Hearing the term “marketing” can bring up a mixture of feelings. On the positive end of the spectrum, maybe you think of a funny and creative ad you’ve seen recently. On the other hand, maybe you think of spam and scams, or a bad experience receiving a product or service that was not-as-advertised. Maybe when you think of marketing, you’re wondering how you can promote yourself better to get your next job. But you probably don’t think of Jesus. Our guest today, Darren Shearer, explores the gospels to discover how Jesus became the most influential person in history. He’ll tell us how applying Jesus’ methods and principles to marketing have helped him in his work. Darren is the founder and CEO of High Bridge Media, and his latest book is Marketing Like Jesus: 25 Strategies to Change the World.
Marketing Like Jesus: 25 Strategies to Change the World, by Darren Shearer
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Leah Archibald: Making It Work is brought to you by The Max De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary and the Theology of Work Project.
Mark Roberts: Welcome to Making it Work.
LA: Through conversation, scripture and stories, we invite God into work’s biggest challenges... so that you can live out your purpose in the workplace.
MR: I’m Mark Roberts.
LA: And I’m Leah Archibald. And this is Making It Work.
Hearing the term “marketing” can bring up a mixture of feelings. On the positive end of the spectrum, maybe you think of a funny and creative ad you’ve seen recently. On the other hand, maybe you think of spam and scams, or a bad experience receiving a product or service that was not-as-advertised. Maybe when you think of marketing, you’re wondering how you can promote yourself better to get your next job. But you probably don’t think of Jesus. Our guest today, Darren Shearer, explores the gospels to discover how Jesus became the most influential person in history. He’ll tell us how applying Jesus’ methods and principles to marketing have helped him in his work. Darren is the founder and CEO of High Bridge Media, and his latest book is Marketing Like Jesus: 25 Strategies to Change the World.
Darren Shearer, welcome to the Making It Work podcast.
Darren Shearer: Good to be with you, Leah. Thanks for having me.
LA: So this was a really fun read, I have to say, and there are a lot of books today that you could buy that offer to teach you how to lead like Jesus, or how to teach like Jesus, or how to pray like Jesus. You wrote a book on how to market like Jesus, tell me what drove you. What in your experience of either marketing or working with marketers made you feel like this was a lesson that people needed to learn?
DS: Yeah, I just had a notary in my house last week, as a matter of fact, and we were talking before he left, just about ways that he can market his business. And so he was interested... Found out that I had a media company, he was interested in what I was doing. And before he left, I gave him a copy of this book. Before I did, I asked him, "Who do you think is the greatest marketer of all time? Who's the most incredible, effective, strategic influencer?"
And that's really how I define marketing, strategic influence. And he said some marketing guru, and that's typically the answer you'll get, whether it's Richard Branson or just any pop stars that do a particularly good job with influencing people. And then, of course, my favorite part was when I presented the book to him, and that has right there on the cover, "Marketing like Jesus." And...
LA: So what was the look on his face? Did it change a little bit?
DS: It was kind of interesting because he had said some off-color things during our conversation, and I had not really kinda indicated to him that, "Hey, I'm a Christian. I love Jesus, I wanna do things like Jesus did," until that moment. And then it really just kind of opened up, he's like, "Well, yeah, I like Jesus. I'm a Christian, I spend time in the Bible in the mornings," and things like that. So it was actually kind of an evangelistic opportunity as well, but the reason I wrote this book is not necessarily to... Well, certainly I want people to draw near to Jesus and get to know him more, but I don't think you have to go look after the latest pop star or marketing guru.
Jesus is... One out of three people in the world claimed to be a follower of Jesus, 2000 years after he walked this Earth. And so I just went through the gospels for about a year. In fact, I was living in New York City, I wrote the first draft of this book on subways, going to and from work, on my phone. And just really looking at the Gospels of, What did Jesus... How did he influence people in a very strategic way? You see some of this in... I don't know if you all watched The Chosen series, but you get the sense that Jesus was very strategic in what he was doing, as you watch that show.
