As you think about all the things that you do for your business to stand out, you probably sometimes feel like you are just throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and hoping one of the noodles sticks. I would say, “Take a breath.” Because there is a different way to go about this. You can use every bit of who you are to be different so that people end up going, “You’re my person.”

Our emotional brain is the part that is responsible for making decisions. It’s not just theory. In fact, 90 percent of decisions are emotionally based. There’s no logical reason why I have 20 pairs of cowboy boots; it’s clearly emotionally driven. How can we get better at using our emotions in our branding and marketing so that we stand out more and so that we are differentiated from the rest of the people who are just flashing quarterly reports? The more we can be human, empathetic and find a way to get that across in how we project ourselves, the more people will decide that we are the ones for them. Especially in this world of AI.

I love this quote by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio: “We are not thinking machines that feel; we are feeling machines that think.” So what do people want in brands? They want transparency, they want trust, and they want authenticity. And they want that from you too.

I used to ask financial advisors about their prospects: “What kind of car do they drive?” “Where do they shop?” “Do they like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods? Or Walmart?” The more you can start to figure that out, the more that you can put yourself there. That’s a niche discussion except that you can also start to understand what they feel. What are they worried about? What mistakes are they making that they are trying to solve on their own?

That’s when things get really juicy, because if you can start to understand what they feel, what problems they are trying to solve, what they are worried about, then you can be like this Venn diagram of your expertise and their worries. [visual] When it crosses over, it’s golden.

Instead of thinking about what your story is, which I think is very important, I think it’s also cool for you to think about what their stories might be because there are challenges with young adults and their attempt at adulting. They see what their parents went through, and they have seen a whole bunch of market downturns and things going sideways and maybe their parents even losing their house. They have also been raised in this Instagram culture where they have to look really cool to their friends. And is that creating situations where Instagram is leading to an overflow of debt? Possibly. So people won’t forget how you made them feel because our limbic brain remembers.

Sometimes you are like, “Well, I don’t need a personal brand because I’ve got a company brand.” And given the fact that we are moving toward a generation that’s making decisions based on who somebody’s brand is, and they prefer to do business with you as opposed to a brand, your personal brand becomes even more important.

I think President Gregory Gagne, who earlier today said, “Let your freak flag fly,” was very spot-on. Because if you are the individual who is helping people with adulting and you get into that as your brand, then the more you lean into that, you’re going to be in a category of one for those people. There’s a saying, “You don’t need a whole bunch of clients; you just need 50 really good ones.”

People will be called to you because you are authentic, you are transparent, and you are trustworthy, which is what they desire. But there is this disconnect between your wanting to fly your freak flag; you can see that you want to be in a category of one, and then on the other side, the biggest thing that we have that works for us — and strangely against us in our branding and standing out and being different — is that we want to belong. We don’t want somebody to look at us and go, “You’re a little weird. You’re a little crazy. I’m not so sure about that.” Belonging is a strong emotion tied to our survival. When we were coming together as tribes, if we did not belong in the tribe, if we were ostracized from the tribe, what would happen? We would die.

So, if you have little kiddos and they come home from school because somebody was mean to them and they are crying as if they are physically hurt, the reason is that when they feel like they don’t belong, in some cases, it is a physical pain. It’s real. It’s in our DNA of who we are. In fact, we have evolved to be people who love to belong.

From my experience personally, the more that I am as authentic and brave as I can be with that, the more I give people permission to be the same for themselves, and the more they come toward me for that feeling.

What would it be like if you brought everything about who you are and what you believe into what you do? I’ll give you an example: My friend Alan has been in the world of financial services for the longest time, just as long as me. I didn’t even know that he played the guitar. Earlier today, when President Gagne was giving his presidential speech, and he was talking about playing the drums, my favorite part of that whole thing was when they cut to the film of him playing the drums. I was like, “That’s who he is.”

He was excited and vibrant and alive. And I was like, “Yeah.” What would it look like if everything of who you are became part of what you do? I get to do that every day. My last name is Fitts. I’m married, but I’m not taking Hayworth. I’m sticking with Fitts because I’m a misfit; I have been my whole life. I moved every three years when I was growing up. I was that awkward, pudgy redhead in the library because I didn’t know anybody. And I feel like I’m creating a place for people like that to be in financial services. That’s my purpose — to give voice to a thousand more people who are crazy and weird like me so that we can serve a million more people, because there is a fair amount of crazy and weird people in the world.