill set, you have okay.

Blake Rocha (00:12:12) - 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. And they're 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.

Blake Rocha (00:12:57) - 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.

Jasmine Star (00:13:10) - Wait, I'm gonna pause. I'm a repeat back. What? I think I just heard you start leasing properties. To list on Airbnb. Sure.

Blake Rocha (00:13:19) - Yeah. So. So you would find a property that's on Zillow for rent? Maybe in this neighborhood. Okay. You would approach the landlord and you say, hey, you know, there's a professional pitch involved. You know, 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.

Blake Rocha (00:13:56) - The profit margin between the 9000, your expenses and your lease is money you can take home. So we have students and it's just like.

Jasmine Star (00:14:05) - It's just it's just blowing my mind. Music. This is why when I started following your content and learning that that was your business model and how we were structuring it, and 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?

Blake Rocha (00:14:32) - Because, I mean, the truth is, I didn't need to have rental arbitrage properties. I at 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.

Blake Rocha (00:14:46) - Yes. No. 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 something guys like commitment. 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 that's one of the big differences that I see with people that can kind of move laterally in this, 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. So 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? I'm like, I still don't know.

Blake Rocha (00:15:41) - but I did know this Airbnb stuff before I began teaching it. And I already had a, you know, multimillion dollar portfolio. I just shared the journey late. Yeah, 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. And 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 want to know this. And there wasn't a lot of people talking about it at the time. There was like 2 or 3 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.

Blake Rocha (00:16:28) - Okay.

Jasmine Star (00:16:29) - 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?

Blake Rocha (00:16:49) - The education, the building, the yeah. Because you're like.

Jasmine Star (00:16:51) - 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 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 do you do? Like you're like, how do I get started? What am I going to start here?

Blake Rocha (00:17:09) - The good news is I created like three shitty courses before this in like the investing space.

Blake Rocha (00:17:14) - So I knew, dude.

Jasmine Star (00:17:15) - I just love this. I want to pause here because friends, like he just said, he created three courses that didn't work.

Blake Rocha (00:17:21) - Like we're talking like sell, sold like a cup, like $8,000 worth with like over a million followers. And so, like, the numbers just don't add up. Okay. That's that's the.

Jasmine Star (00:17:30) - Antithesis of product market fit. So he's coming into this and like most people would 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.

Blake Rocha (00:17:47) - 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 is something that I'm wildly passionate about.

Blake Rocha (00:17:59) - Because I went to school and got my MBA, and I felt like I left and I knew more. I knew as much as I, when I got there is when I left, because I had already started 20, 30 businesses by the time I was done with my MBA. Okay, 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. Okay? You know, I knew that the 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. It 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. 4 to 8. Even though when people see me around now they all still say Mr.. For Mr.. Like nobody says Blake but you know I let people know who I was I was very transparent with my portfolio.

Blake Rocha (00:18:49) - 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 waitlist 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 waitlist at this time, I knew I didn't want to do low ticket. I said, hey, it's going to be a couple thousand dollars. My information that I'm sharing is, you know, 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 waitlist 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 to till this day, it's still a one man show.

Blake Rocha (00:19:35) - 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, you know, tens of millions of net profit, you know.

Jasmine Star (00:19:49) - 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 subscription world. You had experience with that. You came, you had created courses. So it wasn't new for you. When you built up this waitlist and you were running the webinars, were you running it to a subscription? Where are you running it to a course? It was.

Blake Rocha (00:20:25) - It was all to a course I basically no longer promoted. I let my community know, hey guys, you know, because the community had a lot of coaches and people in it, so it was self-sustaining. I got it, I just let them know, hey guys, I'm taking a step away and I'm gonna, you know, 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. And this was strictly to I think at the time it was SLS. Okay. And then I handled the sales calls on all the on the launch by myself.

Jasmine Star (00:20:52) - So what was the cost of the of the offer like your cost.

