Personal branding is the practice of marketing and communicating yourself, your career, your business or product line (especially if your name is attached to it), your expertise or opinions, or any other facet of yourself. It can involve the use of your name, likeness, or other representation of yourself in the promotion of a product, service or intellectual property (IP). Again, it is the alignment of what you say about yourself with what you actually do, and how that shapes people’s perceptions of you.
Some of the world’s most successful brands were started as personal brands: Ford Motor Company, Harkins Theatres, Nordstrom, Newman’s Own, and Walmart, just to name a few. Well-established entertainers, sports figures, authors, and entrepreneurs all have their personal brands to advance their individual business interests. And God has blessed all of them with varying levels of financial success. But few are demonstrably Godly brands.
Why? Because, if lived out properly, Godly branding adds a foundational layer of brand delivery based on the behaviors, actions, and beliefs of Jesus and God followers who are chronicled in the Bible.
Through the Lord’s guidance and research into the lives of 30 or so of the most well-known figures in the Scriptures, they all had qualities in common. From Moses to James the Apostle or Hannah to Mary, the mother of Jesus, there are recurring qualities to their brands that felt like a distillation of all the lessons, laws, and God-inspired guidance that we see throughout the Scriptures.
There are literally thousands of verses throughout the Scriptures that instruct us how we should live.
Here is just a small sampling:
- Deut 5–6
- John 13:34–35
- Rom 12
- Eph 4:17–32
- 1 Cor 13
- Gal 5:13–26
- 1 Pet 1:1–25
- 1 Pet 2:11–25
How does one reconcile these passages and many others in the Scriptures into his or her personal makeup? As the Holy Spirit-inspired Word of God, we—as His followers—must obey all of His laws and decrees. That said, there are a lot of qualities to live by that are crammed into these chapters and verses that include the 10 Commandments, the love chapter from 1 Corinthians, Jesus’ commission to His disciples, multiple references from the Apostle Paul in his various epistles, and much more.
Most Christians hear or read these passages, get the gist, and attempt to live their lives accordingly. Certain verses stick with us, though. John 13:34–35 comes to mind: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Josh 24:15 is another: “…as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” First Corinthians 13:2 is yet another: “…if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” And there are many, many others.
But how do these God-instructed behaviors translate into how you act and your overall Godly brand?
First, we must look at the life of Jesus. He modeled the perfect brand that God the Father calls us to live by. He obeyed His Father in all He did, and thus glorified the Father with a perfectly sinless life. The challenge for many believers may be that Jesus’ model is an unsustainable, unachievable standard due to His being the Living Son of God. Intellectually, we get it. We strive to live by Jesus’ example knowing that we’ll fall short; however, the pursuit of the model is worthy.
Sometimes, it’s easier to look at the examples of others who are closer to us in standing, maybe even perceivably worse. In comparison to a murderer, an egregious adulterer, or persecutor of the church, we can more easily relate to the sinful nature of these people, and even see ourselves and our sin in a different light. That’s one of the many reasons that the Bible simply isn’t just the story of Jesus; it involves many others who sinned, repented, and were saved, like Moses, David, and Paul. In those frail, human, sinful examples, we see ourselves.
As it turns out, when you look at the lives of the 30 or so most commonly known figures in the Bible, certain brand attributes begin to emerge across all of them. In fact, there are eight attributes that they have in common. You could call these eight attributes a repeated model for how they lived their lives and how others perceived them. Of course, this model maps right back to Jesus and His life on earth. The big difference is the encumbrance of sin in the lives of the various biblical figures. These eight attributes include the following:
1) loves others
2) shows patience
3) demonstrates a servant mindset
4) trusts and obeys God’s commands
5) forgives
6) glorifies God through thankfulness
7) is a member of God’s church/community
8) is an agent of change for God’s kingdom.
If God called His followers in the Scriptures to live out these eight brand attributes, He calls us to do the same, meaning that living out a Godly branded life comes with certain expectations. How Jesus and other biblical figures reflected these eight brand attributes in everything they did is explained in Your Godly Brand as well as how these branding concepts apply to all God followers today.