Like it or not, this creates your personal brand …

Even in this era of online marketing, a brand name still makes a difference.

“Anyone can launch a website, anyone can offer almost anything for sale. Only a brand offers trust, reliability, and ongoing quality. Thus, the brand becomes more important in the e-environment for it differentiates the firm in what would appear to be a common-level situation,” says Don Schultz, President of Agora, a marketing and consulting firm.

Brands are supposed to stand for the reliability and quality of a company’s products, and they also speak to the reliability and “quality” of individuals. In a time when leaders (or anyone!) stumble over themselves to create a “personal brand,” there’s still something that acts as a brand for every one of us: our word.

Bible scholar Howard Hendricks once said to his son, “Be so dependable that if you say you will be somewhere and don’t show up, they send flowers.”

Hendricks wasn’t the only one who thought keeping your word is important, Jesus also spoke to this issue. Pointing out that in ancient times people were told to keep their vows, Jesus pointedly teaches us to avoid vowing to do something, but instead, let our word be all that is needed …

“Just a simple, ‘Yes, I will,’ or ‘No, I won’t.’ Anything beyond this is from the evil one,” Matthew 5:37.

We should be able to be trusted with just a simple “yes” or “no.” Our personal credibility — or our “personal brand” — is wrapped up in whether or not what we say can be trusted. Regardless of the image you build about yourself, it will never exceed the dependability of what you say.

What kind of brand have you created for yourself from the dependability of what you say?

Scotty