Blake Rocha (00:20:55) - Of the time was 4500 or $5000. Okay. Somewhere around there it's 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 it because. I increase the value like, by tenfold. Yeah. The biggest thing that I always see with people, if, you know, if you're considering getting into the education space, number one, make sure that you're an expert because somebody is going to check you one day and and you will get clapped like, yeah, if you if you're lying about what you're doing, if you're if you're, you know, don't have what you say that you have, it becomes immediately apparent to a lot of people.

Blake Rocha (00:21:28) - 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, oh, well, she's making $1 million a year because she's got 200,000 on YouTube. Well, if she didn't start YouTube three years ago, she wouldn't be making $1 million.

Jasmine Star (00:21:50) - Thank you.

Blake Rocha (00:21:51) - Yeah. So it's it's all about more like, ready or what? 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 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 that I've just heard excuses about why somebody can't get started as opposed to reasons why people are like, let's talk here.

Jasmine Star (00:22:30) - What are the top three reasons that people don't get started that you've heard because you were in the dirt?

Blake Rocha (00:22:35) - My wife, my wife, number one is a lot. I hear that all the time. Well. 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 400 bucks tied up. You know, it's typically if you have a partner not making the like 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 in marriages and relationships should have already talked through what their goals were with finance, like finances, and what risks that they wanted to take, because 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 it's they're at a place where they're on the hamster wheel. Yeah.

Jasmine Star (00:23:20) - So so that's number one, partner.

Blake Rocha (00:23:21) - 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 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 getting started in real estate. Right. You know, we're getting into real estate. It takes money. Don'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.

Blake Rocha (00:24:13) - 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. I 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.

Jasmine Star (00:24:41) - So if you're listening and.

Jasmine Star (00:24:43) - You fall into any one of the categories, 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 a call, make sure that you're having a conversation with your partner.

Jasmine Star (00:25:08) - Make sure your.

Blake Rocha (00:25:09) - Spouse is on the call.

Jasmine Star (00:25:10) - Yeah, I that's a good thing. I see. You know, you're talking with the closer to be like not a conversation. Yeah. Half the partner on the call. Like 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, and then people complaining there's two sides of the party. Well, it's an infringement on US 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.

Jasmine Star (00:26:01) - Can we talk about number one, what social media means? And then understanding that you build a business not on 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.

Blake Rocha (00:26:19) - Sure.

Blake Rocha (00:26:20) - Okay, we can start with the Instagram. So Instagram is the primary source of driving traffic to the education programs.

Jasmine Star (00:26:27) - Yeah. Even though you have a larger following on TikTok. Yeah, yeah.

Blake Rocha (00:26:29) - The TikTok TikTok following doesn't mean anything.

Jasmine Star (00:26:31) - And I dude, you heard it here. I could not agree. I don't think that TikTok following the moves.

Blake Rocha (00:26:37) - I mean, if you can go, I got one point like 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.

Blake Rocha (00:26:49) - I never really gone live on TikTok. I had like 37 people watching. Yeah, I have 1.2 million followers. Yes. And 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 would 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 that the people I follow, I just go on there and I watch the four page.

Jasmine Star (00:27:15) - Exactly, and.

Blake Rocha (00:27:15) - 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 the investing side of things early is that I recognized I just needed to be on the for you page. That's it. So the way that I did it was I would I would test out different copy that I would write for different video series ideas.

Blake Rocha (00:27:43) - And when one of them would click or when one of them would hit, and that would go from like average views or 8000 views, and then one gets like 1.2 million. I would turn that into a video series, because I knew that people are going to engage with it and want to see part two, so I'd always end them with life. Part two. Yeah. And and it worked. It does work. And then I like, you know, the it was like peaks and troughs and like bringing on new customers in the business for the subscription side. But the peaks were high and the trough or low, 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, 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.

Blake Rocha (00:28:30) - 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. I have over 250,000 text message like numbers that I can use. I've built an ecosystem around my business early, making sure that and to the best of my ability, everyone that heard me talking earlier about me doing everything by myself, it leads to burnout. You might lose your girlfriend. You may not see your parents for a couple of weeks or months. You're gonna. It's hard. And and I don't know if that was the right way. It was the right way for me. But it may not be the right way for you. The more that I'm growing as an entrepreneur and as a creator, I recognize the importance of kind of building out a team. At the time, I just didn't understand the value of like, I looked at money the same way as like when I looked at my mom seeing $100 check for dinner on a birthday and kind of like having a like, look of chagrin.