And the way that he would send his disciples to the towns where he was about to go. These are things that Jesus was doing and some people... Makes people feel kinda uncomfortable. Like the idea that Jesus did sermon prep, for example, he didn't just at the Sermon on the Mount, stumble across a random bunch of people sitting on a hill and just went off the cuff and shared a message. This was at least what they were communicating in The Chosen, and I believe this as well, is it was a very planned event. And so it's just another opportunity for us as workplace people, to get to know Jesus and see another facet of Jesus. That's really what I wanted to explore in this book.
LA: Were there any particular marketing strategies that you uncovered in your study of the gospels that surprised you, that made you say, "Wow, Jesus did this thing that I do in my marketing today?"
DS: Well, yes. For example, having a target group. I work with authors, we've actually now published over 135 books by God's grace, and so I worked with a lot of authors, and I'll ask them, "Who is this book for?" And they'll say, "Oh, this book is for everybody." Well, that's ideal, and Jesus certainly had a big vision as well, go into all the world, preach the gospel. So it wasn't just in his kind of backyard, and so what we can learn from that as marketers is that we need to have a clear target group as well. When a woman came to get healing for her demon-possessed daughter, Jesus said, "I have come for the lost sheep of the house of Israel." And so he wasn't saying that, "I don't care about you, I don't care about your daughter, I don't care about other people," He was just saying that in this finite time that I'll be on this Earth doing ministry, I'm going after a very specific group of people and it was a specific ethnic group, and then even within that ethnic group, it was the people that were on the fringes. And I think this is why you see the lost sheep that are part of his core team, these were not the power brokers of his society, but really kind of the outcast.
And so that's one thing that I think surprised me, was that Jesus was very exclusive in who he came to reach in terms of how he was going to spend his time, is probably a better way to think about it. He loved everybody, for God so loved the whole world that he gave his son. But in terms of how he was going to spend his time, you just can't reach everybody, but you can reach somebody and then leave it to the Lord to do the work of spreading the flames of whatever that message is that you're bringing to the world.
LA: What interests me, Darren, is that you're a marketer and you're seeing Jesus as a marketer, and so there's this beautiful parallel of, "Well, I wanna be like Jesus, and I can kind of counter-play my career on his career, in the same way that people who are masons or blue collar professionals can see Jesus as a carpenter, as a stone worker, working in their trade." I wonder, Mark, you have talked to a lot of people in your career as a pastor, about Jesus. Do you see Jesus wearing a lot of different hats depending on who it is that you're talking to?
MR: Well, yes, and that's part of what I find, Darren, so interesting about what you're doing. Darren, I think you're understandably and wisely aware that some people would be... It would be hard for them to think about Jesus as a marketer. Even... I love it. Even Jesus as a guy preparing a talk. "Nah, he's the son of God, come on, he can just wing it." But the thing that you got me thinking about, is, okay, we know that for about 18 years of his life, Jesus was a carpenter or a craftsman, as the Greek would translate it, and we also know by virtue of the fact that his father was, that he pretty much went into his father's business. Now, most people think that Joseph, at some point, died. So Jesus would be a carpenter, you say, "Well, he's a carpenter, he's not a marketer." No, he's a small business owner.
DS: Yeah.
MR: He's gotta sell his stuff and... If you think about it that way, and I'm not like off on some really weird tangent of biblical scholarship. What I'm saying here is really almost certainly true, that Jesus is a small business owner. He's also got a big family he's supporting, he's got all his brothers and sisters, so he's gotta make some money. It's almost certain that Jesus, a small business owner, must have done some literal marketing. I mean marketing to sell stuff, not just influence. And yet, that's a part of Jesus, unfortunately, we don't know it, we don't know that from the gospel, we can't see what he did. But I think the fact of his background before he got really into his messianic work, even more supports your point.
That then when he got into doing the work of preaching, and healing, and drawing the disciples, and training them and all the stuff he was doing, it was... He was continuing on using some of the skills that he'd developed over 18 years of his life. Now, I just find that fascinating and very challenging, because I think it is hard for a lot of us to think of Jesus in such practical, everyday terms. But I think you're really pushing us to think about that and take that seriously, and then learn from him for the work we do. So I love that connection you're making, Darren.
