Why Your Brand Is Everything: Justin Verrengia on Standing Out From the Noise
You post consistently, you share the opportunity, and somehow the room stays quiet. Meanwhile someone else in the same industry, selling something adjacent to what you sell, seems to attract people without even trying that hard. In this bonus session, Rhonda Swan sits down with her friend and mentor Justin Verrengia to unpack exactly why that gap exists, and effort alone doesn’t explain it.
As someone putting real hours into content that isn’t landing the way you hoped, you already know the frustration of doing everything the training told you to do and still blending into the noise. Justin’s own turnaround came from one specific shift, and Rhonda brought him on this call so he could walk through it in his own words.
Why do most marketers work hard and still stay invisible?
Rhonda’s diagnosis is blunt: most people online are all doing the exact same thing, driving traffic and pointing it at an offer, without ever establishing who they actually are. As she puts it, that habit “separates yourself from like 98% of the marketers out there in the marketplace because they’re all doing the same thing”. Nobody’s building rapport. Nobody’s giving a stranger a reason to remember them specifically, and then they wonder why no one wants to join them.
Her conclusion is the whole thesis of the session, stated as plainly as she can put it: “it’s because your brand is everything”. Not the product, not the compensation plan, not even the traffic numbers. The identity behind the content is what a stranger actually responds to first.
What does it actually look like to build a brand around who you are?
Justin’s own story starts a long way from where he is now. He describes living overseas with his wife on a small salary that barely covered a cramped studio apartment, teaching English simply because the money had run out and something had to give. Seven years into marketing online, his first five were failure after failure, and he says he genuinely couldn’t identify what he was doing wrong.
they all are generating traffic and slamming them into some sort of offer not establishing their brand not building a relationship not building a rapport and then they’re wondering why why don’t anybody want to join me
What changed wasn’t a new product or a better funnel. Justin built a specific, ownable identity around who he genuinely was, a self-described hippie Jedi persona that had nothing to do with hiding behind a generic marketer template and everything to do with actually being himself in public, consistently, across every piece of content he put out.
Why does targeting people who are just like you actually work better than casting a wide net?
This is the part of the conversation that runs against most people’s instinct. Justin didn’t try to appeal to everyone once he found his brand. He targeted people who shared his specific interests, down to the same books, the same worldview, the same way of talking about life. Narrowing the audience that tightly felt risky on paper. In practice it did the opposite of shrinking his reach, because the people who did find him already felt like they knew him before they ever spoke.
Rhonda ties this back to her own team’s approach, pointing out that you can niche down by something as specific as the books someone reads and still find plenty of people, because the internet is large enough that a tightly defined audience is still a real market. The tighter the identity, the stronger the pull for the people who actually belong in it.
What actually happened once Justin put this into practice?
The results Justin describes came fast once the brand was in place. As he tells it, “I had my first $26,000 month” within sixty days of applying the formula, a number that stunned him and his wife given that their original goal had been far more modest. Results like that aren’t typical, and Justin is upfront that they reflect years of prior effort and a specific system applied with real consistency, not an overnight formula anyone can skip straight to.
Rhonda closes the conversation by tying Justin’s turnaround back to the tribe’s larger pattern: a leader’s own growth tends to track directly with how many people on their team are also finding real traction, because momentum in a group compounds in a way that solo effort never quite does.
The full session goes further into how Justin generates targeted leads specifically through Facebook, using the same branding-first approach outlined here. Create your free account to watch the complete session and download the audio at empowernetwork.com/watch.
The full session transcript follows below.
Transcript
Hey everyone it's Rhonda again and I want to share with you this really super bonus video because I was able to bring on a really great friend of mine and even mentor Justin Varengia. So Justin, I'm super glad that you're here. Yes I appreciate you so much. I'm so glad that you're here because we've been shooting this video series all week for everyone, and they just got to see all the testimonials of our tribe. You know, people that we work with, you work with them as well, have a huge influence on our tribe. You know, I started working with you just 15 months ago, it's amazing how quick things can really happen.
Like that. I know, really, and it's funny because when I first met Justin I was like, who is this hippie jedi guy? But as you know I'm into branding, right? I'm like, wow, that's a pretty unique brand. And so I wanted to bring you out here just to really share with our viewers, you know, the results that you've had. And the formula that we rolled out to everyone is really a formula. It's been around for a long time we just really make it our own. So share a little bit about how you've taken the results that you've had and been able to create using the system that we've got and get everyone a little more excited.
Yeah, totally, I'll start just by letting you know where I was three years ago in my life. I was living in China, out of all places in the world, and the reason we were there is, it was an opportunity for us, my wife and I, when I say us, to be able to teach English to Chinese students. And the reason we did that was because we were able to teach English to Chinese students. Wow. So the reason we did that is because we were unable to afford our rent in Costa Rica. At the time we lived in a 300 square foot studio apartment, we were renting it for $450 a month. And then after six months of being there, I'm like, crap, the money dried up, and we needed to do something. So that's what we did, and I was earning a salary there of $1,200 a month. And if you do the math, it's like $14,400 a year.