Blake Rocha (00:29:28) - So I just was like, I don't want to give up any of my money. I'll do it. So anyways, so TikTok doesn't really matter to me. Instagram the best platform by far for me and YouTube if I could scale it, but it's not working for me yet.

Jasmine Star (00:29:39) - Yeah that's right, that's right.

Blake Rocha (00:29:41) - When I got banned on Instagram. So I've well.

Jasmine Star (00:29:43) - I tell the story though. I mean, come on, we have to build a T. So because I saw it go down, I got someone, I was like oh snap. Yeah.

Blake Rocha (00:29:50) - Yeah. I mean I think that I haven't really seen anybody airing out the dirty side of the Instagram business.

Jasmine Star (00:29:57) - You want to do that now?

Blake Rocha (00:29:57) - Let's do it. Let's spill the tea. So here's how it works. There are people internally at Instagram and at meta that are able to, you know, activate deactivate accounts. There are people overseas and in the States as well. They can take down your accounts by reporting you as appearing to be somebody that you're not, or as I can't remember the exact word like imitating somebody.

Blake Rocha (00:30:20) - And so they'll make a million fake accounts of myself, go report me and take me down because somebody paid them 4 or $5000 to do that. Why would somebody do that? Well, even though I don't really look at this as a competition in the space of other people having education programs, people do and they're dirty and they make a lot of money and anything to take you off, they'll do. So I get taken off and I've been taken off.

Jasmine Star (00:30:47) - Okay. But where were you? What was that like? Like you open the app. Well, this.

Blake Rocha (00:30:50) - Is this is probably the 12th or 13th time I've been taken off. And usually it costs $4,000 to get your account back. The problem is when the when the wormhole is open. And this whole network of dirtbags know that your account has been taken down and that you will pay $4,000 to take it back, they can take you down again and come back to your rescue. And you, you have to pay because it's your business. So there's that whole black market, that meta and Instagram.

Blake Rocha (00:31:19) - If you're watching, you guys need to handle because it's a joke. And people were making millions and millions of dollars running this scheme, taking people like myself down and then having me go pay to get it back. So this time though, I got taken down and usually I can pay for $1,000. Get it right back up. This time I couldn't. This time I had to shop around for about three weeks. Cost me a lot of money. And I found a kid, Jamison, who was a who was now become a friend because he got me back. He had connections very high up at meta. He said, you know, somebody paid $12,000 to take you down. He's like, I know who it is. I was able to find it because I was able to find the meta rep that they worked with. And I threatened his his job, and he told me who the person was that paid him. So I know who the guy is. And, you know, we're still trying to decide if we're going to handle it legally or not.

Blake Rocha (00:32:08) - But he's a he's somebody in the Airbnb space, a dirt bag, somebody who I used to consider a friend and who would have thought. So it took me a month and a half to get my Instagram account back. It was the biggest, the biggest blessing and biggest, you know, biggest blessing in disguise ever. Because, you know, I had a month and a half of of, you know, relying on my real estate income and, and nothing else. But it was the first time I hadn't been thinking about or making content all day, every day for the last four years, for a month and a half. So my I, like, got back in shape. I was like focused. I was going to the beach, I was meditating, I was like doing a lot of things that like a vacation almost. But yeah, so it was good. But so now here's the you guys want the final bit of the tease so that you can get around this and not get taken down again.

Blake Rocha (00:32:57) - My profile picture is gone and it's for a reason they can't report you for imitating if you don't have a profile photo up. So unfortunately I have no profile photos so you don't get to see this beautiful action going on. But I haven't gotten taken down yet. So it's what a dirty industry, right?

Jasmine Star (00:33:14) - Okay, so I actually think it's really important though, because it goes back and proves that social media cannot be your business. You had built the business of a business. You have a diversified marketing ecosystem so that you're like, fine, you could take out one of the largest pushers in my business, but I still got I got an email list, I got text message, I got other things. And so when we think about that now, take me on this journey, because it has been a little bit on the newer side of buying this hotel. Yeah. So because you've been able to build a business and not just be a content creator, right? You have a business and that has empowered you to have enough liquid cash to buy something really significant.