DS: Yeah, and I love the perspective of Jesus as a craftsman, and I think we would see this showing up throughout all of the influence that he did, not just as a carpenter, but just think of the painstaking attention to detail that carpentry would require and how Jesus would have applied that to really, every message that he delivered, was very, very methodical, very, very carefully craft... We like to think, as you mentioned, we would like to think of Jesus as just kind of winging it and just speaking off the cuff, because he just has that insight, that ability.
But I don't know, he's a human, he's right there with us, and if he's not going to tell us to do our work with all of our heart as working for the Lord, if he's not doing his work with all his heart and all of the attention to detail that that requires.
MR: That's right on. And a good... A successful carpenter does not wing it, there is a plan. Often, literally a plan, if not just a plan. You've got to do things in the right order, and you gotta know what you do, you gotta buy the materials that you need, etcetera, etcetera. And it's impossible to imagine that Jesus would have been any good at his "day job" if he was just the winging it guy.
And so again, you're focusing, and I think rightly so, on the work he was doing once he sort of outed himself as the Messiah and was preaching, teaching... But it's just interesting to think that that's not necessarily just this brand new completely discontinuous thing he was doing. And I think your point is a really good one, that... And it just stretches us to think of Jesus that way, but it's so important because I think they're gonna... I'm sure there are lots of marketers who are faithful followers of Jesus, and don't see their work as really any significant way, connected to Jesus, right?
Because, "Well, I'm just a marketer, I'm trying to sell stuff, I'm trying to advance the brand or help... " etcetera, etcetera. Whereas, what you're doing is building bridges, I think, between the experience of people who are doing this kind of work, that's important work, and then Jesus and his work. And then you're also challenging the rest of us, 'cause I'm not a marketer per se, but I am, in your definition, someone who is wanting to be an influencer or to be strategic.
And so then you're challenging me to think about how I can be like Jesus in the work I'm doing.
DS: Awesome. Well, that's encouraging.
LA: So let's go to this bigger vision of folks who are not just marketers. Because like I said in the introduction, we're all being pushed to market ourselves in one way or another today. And maybe everyone always was marketing themselves, but we just didn't have that language to describe it. But today, we really have the savvy-ness in the work world, that I should be my own brand, and I need to be working on my touchpoints and my elevator pitch if I wanna move forward in my career. But there's something... There's also this hangover from religiosity that's telling me I really shouldn't be so self-focused or... So Darren, tell me how do individuals like me really move forward to own what might be like a God-given version of self marketing?
DS: Yeah. Well, I don't necessarily think of it as self marketing, as in marketing oneself, although personal branding is an aspect of it. And you see this with Jesus in the way that he would describe himself as the door, as the good shepherd, all of the different kind of word pictures that he would use to use these everyday concepts to help people understand what he was about, which ultimately was about the kingdom.
And doing his father's will and all of these things. And so I don't think somebody can really know what you're about until they know who you are, which is where the branding comes into play. So that's probably an important part, it is to recognize that this is not about you, this is about something much bigger, and I think I'm speaking to Christians here on this show. And ultimately what our mission is, is to know him and to make him known, and we do that, that really is marketing, making him known, that's marketing. And that all comes through in the way that we do our job. Hey, that's marketing, that's gonna either lead people toward or away from Jesus.
And so we're all... Whether we're selling something or trying to get somebody to vote for us, or trying to get somebody to come to our church, or whatever you're... Or trying to get your kids to get in line. It's really all marketing. It's a strategic influence, and I think that's what we see Jesus doing throughout the Gospels.
MR: You know, Darren, I think you rightly, in your book, identify one of the reasons we can be hesitant about marketing. So I wanna ask you about this. Can you talk about the difference between marketers and manipulators?
DS: Yeah, well, I think people automatically... Somebody or some entity comes to mind when they think about a manipulator that ripped them off, that promised one thing and actually delivered either nothing or something that was very, very unexpected in a negative sense. And I've had these experiences of where you learn forgiveness in the marketplace, where you get... I've gotten ripped off of or very, very early. In fact, I shared this example in the book of when I was just starting out as an entrepreneur trying to get a start-up going.
And I paid and didn't really properly vet this guy either, so there's a lot of lessons learned there, but ended up losing $5000 and had nothing to show for it. But hey, this guy was probably pretty confident in his sales abilities, having gotten $5000 out of me and not really had to do anything for it. And so I would consider that a manipulator, and that's... And one example is strategy five from the book. I don't know if you're ready to get into more of the specific...
