Identify Your God-first Personal Brand With These 6 Steps
Updated: Jan 27, 2022
People have problems that need to be solved. And God uses people like me and you to help solve those problems. Personal branding is the outward expression of your calling to help others so that they can find you, learn about your solution, and be transformed by it.
What if you haven't honed in the calling that will be the foundation of your God-first personal brand?
That's what I want to help you with today.
I Struggled to Find My Calling
Why me? What qualifies me to help you? Because that's what my own God-first personal brand is...I help people discover their calling and bring it to life! But I didn't always know this.
In 2014, I started my journey of discovering my God-first personal brand through a Bible study I took in my church. We analyzed our gifts, talents, values, past experiences, and aspirations to uncover God’s vision for our lives for eight weeks. For others in the group, it was difficult to self-reflect. I often found myself helping others find their vision and not focusing on my discovery process. I felt frustrated because everyone else was making progress, but my ideas were all over the place.
Ironically, on the closing day of the 8th week, it became clear that my calling was to continue to help others discover their calling. All of my personal qualities, along with how the group was viewing me and the ease at which I was able to help them reveal God's vision for my business life. This transformed me; personally, it transformed my branding agency, and it set the course for my God-inspired teachings on Daily Godpreneur.
I decided that I wanted to be known for helping people discover what they were born to do and bring it to life through a purposed-focused brand. If that's what God called me to do, then come one and come all!
We All Are Responsible to Steward Our Calling
Like no other time in history, today's digital age gives someone in Kenya and Florida access to learning about what God has called us to do. God has handed us all the ability to go on missions around the world. Therefore we must understand our God-first personal brand to be the face of that message out there.
The problem is that the enemy also knows that we have a calling and will confuse us, causing us to delay and possibly never discover our personal brand calling.
But God has a solution.
The Bible says:
Beloved, do not believe every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1-3)
When 1 John was written, there were so many people claiming to be something they weren't. I believe some of these false prophets didn't do this out of bad intentions; they just didn't have a full picture of the gospel or themselves. They became personally branded as "false" because of a lack of correct knowledge. John's solution was to test their spirits.
Testing the spirit is at the heart of my Born to Do Method, a methodology I use to help my clients discover if the business they want me to brand is the business they should be in or if it's a misdirection from the enemy. In the end, I help them discern this and lead them towards what they are born to do.
If you want to know what message you were born to share with the world through your personal brand, it's going to start with God, go through Jesus Christ, filter through your holy spirit, flow through you to others, and bounce right back at you in the form of your calling.
Let's break this down for you in a practical exercise I share in my methodology, the Born to Do Method. It's also part of my book and course, How to Build a Christian Personal Brand.
Step 1. What you want to be known for is really what God wants to be known for.
In his book, The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren explains that we must first understand God's purposes for us to find our purpose. Our purpose will derive from one of God's purposes for humanity. The flow starts by first understanding that we are conduits of God's purposes.
So first, pick which of these do you feel called to help with:
Purpose #1: You Were Planned for God's Pleasure (entertain others)
Purpose #2: You Were Formed for God's Family (build communities)
Purpose #3: You Were Created to Become Like Christ (coaching, mentoring, personal development)
Purpose #4: You Were Shaped for Serving God (through products and services)
Purpose #5: You Were Made for a Mission (inventors, creators, method-makers)
Your first homework is to read Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life so you can soak in the order of things above.
Your God-First personal brand quest (which is a quest for personal fulfillment, satisfaction, and meaning) can only be found in understanding and doing what God placed you on Earth to do.
Step 2. Jesus already traveled the mission you want to go on Jesus
Guys, this journey God-first personal brand doesn't have to be so complicated! We have an example with can copy.
Jesus studied God's Word, was part of a God-first community, went to get baptized, heard from God, set out on a mission, and transformed people's lives. The Bible goes into a lot more detail, and you have to study his life so you can become more like him. By becoming more like him, your spirit then tunes in better on your calling from God.
It's not that we need to stop procrastinating and delay discovering our calling; it’s that we need more Jesus. When we do this, the heavens open up, and your calling can flow through to your spirit.
