796. What Makes a Rare Breed So Powerful? with Sunny Bonnell

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There's all these sort of fine lines between where the light and the dark sides of this and how murky and indistinct those borderlands can be between them.

Welcome to the Earn your HAPPY Podcast. I'm Lori Harder, Founder of Light Pink, best selling author, three time fitness world champion and I'm a crazy multi passion passionate entrepreneur. My journey has taken me everywhere from being a broke waitress, barista, retails associate and personal trainer with massive anxiety and no belief in myself to later becoming a multimillionaire in love with my life. In 2007, my husband and I lost everything. We found ourselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt at rock bottom. We had no ideas and I had.

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Welcome back to the show.

Today we talk all about leadership from.

One of the co authors of the Rare Breed and her name is Sunny Bunnell. Her co author is Ashley Hansberger. And this book is all about those who dare to be different in a sea of sameness. It offers a guide to navigating your own notorious personality traits that can lead to incredible breakthroughs and triumphs in business and life. So they are not only the authors of A Rare Breed, but it is Also the popular YouTube series and founders of the game changing leadership and brand consultancy motto. They were named 30 Under 30, Inc. Magazine, GD USA Top 25 People to Watch and interviewed by entrepreneur, Yahoo, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, the Breakfast Club and hundreds more. They have earned their way to the front of the work place revolution and have devoted their work to inspiring people to think with the Rare Breed mindset and demand more of themselves, their career and their companies. So there were so many things in this interview that I absolutely loved.

Maybe some things that you have in.

Your personality that maybe you viewed as a weakness or maybe former bosses, former jobs have told you is a weakness that could actually be a massive strength. This is all about not only embracing that in yourself, but also in other people and exactly how those traits show up. So let's get started.

Sunny, I'm so excited to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me.

Oh man, I didn't even know where to start with you being on here. I have so many things that I want to chat with you about because you have written the most exciting book I think for entrepreneurs right now that I cannot wait to dive into that we're gonna talk to everybody about. And you also have an incredible branding.

Company like for a creative you kind.

Of have that job that is just like all areas of my brain are.

Lighting up right now. So first of all cause we're gonna.

Really dive into the book because you've got such cool, the concept is so cool. Just the seven so called vices that are can really be turned into strengths and superpowers which I absolutely love learning about.

But first let's talk a little bit.

About just what even brought about this book. What you do in the branding world. All of those things.

Yeah. So first, thank you for that intro. I really appreciate that. I'm really excited to jump into the book here. So my co founder and partner Ashley and I met in a snowball fight in Chicago in our early teens and we grew up together, we went to college together and in our early 20s we dropped out to start Motto which is our branding agency with $250 and we had no prior agency or business experience. Pretty much everyone said that we would fail. And that was more than a decade ago. We have since led Motto to become one of the top branding and leadership companies in the country. We've really earned a reputation for pushing boundaries, breaking rules, activating positive change within companies. And we're most known for conventional approach to building one of a kind brands and really working with leaders to solve those tough problems, using brand as our lens. So we're kind of an anti branding branding company, if that makes sense. And so we're now about 15 years in. And back in, I would say maybe 2007, we had hit a point in our business where we were a few years in, we were incredibly broken. We were struggling to make ends meet. Again, we're in a small town, no prior business experience, very young, young females, and we're in an industry that is primarily male dominated. And we're trying to sort of figure out how do we cut through, how do we get attention. And we were told we were too white, too female, too broke, too inexperienced to really succeed. And after a while, when you're trying to start a business like that and get it off the ground, you begin to, I think for most people I can say that you can begin to doubt yourself. And we had hit a point where we were ready to give up. We were like, we don't think we are cut out for this entrepreneurial game and we should have just stayed in college and followed the traditional path. I was in vet school, she was going to be a journalist and writer and English major. And we had our past mapped out. And then we end up dropping out of college to chase this wild, ambitious dream. So 2007, we're kind of at a low point and we have a conversation with my dad and he says, well, you two are a rare breed. He's like, not everybody's going to get you. And he said, not everybody's going to love you. And you have to accept that and you have to succeed because of who you are, not despite who you are.

Oh, man.