Jasmine Star (00:33:55) - I want to use that as a benchmark for entrepreneurs with us understanding, because I feel like it took me like way too long to learn. This is like I used to be a server all throughout college, so I had cash, stacks of cash. I was like, I can do my thing. And I feel like when you become an entrepreneur, you get money and then you're like, okay, well, this is just funding my lifestyle. Instead of being like, no, no, no, no. But there's a difference between being rich and wealthy, and that's gonna be a really long time to learn. And so I feel like you learn it much earlier, like I'm here to build wealth. And so I want to talk about what it means for you. Now, as you look at investing in properties and then this venture into buying a hotel.

Blake Rocha (00:34:26) - Yeah. So before I bought the hotel, the hotel wasn't, I didn't I had never sought out to buy a hotel, but I bought a hotel.

Blake Rocha (00:34:34) - Now it's not a Hilton. It's not a hotel like you. You know, a lot of people are thinking about a boutique hotel in the Catskills and in upstate New York. It was a little under $2 million. It was listed about $2 million. And I'd bought properties. You know, for perspective, I bought properties that are much bigger than that in size and in, you know, price tag. Yeah. So I did buy a hotel. It's cool. It's the first time having like, staff and having a full restaurant. It was just like a cool thing. And I completely manifested this. So I was already making about 100 to $105,000 a month on average and profit from my Airbnb business. So I have a quite a bit of cashflow coming in from that business, and I need to reinvest it into getting more properties. Yeah, I had this dream. No bullshit because I'm the biggest believer in energy and manifestation. And I had this dream that I owned property in this place called the Catskills.

Blake Rocha (00:35:27) - I've never been to the Catskills.

Jasmine Star (00:35:30) - But I didn't.

Blake Rocha (00:35:31) - Know anything about it. I'd only been to New York City like when I'd been to New York. And so I tweeted it. I tweeted a picture of this cool little cabin in that I googled, like Catskills cabin, and I tweeted, I have this vision that I'm going to own an A, an amazing property in the Catskills in 2020 by the end of this year. And I tweeted it. Didn't think anything of it. I just, I like, put it out in the universe. The next morning I wake up to an Instagram DM from a follower that's like, hey, here's this pamphlet. My realtor gave it to me. It's a really unique place. This place used to be a chicken coop that they turned into a boutique hotel, full service restaurant, you know, pond on the property, acres and acres of land. It's amazing. The price tag seems relatively low. It's making great money, and they have to sell it because one of the co-owners passed away recently, so they just need to liquidate and they needed to sell.

Blake Rocha (00:36:23) - And his wife and, you know, this whole back story, I go, no, I like look up. I'm like, God, like, if.

Blake Rocha (00:36:32) - If you're real lonely by this hotel down.

Blake Rocha (00:36:36) - I just knew. I knew right then and there. I flew out that week. I flew out to that, hotel, met with the owner. We became, like, literally hit it off that for a second. You know, the first thing he told to me was, he goes, he kind of started tearing up. He meets me and I'm just with a younger friend, too. He's like, holy. Like, what do you do? Yeah. And we get to talk and we have a drink at the, at the bar. And he just starts like tearing up and he goes, man, you remind me so much of Heath. And I was like, who's Heath? He's, you know, my partner that built this with me, that just, you know, passed away in this car accident.

Blake Rocha (00:37:08) - He's like, I know that Heath would, you know, tell me if he met you, that you're the right person to hand the keys to. And I was invested. I didn't care if this thing made a dime. I knew that this is an amazing property. It's pet friendly, and it reminds me of my childhood. So I have this, like, guy telling me that everything just coming full circle at once and was able to get it at the price that I wanted. And now it's a it's a cash flowing machine. Now we're using it as a wedding venue.

Jasmine Star (00:37:37) - See, I saw you and your dad doing work on the venue. So you get in, like with.