LA: No go for it.
DS: Yeah, it's strategy five, and you could call it a strategy, call it a principle, whatever you want. But I think if you're doing marketing like Jesus, you're gonna offer results for every claim, and we all know those who have not done this, such as the example I just shared a little bit ago. But this shows up with Jesus where John the Baptist is really in his low moment in prison, and sends word to Jesus, "Are you the expected one or shall we look for someone else?" So this is the forerunner, this is Jesus' chief promoter.
And he's just almost convinced that this was all just a waste of his time to say nothing of his life that's on the line here. But Jesus says, go and report to John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight, and the lame walk, and the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. So Jesus is basically saying, look, the proof is in the pudding, here's everything I said I was going to do.
And Luke 4, where Jesus really effectively gives his mission statement of what he's going to accomplish, he says, this is all happening, and so go and don't just give him a pep talk or say, No, no, no, actually, I'm not... This is not all a waste, I am who I say. But he gives them the proof, shows him them the results. And so if you're looking for a promotion at work, you wanna go and share the results of what is... Now, when you hired me, this is what you hired me for, but now let me show you the specific tangible results of what I have accomplished here, that probably wouldn't have happened had I not been in this role. Go ahead, go ahead.
LA: Well, this happens in Matthew 11, and it's almost like Jesus is handing his disciples like the annual report of his ministry, like this is what we've done so far. The blind are receiving their sight and the lame walk, and the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear. And it's hard to argue with actual results in that way, and I think this is a very easy... Market with your actual results is a very easy stepping stone for people in their careers who might be nervous about self-promotion, our first step could be just logging some results.
I had a woman who was a mentor to me, and she said one of the best things that you can do is just have a spreadsheet saved on your computer somewhere called personal accolades or personal accomplishments, and whenever a client sends you a very complimentary email or you pull out something in at the last minute, something good happens, just note it in the spreadsheet, so you have a running record, 'cause everyone forgets come review time, they only remember what happens happened in the past few weeks. But if you set up for yourself this running record, it can be a good way for you to not only advocate for your work when everyone else forgets, but also a way to have some satisfaction in the real results that you've driven in your job.
DS: Yeah, yeah. And I think this also assumes that you already have clearly defined what your message is, what your value proposition is.
LA: What the results result should be, 'cause if you don't know what the results result should be, you can't keep a record of them.
DS: Yeah, 'cause if you go to your boss and you're like, Yeah, I led this blood drive, or I went out and did this that and the other thing, but it's not actually moving the needle in terms of your core, what you were really hired to do. And I think that comes with getting really abundant clarity about what your role is, what are you assigned to do. And then as you said, use spreadsheets, Google Docs, whatever you need to use to keep track of what you're actually accomplishing, and you'd just be shocked at how many organizations, how many individuals are not doing this, they're like, "Oh well, if they think that I'm doing a good job, then they're watching that and I'll just... "
When I was in the military, performance reports are a huge deal, and your boss basically comes to you and says, Draft up your report. And they're either gonna agree or they're gonna tweak some things, they're gonna add some of their own language and things like that, but they're gonna need you to write that yourself.
And you know when Jesus delivered the demon-possessed man at Gadar, he told him, "Go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how he had mercy on you." He didn't say, "Go home to your people and tell them that I'm the son of God," or "Go tell them this that," He tells him, just tell them what you have experienced and that's gonna be enough, because that's what Jesus was into, was results. And so if you're looking to get people to go talk nice about you and tell of what you have to offer, make it very tangible. And that's what Jesus did. But there are probably the most complex, as you can imagine, issue that came up in the book is, what about when, I don't know if ya'll wanna get into this or not. What about when Jesus said...
LA: We wanna get into it.
DS: For example, "I know I just healed you, but don't go and tell anybody about it." [laughter] So there were issues like that. I think that those were mostly earlier in his ministry when he would say, for example, to his own mother like, "My time has not yet come. I know you want me to work a miracle here with this wine situation, but my time has not yet come," and so there were some issues related to that.
MR: Yeah, but you think even practically. So you're a marketer, but suppose next week in church, you're supposed to like, I don't know, give the announcement for some event at church, and if in the middle of that announcement you start talking about your latest book, you shouldn't have done that.