Step 3: Ask the holy spirit to move you
As you get to know Jesus and God's Word better, you begin to develop the habit of improving yourself, and God gives you the desire to learn even more about yourself so that the spirit can speak to you. For example, remember how I discovered my calling by being part of a Bible study. The act of gaining knowledge will move your spirit.
Some ideas: take courses, read books, get deeper into your craft, listen to podcasts. It's by seeking knowledge that the spirit guides you towards things you like (and away from something you dislike).
Trust your spirit's guidance; this is the heart of discovering what you were born to do.
Step 4: Ask others to describe you in a few words.
So we started with God, went through Jesus, landed on the holy spirit, and now the Spirit wants to use you to impact others. So going to other people's opinions and views of you is the next step in our journey of discovering our God-first personal brand.
Have ten people write down how they would describe your most helpful quality to them, and try to keep it anonymous. You want truthful answers from those you ask. You're asking people, “If you were to describe a time where I helped you the most because someone else needed that help too, how would you describe me to that other person?”
This step will often reveal your superpower, bringing you very close to uncovering your God-First personal brand calling.
Step 5: Take a sober assessment of yourself, too
I'm not going to ask you to fast and pray for 40 days and 40 nights, although that works for many people when they want to hear from God. Maybe consider a 1-day fast while also having a conversation with your own spirit and asking it to reveal how you help people most.
What was the one time you helped someone with something where you felt the most joy and meaning? It could have been a paid or free job. It could have happened at the dinner table or while doing an activity.
There's something in business that you help others with, giving you joy and meaning beyond making money. This is closely tied with what you want to be known for. Write all these things down.
Step 5. Collect and Categorize
Gather your answers as well as the answers from the others. Group similar traits and qualities together.
Some groupings have similar traits that you and others identified. These are traits congruent with your personal brand.
For example, somebody says that you are good at making them feel confident, and you have identified that you want to help more women become more confident in themselves. You could gather those two notes and put them next to each other. Repeat this process until you see the common pattern.
Step 6. Conclude on Your Calling
You should have some clusters of categories that you are now looking at. These are clusters for which God wants you to be known because they match what others already think about you! God will use others, along with your holy spirit, to help you conclude on your calling.
These overall traits or qualities will be the foundation for your God-First personal brand. You have now found the intersection between what other people think about you and how you see yourself.
Imagine if we all went through this activity to discover the message we're called to deliver on behalf of God through our personal brand. How much better would, then, our products and services be? How can we go wrong if God is first in our personal brand and business?
With the help of others and the holy spirit, it’s possible to discover our calling and bring to life the business God created us to start.
Next steps
For some, building a God-First personal brand will help them share their message as a speaker to audiences locally or even globally. For a God-first real estate agent, building their personal brand helps God bring them, new clients, through organic searches from people trying to buy homes in their area. For a young startup trying to work towards their first round of funding, focusing on elevating the founders’ God-first profiles may attract investors by adding credibility in their meetings before even meeting with investors. And a God-First personal brand will benefit someone who wants to launch a faith-based podcast to help them build awareness around their show’s topic.
God won't build your personal brand overnight. He wouldn't give you that burden. You have to grow into it as your spiritual walk grows. Imagine becoming a person of influence without the ability to influence correctly. That's why your influence grows as you grow with God. That's by design to protect you and others.
I hope that the Born to Do Method makes sense to you and that you find it useful in building your personal brand. If you have any questions about the steps, feel free to Tweet me @DailyGodpreneur.
If you found this article helpful, I encourage you to share it with your faith-based network. The more we help each other learn how to start building our God-first personal brands, the more effective products and services will be in the marketplace for us to enjoy and be transformed by! And if you have any God-First tips about starting a brand or processes that helped you, please share as a comment!
P.S. I did a Business bible study called 7 Steps to Launching Your Christian Personal Brand. Check it out:
This business Bible study will help you launch a God-first personal brand that will help you strategically, financially, and personally.
Developing your personal brand starts with launching something new and completely different from what you already have.
Also, coaches and Christian business leaders, you can use, edit, and repurpose the teachings for your own tribe! Check it out.
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