How I Learned High-Income Skills and Earned 6 Figures Without Earning a Degree...(And You Can Too).

You'll often hear great entrepreneurs like Dan Lok and Patrick Bet-David talk about the concept of "High Income Skills", Skills that earn you over $10,000/month.

Throughout my adult life I developed 3 very powerful high income skills, that have resulted in a 6 Figure Income.

These skills did not require a degree, and I left college (community college) with zero student loan debt, and I didn't learn these skills as a result of my training there. These skills are very accessible to anyone who wants to develop them.

This is going to be a 8 minute read, but I think there is a lot of value you can take away from this if you're trying to transition in your career or ambition this year.

SALES AND MARKETING, PUBLIC SPEAKING, & VISUAL COMMUNICATION.

For those of you with no context on me, my name is Roberto Blake, I'm 34 years old and I'm a creative entrepreneur with an online education based business. This business generates over $100K in gross revenue, and this is outside the income I generate from my personal brand as online influencer on YouTube with 370K Subscribers and 1,200 online videos.

None of my success came overnight, but if someone had offered me a "Framework for Success" based on what was accessible to me at the time, I would have taken it, and arrived at a comfortable place in life more quickly, with less sacrifices to my mental health along the way.

HOW I LEARNED MY HIGH INCOME SKILLS THROUGH SELF EDUCATION

Sales and Marketing are two seperate things, but you have to understand the value of Marketing is in fact facilitating sales. When I was working my way through community college, which I paid for each semester cash, freelancing as well as working retail jobs at the local mall, were how I covered my tuition and expenses.

Many of these jobs also had commission based incentives. To make the money I needed and to possibly be promoted I always set the goal of leading in sales in the store. This meant I had to provide better customer service, higher units per transaction and sign up more store cards than anyone else.

This isn't something you can do if you "phone it in" or read a script. You have to understand what the value is for someone and communicate that value in a concise way. You have to be a good listener, and recognize patterns and buying behavior.

Understanding this at a young age would play out in my life, and allow me to be successful without the benefit of a prestigious education or a degree, let alone any pedigree or privilege. My unique advantage would be that I could read a room, and sell a solution that actually solves a problem.

YOU HAVE TO MARKET YOURSELF

Freelancing, and later working as a web and graphic designer, meant that I needed a portfolio or body of work and a reputation for delivering for clients. When I was in college in 2002, they were barely teaching web design, and it wasn't even considered a real profession just yet.

Most businesses still didn't see the need to be online and have a website of their own. Individual professionals didn't see the need either. Instead of following convention, I prioritized having my own website, building other websites as a hobby to demonstrate my abilities, and taking on work however I could so I could build my reputation and referrals.

At this time there was almost no formal education offered in online marketing, very few courses on web design, and most of the of the focus was on print production and newspaper advertisements. I was actually ridiculed by some of my professors for suggesting that in the next decade that print design would decline.

Learning how to code with HTML, CSS and Javascript was something I started learning around my 13th birthday when my grandmother Marjorie (now deceased) bought my family a new computer from QVC. She was a CNA (nurse) on a fixed income, and it was a huge sacrifice but she new it was an investment in giving her grandchildren every opportunity to succeed in the new world. She was right.

By learning to dominate the internet and SEO I constantly got opportunities I would never have gotten otherwise. In my early 20s I was able to get the attention of an ad agency without even applying for the job, and managed through my interview skills and body of work to beat applicants from the best schools in NYC.

This also got me my first real corporate job as a web and graphic designer, also without a formal degree. My reputation and body of work were all I needed.

LEARN HOW TO SELL A SOLUTION

My online coaching business Awesome Creator Academy, obviously relies on my skills in sales and marketing to generate revenue.

But before developing that business I used my skills in sales and marketing to generate income with affiliate revenue.

Today I average at least $6,000/month in passive income via affiliate marketing alone. This is not said to brag, but to open you up to the possibilities, in fact I know it is possible to scale this income over the next 18 months to $10,000.

The most direct way to earn significant money, has always been to sell a product or service, and then build a scalable business around that. The least effective way to make money is to trade your time producing labor.

It occurred to me that if I averaged $300-$500 as a daily income goal, that I could produce a 6 Figure Income. But I would need to develop skills and a reputation that would be accepted by the market for enough value. That is the key, what can you value can you offer to the market?

For me it has been my ability to deliver information... my skills in public speaking and visual communication are what I was marketing and selling.

My abilities in public speaking were developed by having to present my work to clients both as a freelancer and working with an agency. My visual communication skills as a creative, started early with drawing, then photography, and later graphic design.

While I did go to school for advertising and graphic design, most of my education was self education.

EDUCATE YOURSELF IN FUTURE PROOF/ RECESSION PROOF SKILLS

I had started learning Photoshop, Premiere Pro and other software in my high school years, and most of my professors were not "software savvy" they were great at teaching principles and had a concentration on print design and logo design.

My life was about the internet from the time I was 13 years old. There were a few things I focused on between the ages of 13-18 years old. I used to be an A Student on the honor roll, but I quickly became a C Student due to depression, bullying and circumstances within my home life.

The internet in many ways saved me. It offered me refuge, but also rewarded my curiosity in a way the traditional system never could. Here is what I was curious about, see if you can recognize how this would play out 20 years later:

• Photography and Photo Editing
• Video Editing and Animation
• Web Design and Coding
• Ebay and Selling Online
• Graphic Design and Typography

If you think about those particular interest that I had, and that in my early years they became the daily focus of my time and energy, it may not be surprising that I eventually was able to leverage the internet and social media when the time came.