So there's a time to talk about stuff and then there's a time not to. You have probably, and I'm sure listeners know people who are always marketing themselves, and so it isn't that they're talking about their work or their product that's a problem, it really is the indiscretion of just always doing it, right? When you're just hanging out, they're talking. So they're always selling. And that's inappropriate. So I think one of the things we learn from Jesus is pay attention to your audience and the timing, and even the message, there are certain ways to talk in a certain context and ways to talk in another context, and Jesus, I think, was aware that if the message gets out in the wrong way at the wrong time, it's actually not gonna be as helpful to people.
DS: Yes, yeah, I totally agree. And there's the maxim in sales, Always Be Closing, ABC Always Be Closing. I think that's not good. That's manipulation. That's not marketing like Jesus. That's not strategic influence the way that Jesus did. Maybe you might get some more sales that way, but you're probably gonna have fewer friends for one thing, and the people that, if your whole focus is on closing and not really on the person and helping to really identify what their needs are and the extent to which whatever you're offering can actually help to meet those needs, I don't think you really have studied your target group very well or maybe even not even defined what your target group. It's like this book is for everybody, and so you're gonna go try to sell a distinctly Christian living book to a group of non-Christians. It's probably you're not really understanding there are ways to write books for non-Christians as a Christian, but don't expect your non-Christian co-workers to wanna just go buy your devotional, because hey, it might not be time for that just yet.
LA: And that's... I was wondering, as you're saying this, if this seems harder today in a marketing culture where instant and newsworthy and news cycle has really been reduced in the scope of time, right? So here's Jesus at a wedding, you know, this is in John Chapter 2, and perfectly capable of doing a miracle, turning water into wine, and indeed that would be very helpful to the wedding guests and to the host, it'd be helpful to the host and to their reputation, and he's saying, "It's not my time to shine. I'm not the one who's supposed to be on the spotlight today." And I wonder if that message feels difficult, it feels more difficult to us today when we see... Especially the social media marketing, and look at everyone on Instagram prepping their latest thing for its launch. And I wonder if the waiting until we've really identified our target audience and that we have a compelling message for them, I wonder if that feels harder today?
DS: I think we all face that temptation of, well, I need to be more... You gotta be more active on social media, you gotta be telling people all these things that are going on in your life. And... I mean, just to see the patience of Jesus, I think it really... The difference is, when it's not about you, when it's about something bigger, I think you'll be more strategic. Because there were so many... Like, his brothers said to him, "Leave here and go into Judea, so that your disciples also may see your works, which you're doing. No one works in secret who seeks to be known openly," this is what they're saying to Jesus. "If you do these things, do them in front of the world," that's like the slogan for our narcissistic social media, we gotta show them everything culture. If you're gonna do it, do it in front of the world.
But Jesus responded to them and said, "My time is not yet here." But then later when the time was right, he said, "Let us go to Judea again." And so, I think part of that was, Jesus is concerned that his time might be up quicker had he gone there at that time. And I think that's where Thomas says, "Let's go and we'll die with you." But Jesus, regardless of why he waited on things and he was just... He was so strategic and careful about what he was doing.
LA: And that's another story from the Book of John, that's John Chapter 7, and I'm thinking of the way the whole Book of John, John's Gospel is written probably last in the timeline of the Gospels, and there's more focus on time. [chuckle] Jesus reflecting on time, both the time of his ministry and eternal time. So, it's interesting that we've just pulled out a whole bunch of scriptures from the Gospel of John. And Mark, I wonder if you have any thoughts of the time... The reflecting on the eternal time nature that Jesus talks about in the Gospel of John, and whether that's something that we could maybe lay a hold of today as we think about crafting our own image? Maybe that could help us get away from this kind of anxiety about crafting our own image.
MR: Man, that's a very interesting question. I think one thing, and both of you already talked about this, the influence of social media in general, but especially, social media has made people extraordinarily impatient and hurried, right? 'Cause you gotta get ahead, especially on social media, if you're gonna get attention, you gotta get ahead of everybody else. And so, what do you lose there? You lose reflectiveness, you lose... I mean, Darren you're talking about thinking strategically. You'll even lose strategic thought, you're just reacting. And we've seen so much in news cycles that get things wrong 'cause everybody's reacting so quickly and we can get caught up in that. So one thing, and this isn't entirely answering your question, Leah, but one thing that ought to happen for those of us who are Christians, we do need to have this expansive sense of time, that it's a long time and that it's God's time, that God has times in which things are right and appropriate, and times in which things are not.
