When most marketers, branding professionals and ad people devleop and execute a plan, we feel a sense of permanence about it. “There,” we say, “that’s finished and set in stone, ready to be released to the world where it will make an indelible impression.” Similarly, when entrepreneurs and business owners create a product or launch a service, they feel they have created something that is worthy of lasting and that will stick around (unfortunately, we have many landfills that prove some of these inventions are a little too long lasting).

We all fool ourselves into thinking what we create and promote will last, if not forever, well beyond our lifetimes, probably because of our unquenchable desire to outrun death as well as our unexplainable urge to leave a footprint. But all footprints are eventually erased, and so too are our Web sites, print ads, Facebook pages, billboards, media kits, radio spots and Twitters. Everything we do to market our businesses and serve our customers starts to fade as soon as it is set free.

So with such little time, as we make such evanescent gestures, it’s important that what you write in the sky be important. More than important, actually. Vital. Vital for you, for your customers, for the world. Because if all we can write is “Viagra” or “Low prices” or “Buy now”, than we’ve wasted a valuable opportunity to say something meaningful, something worthy of being writ across the big broad sky.

Some of the nation’s biggest brands were built by entrepreneurs with humble beginnings, who didn’t have millions in VC money, who didn’t have the luxury of starting out with a fat trust fund from daddy. In fact, it was probably because they had to learn things the hard way that entrepreneurs like Ray Kroc or Sam Walton became so successful. But they also had something going for them – they had a vision of what they wanted to create and an unswerving committment to realizing it.

This vision was in creating a brand that was different than other companies they saw out there. And it didn’t take millions of dollars to formulate their brands. It took the desire to do something different, to build their business according to a set of principles and the dedication to apply them consistently over decades. And you can do it, too … if you have the moxie, forsight and dedication to create something remarkable (plus a little luck never hurts).