People have always asked me "what will you do if the internet goes away"?

Firstly I'm not going to be shy about calling this THE MOST IGNORANT QUESTION, I am ever asked on a regular basis. At this point the infrastructure of the Western world, is so tied to the internet, that it's likely not going anywhere in our lifetime.

But when I humor that question I point out that, sales and marketing is sales and marketing, there will always be people who need to sell a product or service. There will always be a need for packaging a product or service, and there will always be advertising. The means or medium may change, but the market remains.

The people who have embraced technology have been rewarded, the people who continue to distance themselves from it, are wilfully choosing to ignore the economic reality.

When I was first developing my skills, Google didn't exist yet and YouTube wouldn't exist for many more years. And when they did arrive they were not what we understand them to be today. The foundation of my skills were built in the primitive days of the internet.

Additionally, I didn't have the benefit of a hands on mentor, I was limited to reading books, and at the time it hadn't occurred to me to go to events or seminars, but the odds are I wouldn't have been able to afford to do it often in my situation, since I spent most of my free time working or developing my portfolio.

Eventually I would realize that I could study the success of people I've never met, and adopt their patterns, standards and incorporate them into my own behaviour and lifestyle. Doing so created a gap between me and the average person. I was adopting the habits that build success, and demonstrating higher value in all of my actions. This would increase my confidence in how I communicated. That confidence would yield better results and better relationships.

PUBLIC SPEAKING TERRIFIED ME, THEN IT MADE ME...

I am an introverted person by default, despite being somewhat outgoing. Throughout most of school I was also what some might call "anti-social". Public speaking was my least favorite thing to do in middle school and high school, I warmed up to it a bit through my creative writing classes in college, and then I had little choice in the matter when it came to sales.

Working retail when you're young teaches you quite a bit if you're open to it. It put me in a position to learn keen observation skills.

In many ways it became a game to me. Being top in sales in my store or district, was much like getting the high score on a video game, and that is how I treated it.

Walking up and selling to strangers is one of the hardest things I ever had to become comfortable doing, but my income relied on it.

Years later I would start making videos on YouTube. I started my current YouTube Channel in 2009 but I hadn't really uploaded much, since back then YouTube really was mostly a video hosting service and not truly seen as a social platform yet, though there was a community, I just wasn't aware of it.

In 2013 I decided to start taking YouTube more seriously and you can say that it really began my career as a both an educator and a public speaker. By getting in front of the camera several times a week or doing a software training I was getting more comfortable communicating deep knowledge in a relatively concise way.

Since then I've produced over 1,200 YouTube videos on the main channel, and been interviewed or featured hundreds of times on other channels. In 2015 my channel got me my first public speaking engagements on stages and since then I've spoken at over 50 events and given 75 presentations on stages.

Today I do lecture style videos that are more often 10-25 minutes long, but communicate the level of information that you'd need to attend a 90 minute seminar for, and pay at least $900 for the privilege.

Why do I offer this for free? Remember what I said earlier, body of work and reputation. I've leveraged marketing myself with thousands of pieces of free content across a dozen or so platforms, and while marketing myself, I've been indirectly monetizing it.

By creating YouTube videos I immediately moved into paid public speaking. Not only through the ad-revenue generated on my content, or the affiliate sales it facilitates, but directly from clients and from events and brands that work with me.

When I say public speaking made me, I'm being quite literal. It made me a name in several niches and it made me a significant amount of revenue.

SO MUCH OPPORTUNITY EXIST FOR YOU

Many people have overcome poverty, disability and eras of massive scarcity to make an impact on the world and better not only themselves, but everyone who came after them.

If you are reading this now, you are blessed with abundance. You have access to a smartphone or a computer or a library/media center, and the internet.

You have ability to learn high income skills such as design, social media marketing, web development, and sales.

You also have the ability to directly market yourself for FREE, using online platforms like Medium, LinkedIn, YouTube, SoundCloud, Tumblr, Instagram or Facebook. These platforms give you the ability to develop an audience and commoditize attention.

Online marketplaces exist for you do directly provide value to the consumer, and many of them cost you nothing. You can freelance on Fiverr to build up a body of work and experience while making money on your skills. You can directly sell assets in online marketplaces like Creative Market.

You can write a book and directly sell on Amazon or iBooks, or develop app for Google Play or the App Store. You can even produce your own films, education videos or comedy skits and monetize on YouTube.

If you prefer audio, Anchor.FM is free and can allow you to directly monetize on an audio only platform through podcasting.

Develop your skills, then build your body of work and reputation, this is what many of us refer to as your "Personal Brand". The reason it is "Personal" is because you have OWNERSHIP.

The work you do for your employer, isn't always transferable, so you have nothing to show or not enough sometimes for all your skills and experience. You need ownership of your relationships and your reputation.

As you build your personal brand (body of work and reputation), you then need to deploy that against the market and monetize yourself.

Once you've mastered this you can build systems around leveraging other people (human capital) and automations that allow you to focus your energy and time where you want or where it has the most impact.

None of this requires you to go $80,000 in debt by the way, to have permission just to even try. Obviously this may not apply to you if you want to go into a regulated profession or industry: doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer. But here is a fun fact, if you're in those professions, you can scale your income, with the advice I've given here... because in the current economy, it is information/media that is commoditized at the highest value, and information can be packaged and sold at scale.... labor, even skilled labor, cannot.