How to Develop Your Personal Brand

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show or, if this is your first time listening, thanks for joining me. You’re hearing Faithful on the Clock, the podcast where every line in the code runs to get your faith and work aligned. You’ll be learning today about personal branding. Should Christians develop a personal brand? And if so, how do you do it? The episode is a bit of a longer one today because there’s a lot to cover, but let’s figure it all out together starting right now.

So, if you’re new to the idea of personal branding, it’s not all that different from the branding you might do with a company, OK? And when most people think about company brands, they think, OK, we’re just trying to control the reputation of the products or the enterprise. So, you might be tempted to think of personal branding as managing your own reputation. But Harris Monarth, he had a really good explanation of personal brand in Harvard Business Review, and he said, and I’m quoting here, “Your reputation is made up of the opinions and beliefs people form about you based on your collective actions and behaviors. Your personal brand, on the other hand, is much more intentional. It is how you want people to see you. Whereas reputation is about credibility, your personal brand is about visibility and the values that you outwardly represent.”

Now, there are two things I want you to take away from those definitions. The first is that your reputation is going to suffer if your behaviors contradict what you’re communicating for your brand. So, if you advertise one thing but do another, that’s a reputation killer, OK? Nobody is gonna trust you if you do that, and your reputation is going to be really bad because you’re not, you know, walking the walk, so to speak. So, if you read between the lines on that, what do you have to have for a good personal brand? You’ve gotta have consistency. You have to behave the same way in different environments. And you get visibility from intentionally moving into environments where you can exercise your value-driven behaviors within a reasonable level of tolerance. If your value-driven behaviors exceed the expectations of those in a given environment, people will criticize you or even boot you out.

So, the second thing with personal branding is, it’s really just about authenticity. You have to figure out what you believe in and what you stand for. Your values are gonna determine how you behave, OK? They’re like a North Star for what you do. So, the kicker is, if you don’t know who you are, guess what. There’s no way you can do personal branding work, because without your core values figured out, without authenticity, you won’t have any cornerstones to build anything solid on.

Now, there are a lot of reasons why you might not know what your values are and struggle to be authentic. Maybe your caregivers always told you exactly what to do or think and you never really figured out your own ideas. Or maybe their messages to you were all just all over the place and you couldn’t orient to anything. And sometimes, if you’re young, maybe you just don’t have enough life experience yet to really have figured out what matters to you. Or maybe, you know, you get going later in life, and all of a sudden, you have a crisis where things you thought mattered don’t seem all that important anymore. A lot of people run into that when they go to retire and have to figure out who they are without their work. And in all those scenarios, it’s not necessarily your fault for not having things figured out, OK?

But the bottom line is, if you want to create a personal brand, you have to have some key beliefs to anchor to. And what I want you to know within that is that self-discovery is not an overnight process. You might hear the word branding and think of it like any other work project where you can just put a deadline on it. But this is an ongoing process, and you might not be really ready to build a personal brand for years. It might take a lot of really intense work, and I want you to be prepared for that. And just like companies might have to tweak or rebrand a little bit, as you keep learning and discovering things about the world and about yourself, you might find that your personal brand needs a little facelift sometimes, too. That’s all totally OK.

So, all of that said, before we go any further, let’s just address whether you should try to develop a personal brand at all. From the Christian perspective, I love what Samuel Brebner wrote in his blog about this. I’ll link to it in the notes. But he identifies three big dangers of personal branding, the first of which is that charisma becomes more important than character. So, to put that another way, if what you’re showing people has draw, then it’s OK to not behave like Christ. And we see that sometimes with pastors or other Christian leaders, where they have these huge followings, but when you dig a little under the surface, they’re really causing damage. The second danger is that you don’t say anything that would damage your brand. So, this is where you might not take a stand on what God really says because you don’t want to risk offending anybody and having them stop following you. And then, finally, fame isn’t morally neutral, which is just to say, when you do get a lot of people following you, when you become well known, there are temptations that come with that. So, you have to be ready to resist all that and have some good accountability tools in place. You can consider what the apostle Paul said writing to the people in Thessalonica, too. In 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, he tells them, “...make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” Now, another problem with personal branding I personally see right now is that there’s such an emphasis on monetizing. It’s all about how you can essentially take your story and make money off of it. And if you have that focus, it’s really easy to have greed start running the show and to make it all about being comfortable in the world. You know, it becomes about what you’re getting from being yourself rather than what you’re contributing. And on top of that, we have this message now that you can’t even compete if you don’t have a personal brand, so there’s just all this pressure and stress around marketing yourself, when all God really just wants you to do is go out, live your life, and do the best you can for Him. It plants this seed of fear that you’re not gonna make it if you don’t turn yourself into a commodity, and that’s never what God intended you to be. You’ve gotta know you’re more than that, OK?

On the other side of the argument, the Bible Daily website connects personal branding to your gifts. Remember, God gifts everybody gifts, right? And we all can use those gifts we have to bring him glory. And they point out on the website that if you don’t have a personal brand, if you don’t develop your gifts, then it’s hard for people to understand you even have those gifts. You expose yourself and the God who made you to just a few people. And Alex Miranda, who runs the Daily Godpreneur website, he puts it like this, “Christian personal branding is the calling on an individual who follows the word of God and is essentially marked for the world to take notice. It’s already obvious in how you speak, how you act, and how you carry yourself because the word of God isn’t just a hat that you wear and take off whenever you want to — it has branded you.” So, you’re already meant to put your authentic self out there, OK? That’s what he was getting at. And it’s not a part-time gig. It’s something you’re supposed to engage in all the time. But, he makes the connection between personal branding and authenticity really clear, and he says, “Just be authentic. Don’t fake it. If you do not truly believe in putting God first in your personal brand, then followers won’t, either.” And back to the Bible Daily website, to paraphrase just slightly, they say, “The question is, what’s your main intention behind showing people what you’re gifted to do? Is it to prove to others that you’re relevant, or to make a Christ-centered impact in the world aside from the normal?” And they make a great point, too, that if you’re a Jesus follower, you don’t brand yourself like unbelievers do. You’re trying to set yourself apart from the world and not look or behave like the world does.