And then we recognize... I think it's Psalm 31, Leah, you probably know. But I think it's around Verse 14 or 15, but where the psalmist... It says, "But I trusted you, O Lord. I say, you are my God, my times are in your hand." And just this notion that God holds the time of our lives. You know, if we really take that seriously, that's gonna... It's gonna move us out of this place of anxiety and rushing and that we've gotta control it all, and we've gotta do it all. It's gonna give us a very different sense of time. It's gonna help us deal with the craziness of the way time functions in our world today. So that's not everything, but that's just one thought.
LA: It's Psalm 31:15, my times are in your hand.
MR: Oh I guessed right. Way to go.
LA: Good memory. [laughter] Mark. But the Verse before is, I trust in you O God. That there's this trust that comes from knowing that the time is not something that I have to control, which I think does take a little bit of the pressure off, of I need to craft my image, I need to market myself, I need to make myself more ready for the next version of the job market. Perhaps one reason that Jesus could implement all these wise marketing tactics is because he knew that what... The message that he was selling was not just his persona, but was God behind it, you know?
DS: Yeah.
LA: And God had infinite time scale, and I think we can get a piece of that by repeating the Psalm ourselves, I trust in you O God, my times are in your hand. That we can hold on to God's time scale and feel a little less... Alright, I don't know, Darren, does that resonate with you at all?
DS: Yeah, yeah, it does. It makes me think about this term that scholars have given to the way Jesus would say, I know I just healed you, but don't go tell anybody. They call it the Messianic secret. And so, I think for each of us as individuals, there are some things that we should be able to just keep secret for a time and just wait for the peace of God to start to bring that forth as opposed to the idea that the disciples had, if you do these things, do them in front of the world. That's not God's way. That's certainly not Jesus' way. I mean, there are certain things that he certainly did demonstrate in front of... I mean, for example, rising from the dead. So, there are... But I think for a lot of us, there is just so much pressure to have to be constantly putting stuff out on social media. I don't really buy into that, and... I mean, I write on marketing, I think a lot about marketing, I encourage my authors to market well, market consistently, but that doesn't mean that you need... It doesn't even necessarily mean that you need to be putting stuff out on social media. Like the question is, where is your target group?
There are certain metrics that I track for my business, and one of those is not how many social media followers do we have, or how many likes do we have? But I can tell you it's... For our publishing company, it's how many authors are publishing multiple books with us? Which is about 45%. And then, how many books have we published that were referred to us by our authors, by an author that we have already worked with that was so satisfied... They were at least satisfied enough to go and refer their friend, their colleague, to publish with us, and that number is about 49%. Might even be a little bit over that now. But those are the two metrics that I wanna pay attention to, because I think that's another aspect of Jesus' marketing, is it was more on quality than quantity, because he could have gone and... He did preach in front of a lot of people, but we really see him spending the bulk of his time is pouring into those disciples, that core team.
And that's what I once said about me, is that I focused on a few regardless of how many ended up buying into what we're doing as a result of that, but focusing on the quality, the value that you are delivering, and whether you're a pastor, or whether you're a stay-at-home mom influencing your kids, whether you're selling things in the marketplace, or any combination of those, that we should really be focusing on the quality and the follow-up of the message that God has given to us.
LA: I like that, and I think that's a good place to end 'cause we've really come around full circle. [chuckle] From this point of, Gosh, how do I market myself? How do I keep on the treadmill of branding and message to actually do your work well. And the consistency of your message will follow from that, I actually feel like I got a lot of peace from this conversation in the end. So, thank you, Darren. Thank you for bringing the peace of a real marketer to bear on our toughest marketing questions, and the book for other people to go check out is, Marketing Like Jesus: 25 Strategies to Change the World. Darren, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today, it's been a pleasure.
DS: It was a lot of fun Leah and Mark, thank you all for having me, it was a lot of fun.