Blake Rocha (00:37:41) - Your property in there. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Blake Rocha (00:37:43) - My dad does it full time. Like I have him flying around. He doesn't work at the prison anymore. He flies out and works on the properties. But yeah, I get in there a little bit. He's a lot more handy than I am. I'm more like.

Blake Rocha (00:37:53) - Like doing the doing the rendering, but.

Blake Rocha (00:37:56) - Well, at least.

Jasmine Star (00:37:56) - Hey. But at least on social, it makes you look like you're out here.

Blake Rocha (00:37:59) - Cameron, do we get the shot? All right, I'm done. Like.

Blake Rocha (00:38:03) - No. Yeah, I like to, you know, spend time at my at my properties. And I've just been so blessed, like, so, so blessed. I can't describe it any other way. The energy of, you know, wanting something so bad and just envisioning it over and over and over again and putting it out there, it just keeps coming back. Like it just keeps coming back to me. So I just keep putting it out there.

Jasmine Star (00:38:23) - Okay, so we talked about how you, you know, from your parents couch decide you're going to be building a business and then the iterations from there. But when you look into the future, how is Blake thinking about the future of marketing? Like, what are you doing now and looking at the future like, I that's the direction I need to go.

Jasmine Star (00:38:40) - Or I'm your Latina, very, very good godmother, your marketing fairy godmother. And it's like, I have a wand and I put it over your business. What happens? How what are you doing? What am I doing as your fairy godmother? To bring your idea of what you want to do to life. What is that?

Blake Rocha (00:38:55) - You know, I've.

Blake Rocha (00:38:55) - I've always.

Blake Rocha (00:38:57) - I could see myself stepping into the shoes of somebody like a garyvee. You know, being. I don't like the cameras on me 24 seven. I really, really don't. But I also think that I have a lot of value to offer in to to people of, like, every age, from young people learning about social media to people that are in their 30s and 40s and 50s that don't know anything about real estate. But I've been able to build this career in real estate as well, and so I don't really know where I fit in. I just know that what I do need to do every single day to keep my sanity and to to remain passionate about what I'm doing, is chase whatever things are giving me energy.

Blake Rocha (00:39:35) - So if it's if it's for a week or two, I'm just on a kick where I'm like, I need to make my videos way better. Who's doing it the best right now? Let me read. Let me read, reverse engineer their scripts. Let me break it down. Let me translate this to my stuff. Let me go hire an editor and let's see if we want to do low style edit or high, you know, high high edits. But like I get fixated on things because I wake up and I'm just geeked. I don't need coffee. I don't need caffeine, I don't need alcohol, I don't need drugs. I need something that I'm passionate about to wake up and just say I'm all in. And so as long as I can keep finding those things and taking it to the next level, I'll tell you this. My goal is not a number goal, because I think that quite a long time ago I was able to identify, okay, my lifestyle does not cost that much to live like I do have a nice car and I stayed a pretty nice house, but I still rent, you know, I pay a couple thousand dollars a month for rent.

Blake Rocha (00:40:29) - I live right by the beach. I get to surf, work out. My life doesn't cost that much money. I make a lot of money. Yeah, it has become numbers on the screen at some level. It's just like a video game. So for me, I'm like, okay, so what is this all about? I want to win business like I will dominate anybody that comes against me, I will. I will build whatever space that I decide to be in. I'm going to build the best business, not because I want the money. The money is the money comes with being the leader. I want to not have to look at somebody and be like, oh, so they're doing it right. I'm gonna I'm gonna copy. No, I'm I'm doing it right, and I'm going to lead the pack. And I just want to win because it's just a competitive nature. And but I don't lose sight of of being, you know, grounded and being realistic. But I also dream big and I want more.

Blake Rocha (00:41:21) - And I feel like you have the same personality, that it's not just about the money. It's about I want to prove to myself that I can actually do this as big as I possibly can. And I see the people like Elon Musk and I'm like, this dude is doing it big. I wouldn't trade my lifestyle for his, and I know where my balance needs to be, but we can do so much more. We can do so much more. Here's the same time that I do.