So, to simplify, if your personal branding is to glorify God, you know, if you’re doing it so you can be visible to get the message out and help people, you’re golden. But if you’re doing it to draw attention to yourself, then your heart’s not in the right place. You gotta check that ego of yours and reorient back toward God, OK? Livedesignonline.com says it all really comes down to three things or three questions, which are, what are my motivations, what are my goals, and who will keep me accountable.

So, now that we’ve cleared up what personal branding is and whether it’s OK for Christians to do, the obvious question is, well, OK, how do you develop a personal brand of your own? We kind of hit the first step of this already, and that’s just figuring out who you are, figuring out your values. But to just expand on that just a bit, I think you have to think about your story. We all have a story, right? And there might be defining moments in yours, times that have shaped you. What has God taught you or allowed you to do? Or to put it another way, what solutions are you able to offer to people? Because the way you help people is how they’re gonna remember you. That’s what becomes your brand, and it’s really what defines the value you have to others. So you have to look at that and communicate it, because if people don’t know your story and what your offer is, it’s gonna be really hard for them to connect with you. They’re gonna be like, I’ve got no reason to trust you — I don’t know anything about you and I’ve got no idea what’s motivating you to do anything at all. So, you turn your truth into your brand narrative and say this is where I’ve been and this is where I want to go. And just like companies have mission and vision statements, try to come up with something that really sums up the core of the narrative, both so you don’t lose sight of it and so that it’s easy to pass along to others when you get the opportunity. For me, I find it incredibly helpful to fill in the blanks on this statement, which is, “I believe God has given me this core message X — you know, whatever your core message might be for you — that I might serve Him by Y — and you know, Y is your personal brand game plan and goal.

So, that brings me to the second step, which is to create and implement a more logical game plan for how you’re going to communicate and where you’re gonna engage with other people. That might mean, OK, I’m gonna get on certain platforms or reach out to specific people face-to-face. It includes things like, OK, what kind of photo am I gonna have to have to send the right vibe about who I am and choosing a target audience. And you can break this down for like, a year, or a month, maybe week by week, however detailed you wanna be about it. And part of the beauty of personal branding is that it is 100 percent unique. I mean, you are the only you, so by definition, no one else can have the brand you develop. And that means that your plan is never gonna look like anyone else’s. There’s a ton of flexibility in that where the way you present yourself should feel really good and natural if you get it right. You don’t have to do what others do, even if they swear it works. But the boundaries have to be in that plan, all right? You have to know what you’re going to say yes to and what you’re gonna reject. Because otherwise, you know what happens? People start to twist your story. They try to make the brand narrative what they want it to be so it can benefit them. So, good boundaries are what keep you in control of the story you’re telling and how it gets out. And this includes things like having control over your resources like your website so everything stays consistent, right? And you might discover as you try to put this game plan together that there are skills or facts you still need to get. That’s 100 percent OK. If you need to take some classes, go talk to people to learn, you do that. Don’t be afraid to make some mistakes to put yourself into the position you need to be in, because remember, that’s an opportunity to show people the character and personal integrity you have, and all of that is gonna build trust over time. That’s just part of the process. But make sure you’ve got some way to measure the success of what you’re doing, both quantifiable and qualitative measures, because otherwise, you don’t really have a way to define how you’re going to hold yourself accountable.

So, the third and final step of personal branding is analyzing feedback and other data like your website traffic. Because remember, psychology tells us that people have all kinds of blind spots and biases. And so, we might think we’re coming across a certain way, and in reality, we’re not hitting the mark at all. So, just like companies are gonna listen to their customers, you’re gonna listen to people when they tell you what’s working and what’s not. And you’re gonna use that feedback to fine-tune your message. And the objective here is not to change your mission or goal to what people are demanding, right? Because remember, when you represent God, you’re not of the world, and the world can reject you. So, the idea is not to let people change your path, but rather to understand how to convey your ideas so that they land and people understand them better. And if along the way, people point out to you where you’re not consistent, that’s where you do some soul searching. You look at your habits, repent, and you try to raise that bar for yourself.

So, I think that’s as comprehensive as I can fit into the time we have, but hopefully I’ve given you enough of a start on this that you at least understand the main points of what personal branding takes. You can look at the resources I’ve mentioned throughout this episode in the show notes.

But let me just send you off with a prayer.

Lord, I thank you today that you have made every single person on this Earth to be completely unique. And I just pray, Father, for courage. Because it isn’t easy to be bold and say, “This is who I am.” We get scared to do that. So, help us remember that the reason we need to be courageous is not for ourselves, but for You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

I’ll leave it there for you, everybody. Next time, I’ve got an incredibly special episode I’m super excited about — I’m gonna have husband and wife power couple, 4-time Grammy winner Charlie Peacock and author Andi Ashworth as my guests. They’ve got a wonderful new book we’ll take a look at and just a massive amount of insight to share about building a career while remembering why all the little things in life count. In the meantime, go to faithfulontheclock.captivate.fm to subscribe to our email list or to become a supporting member. Until next time, listeners, be blessed.