Wow. That's where I was three years ago. So wait hold on you have to hear this though Justin's talking. Where are you at right now? I mean, your results are ridiculous, of course everyone needs to know, results are not typical, right? We're really not typical people, because we work our butt off, we love what we do. What is your results been so far?
I know it's going to sound crazy, but my dream two years ago was to earn $5,000 a month, because it's the simple things for my wife and I that mean the most. Just being able to have the freedom to not have to stress overpaying the bills, it's the little things. However, in the last two years, my wife and I have earned over a million dollars utilizing the system that we have in place. How did we do it? It works, and I ain't seen nothing like it. And I've been marketing online for seven years now, my first five years was just failure after failure, I just couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. Once I started branding myself and applying the teachings and actually using the system, everything transformed almost overnight.
I think. From the time of going from zero, within 60 days of utilizing the formula, I had my first $26,000 month. My wife and I were like in shock, we're like, we were in this to make five grand, yeah, right, made 26 grand in a month. So it's just been a crazy ride, yeah, right on. Well, you know, it's interesting, because as you remember the last video I shared with you our formula, right, which is the tried and true formula, but we made a twist on it, because we really include branding heavy attraction marketing, which I know that you're huge on is.
Well, and also I shared with you guys how we generate Facebook leads. I mean, really, I learned the methods from you on really how to generate low-cost leads, very attracted and targeted to our niche. At some, really finding people that want what we have to offer, you know. So share a bit about how, you know, how you do started to do that, really building your brand from. Yeah, totally. And I just want to give you a lot of credit, and because it's you who taught me more about branding myself, which took my time and effort to get me to where I am today.
Business to the next level. I have this brand called the hippie Jedi, just like you're the unstoppable family. And once I started targeting people like me, my business transform. Because I started working with people who have some of the same ideas, they read some of the same books that we read. So we really connected. And I feel if you can speak somebody's language, the right language, they can understand. It's, it's, there's no limit to what you can do. And that's the difference from where we were once we started branding ourselves.
So being able to use a brand, another thing that is completely unique and different that works so well. It separates yourself from like 98% of the marketers out there in the marketplace, because they're all doing the same thing. They all are generating traffic and slamming them into some sort of offer, not establishing their brand, not building a relationship, not building a rapport. And then they're wondering why, why don't anybody want to join me? It's because your brand is everything.
Yeah, I just want to say thank you. Yeah, I mean it's such a, you know. And I know that you had already started that, we really started working together, the things that we, this is what I love about mastermind, it's what I love about our tribe. Right, you get so many great people that know so many different things, and when you start bringing it all together. You know, Justin's very unique, he targets people that are just like him. And you heard a couple nuggets, he said the books that they read, think about that. You can target the books that people read, right? That's another way to niche and find the people that are just like you and attract them just like you.
So, you know, Justin, it's pretty cool, because we've had some ridiculous results for my family in the last 15 months. It's super exciting. So I don't really share it, but I do want to, because Justin was a really big part of that. And I'm really working together, really allowed people to, to really see what's, what's possible. You know, we, we've, we've reached over 300,000 the first 15 months in business. Yeah, and we just hit our six figure mark in this last month, that's a massive, right? Feels good. I know it gets me all excited, I get goosebumps thinking about it.
It's like, wow, to think of that. All you have to do is really put your focus on. Follow a very simple formulaстрой necessarily simple just a сталastiley formula, it is what it is, right? You just have two ahora de palo de foto. And results can pop out the other end. You have to put some time, dedication, and effort into it, right, because we never tell one the fake dream.
You know, I just want to stress that, because this is so important, the reason we have such, but nominal, unbelievable result. We're willing to work harder than most people. I know I had a lot of people won't cal 이거는 i catapult working agreement with, more importantly with, you have a box wanna, leaders. Your income is where it's at because of all the success on your team, that's right. And I want you to realize that people don't earn these sorts of figures in their income, in their business, unless a lot of people are succeeding. And a lot of small victories equal a massive victory for the entire tribe, that's right, absolutely.
So guys, you heard it. I wanted to bring Justin here, I want to thank Justin for coming. And remember, we are, we're cooking up something pretty sweet, so don't forget, to uh, to make sure you're at the next video. When we invite you to our very special opportunity to work along with us, to utilize not only the system but the trainings that we offer to our people. So guys, pay attention to your email, and I don't know exactly when they're going to get it. But as soon as you get the email and the doors open up, take advantage of it, because it's for a very very limited time. This is a very very small window to leverage off of what we've created that has created this fortune for us. Yeah, and the lifestyle, which is even more important, that's right. So be unstoppable, we'll see you next time, cheers.