Jasmine Star (00:41:46) - So can I repeat back what I think I hear and then you can amend it? Sure. Your next level marketing strategy is to be guided by energy of what interests you and what interests you. You look at and say, how do I be the best? And then you reverse engineer your version of being the best, and then you test it, and that guides to the next iteration of your marketing strategy. Dang. That's cool.

Blake Rocha (00:42:06) - Yeah, it's it's cool.

Jasmine Star (00:42:07) - That's really I well, here's the reason why I think it's cool.

Jasmine Star (00:42:10) - It's so counter opposite to what people classify as strategy. Because what you're saying is there's something unquantifiable. And that's what I'm energetically attracted to. And so I really want to pause there and, and let people know that you're listening and watching to somebody who's incredibly successful. And instead of saying, this is on the back of, you know, analytics, which a part of it it is, but only after energy. So energy, then analytics. And I think that it's okay to dwell there. And I think I'm very happy that you're saying it. And then your proof that it's working. Yeah. And what I hear is for me is go to the energy, go to the energy and reverse engineer from there, protect your piece.

Blake Rocha (00:42:48) - Like if people are bringing you down like energy drains, just eliminate them.

Jasmine Star (00:42:54) - Energy vampires.

Blake Rocha (00:42:54) - Energy vampires tasks that your tasks that drain your energy delegate them like do the things that you want to do. Be happy. Live a clean and healthy lifestyle. Like all this stuff fits together.

Blake Rocha (00:43:08) - And when I always hear people talking that are successful, you know, and I don't even want to name drop, but I might. I see a couple of people out there that everybody looks up to and I'm like, would you trade your life for theirs? They look so miserable. Who cares if they made $100 million? Who cares about the best selling book? Who cares?

Blake Rocha (00:43:26) - They are.

Blake Rocha (00:43:27) - They are miserable at least. At least they look miserable to me. Maybe behind closed doors after they're done filming for 13 hours a day. There's they're very happy. But you know who's you know who's the best example of this? And the person that I just listened to on podcasts so much you wouldn't.

Blake Rocha (00:43:43) - Believe who who Rob.

Blake Rocha (00:43:44) - Dyrdek.

Jasmine Star (00:43:45) - Oh come on, I freaking love him. Do you know that I, I legitimately, like, went to an event because he was speaking. It was like a Q&A. And then.

Blake Rocha (00:43:52) - I waited. The one.

Blake Rocha (00:43:53) - With salmon. Yeah yeah.

Blake Rocha (00:43:54) - Yeah yeah yeah yeah I.

Jasmine Star (00:43:55) - Was like geeking out. Okay. Hold on. There's a side there's a side note that I actually haven't made public because it's super embarrassing. I said, I'm going to be waiting in line because I want to sit in the front row. Except for the fact that they didn't tell you where the room was. It was actually like, partially like partitioned off. Right. And so then all of a sudden I'm on the opposite side of the room and I see, oh my God, there's a whole group of people who were on the other side of the room. They got there first and I was like, I'm not going to sit in the back. I came out to late. I'm going to sit in front. I literally weaseled my way to the second row and I looked at two people and there was like this. It was a love seat. It was like sofa for two people. And I was like, I'm so sorry, can I sit at this? It was like, can you just go over a bit and like, these two people look at me like, no, she just didn't.

Jasmine Star (00:44:33) - I was like, I promised. I sat with my my glutes at the edge of that couch being like, I'm here. I don't even care. There's no shame. But yes, the family house, the life, the intention, the optimism.

Blake Rocha (00:44:47) - I think the optimization stuff. I don't really relate to that much because I've, I'm, I like running a little loose and being able to do something like on a pivot. Like if my girlfriend says, hey, look how nice is a week in a Big Sur sound. I don't need to go check my optimization calculator to tell me, like, the Big Sur sounds like a great weekend. So, you know, I don't there's some of the stuff to another guy that I would love to shout out that I don't hear anybody talking about. He's he to me has one of the best podcasts ever. And the most incredible story is his name's Matt Stein weed and his podcast is called 31 minutes. Very few listeners, not big on YouTube, not big on social media.

