Apple said it best: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The round pegs in the square holes.”
They were talking about the people who change the world.
America was built by that caliber of people.
Rebels with no business plan. Zero venture capital. No proof of concept. Just an idea and the audacity to ask, “Why the hell not?”
Just look at what those crazy ones shipped.
The telephone. Zero users on day one. Nobody to call.
The light bulb. Thousands of failed filaments before one burned bright.
Powered flight. Two bicycle mechanics in a field, betting they could beat gravity.
The moving assembly line. The transistor. The skyscraper. Blue jeans. Coca-Cola. The fast-food assembly line. GPS. The graphical web browser. The iPhone. Even the first commercially released rock and roll (and jazz) recordings.
Every single one was a startup with terrible odds and no precedent.
Someone looked at the way things were and said, “Why the hell not?”
250 years later, most American brands have forgotten that DNA.
In place of that restless impulse to innovate, we find an ocean of the same AI-written copy. The same committee-approved language. The same beige anonymity stretched across every industry, from insurance to SaaS to financial services.
That’s not the spirit of the crazy ones. That’s surrender.
250 Years: Standing Up for an Idea
Voices of 250 invited me to record a message for America’s 250th birthday. The lineup includes Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, the presidents of the NYSE and NASDAQ, and many others.
They also invited a kid from Brooklyn with no pedigree, no business training, and no safety net.
Not because of who I knew. Because I’ve given businesses a voice that refused to be ignored.
They asked an entrepreneur from Holland with a dream (Stu Sjouwerman, one of my dearest friends and clients) and a force-of-nature client (Tom Cummins) to grab a mic and speak on what freedom means.
Daymond John is in there too. Fellow native New Yorker. Someone who knows a thing or two about building a brand from nothing.
To give you a short preview of what you’ll find on the Voicesof250 website, here are Daymond John’s, Stu Sjouwerman’s, Tom Cummins’, and my videos:
Daymond John
Stu Sjouwerman
Tom Cummins
David Brier
The Most American Thing a Brand Can Do
The Declaration of Independence was not a list of best practices.
It was not a positioning document that lived in a shared drive and got updated every three years. It was an act of consequence-be-damned courage. It named an enemy. Made a promise. Took a side.
250 years later, most brands do the opposite.
→ They operate like they need permission.
→ Permission to have a point of view.
→ Permission to be different.
→ Permission to be bold.
They wait for the competitor to move first. They wait for the focus group to validate the safe option. They wait for the committee to reach consensus.
Meanwhile, AI is accelerating the sameness. One AI-generated phrase pattern appeared 73 times in a single quarter’s corporate filings.
The brands didn’t decide to sound the same. They just stopped deciding.
America wasn’t built on replication. It was built on a voice that had never been heard before.
I’ve used this freedom to help clients generate over $9 billion in brand value. It’s created millionaires. And a few billionaires. This skill earned me a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship medallion (shown below). For a kid from Brooklyn who walked into rooms and asked the question nobody else would ask.
The medallion was not presented because I was the smartest person in the room. But because I was the one willing to sound different.
The CEOs I work with don’t call me because they need a new logo. They call me because they’ve burned so much cash on marketing their spouses think they have a coke habit. The problem is never the budget. The problem is they’re invisible. Indistinguishable. Buried in a wall of beige.
Freedom isn’t fireworks and hot dogs and a day off. Freedom is the right to defy the consensus. To be the round peg when every committee in your industry is voting for square holes.
America’s 250th birthday isn’t a branding opportunity. It’s a branding gut check.
Are you one of the crazy ones, or are you just renting someone else’s voice?
Visit Voicesof250.com and add your voice. The crazy ones don’t wait for an invitation.