Nothing Hidden: How Brian Ahearn Built a Career on Ethical Influence and an Open Faith

Brian Ahearn was in the final round of interviews for a sales department job. Three other candidates were still in the running, and each had a clear strength: marketing, IT, finance. The hiring manager, Rick, asked him directly, "Why should I hire you?"

Brian slid a sheet of paper across the desk. It was his personal mission statement. The first line read: "When I die, I want to hear God say, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'"

"I knew I took a big risk," Brian says. "He could've said, 'Okay, I don't want this guy working for me.' But he hired me."

A Mission Statement Written in Order of Priority

Brian wrote that statement in the early 1990s after reading Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It named his priorities in a deliberate order: faith, family, personal wellbeing, and then career. It closed with a line he still stands behind: "I will never sacrifice my faith, family, or personal wellbeing for my career, because I work to live, I don't live to work."

The risk paid off in a way he did not expect. Because his boss always knew where he stood, Brian had room to lead. "Nothing I ever did had him go, 'Where did this come from?'" he says. Years later, when he was asked to run the company's internal university, the first thing he did was hand the same document to his new team. "I told them, 'This is who I am striving to be, and if I don't act in alignment with this, you have every right to call me out.'"

Nearly 35 years after writing it, he still reads or listens to it almost every morning, right after his Bible reading. "It just seeps into my soul every day."

Forty Years in a Noble Industry

This summer marked 40 years since Brian started in insurance, in July 1986. He met his wife on his first day at work, and they have been married 38 years. He did not choose the industry out of calling. Over time, though, he saw how much good it does. When tragedy strikes, insurance helps families get back on their feet. Its guarantees also give banks the confidence to lend and people the confidence to buy homes, cars, and businesses.

"I found that it was really a noble industry to be a part of," he says.

In the early '90s, at State Auto Insurance, Brian had what he describes as a transformative season in his relationship with God, learning to hear from the Holy Spirit and to see God actively at work in his life. He asked management for permission to start a Bible study. They said yes. A daily prayer chain followed, and eventually about one in ten employees took part.

It was not always easy. Some participants joined, he suspects, to stir up trouble. More than once Brian found himself in the HR office explaining a post. The group had a simple rule drawn straight from Scripture: if you have a concern with a brother or sister, go to them privately first, and bring it to the administrators only if that fails. Not everyone followed it. "But by the grace of God," he says, "it never got shut down."

Where Conviction Meets Ethical Influence

Brian's faith did not stay in the Bible study room. As a sales trainer, he taught the psychology of influence, drawing heavily on the research of Dr. Robert Cialdini. When he taught reciprocity, he reminded people that the idea is not new: "Better to give than receive. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Context mattered to him. A prayer chain is something people choose to join. A sales class is not. "If a class is specifically for this purpose, you can't turn it into a prayer chain, because they didn't sign up for that." Instead he wove biblical wisdom in where it fit and let his character carry the rest.

That same moral compass led to a defining moment. Stanford was promoting Cialdini's work with language that used the word manipulation. Brian could not let it pass. "This isn't manipulation," he thought. "This is about ethically influencing people." He emailed the university. Later, Cialdini's organization contacted him to say Stanford had changed how it marketed the materials, and to thank him.

"If it weren't for my spiritual formation, I wouldn't be doing what I do with Cialdini."

The Question That Became a Book

Brian's book, Influenced From Above, began over lunch with his daughter, Abigail. She had come to one of his presentations after not seeing him teach for years. The next day she asked him a question that stuck: "Dad, where's God in all this? All the psychology you teach, how does he fit in?"

The conversation that followed was unplanned. Liking, he told her, is not a trick. If your heart is to truly know and care for someone, you are getting close to love. Reciprocity is not "give to get." It is giving because that is the right way to live, the way Jesus modeled when he took the first step toward us.

"All of these ideas started hitting me," Brian says. "I thought, I've got to sit down and pull together my thoughts about my faith and Cialdini's principles and see how these things mesh."

In Authority, and an Authority

In their conversation, Brian and interviewer Tom Mitchell landed on a distinction Brian teaches in his workshops. Being in authority means holding a title, a corner office, a position. Being an authority means carrying credibility with you wherever you go. Brian points to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was as much an authority on civil rights in a jail cell as he was in the pulpit.

Jesus is the ultimate example. The crowds noticed that he did not speak like the Pharisees; he spoke as one who has authority. Yet he holds all power and still invites people to choose him freely. "We want to be the kind of person that, whether or not we have a title, people say, 'I want to follow that individual,'" Brian says.

Nothing Hidden, Everything Natural

Asked what he would tell business leaders who feel pressure to keep faith out of the workplace, Brian keeps it simple: be honest about who you are and what motivates you. You do not need to turn every meeting into a Bible study. Let people see your convictions in how you talk about your wife, how you raised your daughter, and how you treat others. If they are curious, go as deep as they want. If they are not, move on.

"There was nothing hidden. I was just vulnerable about who I was and what was important to me."

Some of those coworkers came back years later, in hard seasons, to talk. They remembered the person they had watched.

Brian anchors himself with daily habits: reading through the Bible or the New Testament each year, posting reflections for a small group of readers, reviewing his mission statement, and sharing a meal, teaching, and communion with his wife and friends every other week. His daughter, now 30, is reading through the Bible herself. He loves seeing her at his kitchen table with coffee, taking color-coded notes.

What You Can Do This Week

• Write your mission statement. Put your priorities in order, then ask who should see it.

• Read it daily. Let it shape your decisions before the day begins.

• Share it with someone who works with you. Give them permission to hold you accountable.

• Influence with integrity. Ask whether the way you persuade serves the other person or only yourself.

Brian is now in what he calls his last gainful employment sprint. As a Kingdom Factor coach, he hopes to form small, affordable cohorts where business leaders can support one another. The goal is less about income than about community. "I want to make it count," he says.

His story invites each of us to ask the same question. If the people around us could read our mission statement, would our daily work match it?

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