Blake Rocha (00:45:27) - He is an ex drug addict. He's died like 3 or 4 times like overdosing and came back to life. Now he's the number one real estate agent in Australia and he talks in depth about this energy stuff and how and he's in when I tell you he's in the best shape of any. Human you've ever seen. You're looking at me. You'll be like, there's no way you're 50. You look like you're 27. So it's. And it all comes back to this, this message of, you know, energy and and protecting your peace and being happy and prioritizing the things that truly matter to you. In an age where people compare themselves so much to to others, and they look at me and they say, well, oh, I, I want that car like, I'm going to do all of this for that car. Meanwhile, you know, the cars aren't a priority for me. They don't know that, but they think that that's what they see. So it's we're in a very weird time.

Blake Rocha (00:46:16) - But I just think that the message that people don't share enough is doing what makes you happy and and doing something that, like, gives you energy every day.

Jasmine Star (00:46:25) - Okay, so, ladies and gentlemen, the reason why I had the conversation with Blake, it was because I saw that he thought differently and approached marketing in a very different way. And y'all know it's not a surprise. I believe in content. I believe that content is a defining marker for any business. And it is your it is your X factor. It's the thing that cannot be quantified. And here we have stories of a person who started at his parents couch, was able to build enough liquid cash that instead of funding a lifestyle, is funding a pathway to wealth, started creating content that was faceless, became successful, and then decided, If I'm going to get into education, I'm gonna have to put a face and a name to this. He comes out and does this, and he starts creating content that leads to product market fit tells people, I'm going to create an offer that is going to likely be very expensive, and on the back of three failed courses, decides that he's going to put together a course, not being daunted by previous things, and but instead jack up the price to make an offer to an audience who clearly wants it, decides to build entire thing from scratch.

Jasmine Star (00:47:25) - One person doing the whole thing so he understands the model before he starts hiring a team to then take over that model using the cash infusion from that course business, he gets into continuing to buy properties, leased properties, and teach people openly with that content. It does. As if that isn't enough, he doesn't believe in just one platform that is going to guide the marketing. He's looking at diversifying his marketing efforts. So that is a big takeaway. The second biggest takeaway is even if you have something failed in the past, it doesn't mean that you could try the same mechanism to do it again on the back of education and experience. And the third biggest takeaway is to follow what gives you energy in life. Not caring about a New York Times bestseller or going viral or millions of followers. But what guides you energetically, and then what you do after you find that energetic as you go and see who else is doing this in a really great way, I'm going to reverse engineer. I'm going to look back and see what did they do to get there.

Jasmine Star (00:48:18) - Then you apply it to your business. You put your own genius, acquire your own sub or your own salsa, your own Tapatio, and you make it your own. And then you continue to reiterate the process, prioritizing where you are energetically to build a life and a business you love. That is why I brought Blake to this show. So, Blake, if people want to go deeper with you, where are we sending them? Yeah.

Blake Rocha (00:48:41) - Best place would be my Instagram at Mr.. 428. Mr.. 428. And I try and respond to all my DMs. I don't have like many chat automations texting you. So if you have any questions, we'd love to help you out or give you some guidance. And I just really appreciate the opportunity to come on here, share a little bit of my story. And yeah, it's been this has been awesome.

Jasmine Star (00:49:01) - It's really, really, really awesome.

Jasmine Star (00:49:03) - And I think that you opened up energetic pathways for me to give me the permission to do it my own way and be led with that without thinking about the ramifications of what it means for titles, labels, followers, or even cars.

Jasmine Star (00:49:14) - But let's have a moment for your car because your car is nice, like all things considered, all things considered. There's like one of those things, you know what? It doesn't matter. And yet I'm so happy I have it.

Blake Rocha (00:49:23) - Yeah, I have those feelings.

Jasmine Star (00:49:24) - Can we celebrate that? For those who are listening and watching The Jasmine Star Show, it is an honor and privilege to create this for you. Be sure to tag Blake and myself on Instagram so that we could see what it is you're doing as you build your pathways to energetic freedom, building a life and business you love. Like always, it is an honor and a privilege to create the Jasmine Star Show.