And it was really a pivotal moment for us because he was like, the things that you're getting fired for, the things that people want you for are the things you're going to get fired for. He's like, you're going to get hired for the same reasons that you're fired. He said, you're also going to rub people the wrong way. And he said, but you have to realize that your rebellious spirits, your audacious vision, this kind of obsessive Tendencies that you both have this emotional quality that you're on a different frequency. He was like, you're a threat and you don't even realize it. And you're to make those traits of yourself invisible. And what's really interesting about that is we filed that away, ended up changing the entire framework of our business. And we're like, we're going to double down on this and actually start working with companies to identify what that special something is within their teams and their organization. Literally built our entire career around that and then wrote the book rare breed in 2018 after we had kind of decided that, look, we've now studied and been in some of the biggest brands on earth. We've worked with some of the most obstinate temperamental visionaries you could possibly imagine. And what do we call those people? We call them the rare Breed. And so we pulled that name back from the one that my dad gave us, and we ended up turning it into a book. Oh, my gosh.

Okay, so I want to dive into the book. So you broke it out into identifying kind of these seven vices. So tell me about how you all created that. How did you figure out what those seven were? And then I want to learn all about them.

Yeah. So we started with this curious question, which is, what if you could take the parts of yourself that other people criticize and turn those same counterintuitive traits into your superpowers? These traits are essentially vices. They are traditionally seen as counterintuitive to your success. They are often told. We are often told from a young age, we're conditioned to believe that these seven traits specifically will be our undoing and that we should make those traits invisible. And we wanted to flip the script on why they were actually virtues. And we use our own career of sort of tearing up the rule book and striking out on our own path, and then ultimately working with companies who share that same philosophy into an actual framework that became the seven virtues in the book. So these seven virtues, the rare breed virtues, are rebellious, audacious, obsessed, hot blooded, weird, hypnotic, and emotional. Each one of these seven traits have not only a positive side, but they have a very dark side. And that's why we call them a vice and a virtue. Because a lot of times when we are not self aware, we usually have one of these dominant traits at work within us. We don't often realize it. We just know that we're getting fired from every job that we've had. People don't get along with us. We're called difficult. Some people are like, oh, she's so emotional. And we're saying it in these negative ways because we believe that we're too much of one of these seven things. And so by unlocking these seven traits that society is teaching us to silence within ourselves, we begin discovering that those same attributes are also the driving factors to not only radical differentiation, but to breakthrough success. And not only have we been on a mission to help others not only recognize those seven traits within ourselves, but by recognizing them and others, we are teaching others to own all of who you are, not just the pretty parts. And we're also being able to change societally the conversation that we're having around just othering people and saying, oh, you're the misfit. There's something about you that's flawed. This is taught in thousands of leadership books. There's something about you that's flawed. You need to change who you are to succeed. And we wanted to say, why do you have to change? Why can't you refine and hone in on one of these dominant traits and actually make them the thing that allows you to kick down every door in front of you?

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So tell me first before we dive into each one, because I do want to get into each one. What were some of the main ones that you identified with and how did you kind of hone those in for yourself?

Well, we had a. So we developed early on, right after we launched the book, we had worked with a professor and psychologist because we said, wouldn't it be interesting if we could actually help people sort of identify what that dominant trait is? And so we developed a quiz. You take it and it's 28 questions. And it tells you which of the dominant traits is at work in you. And we go into great detail about famous rare breeds throughout history that have had that trait. We talk about what to look for, what often comes with those traits, and then ultimately where can it be destructive and what should you look out for if you are one of these sevens and it's been a really powerful thing, we've had over 30 or 40,000 people take it so far with very little marketing. And now teams and organizations are now taking the quiz as well to better understand how these rare breeds within their organization can be better leveraged and better utilized and more seen and heard at the table. And it's just a really powerful thing to sort of see it evolve the way that it has.

And which ones do you identify with the most? Which ones are you? Like, that is me.

Yeah. Yeah. So when I early on in the iteration of the quiz, we actually had a primary and secondary trait. So a lot of people were getting. They were like, well, I'm kind of like all seven. And what we learned was is that that's true. That is true. A lot of people are like, well, I'm all these things. But in reality, there's usually one sort of dominant trait at work, and there's usually a secondary that also might be very equal or just shy behind what that sort of dominant trait is inconsistent throughout your life. And for me, I have continued consistently gotten audacious. But my secondary trait was obsession. And if anybody's listening that's ever worked with me, you probably know that to be very true. And just the way that I work in motto as well as the chief visionary, but also I am incredibly detail oriented. I don't miss anything when it comes to making things right and wanting it to be above and beyond the standard and the norm. And mediocrity is not in my vocabulary.

So for you, before we dive in, what has been, you know, what have you found has been kind of like either what people have called you or what you feel has been against you for maybe being audacious and obsessed? Like, what have you felt in the past before you learned to harness these and that these could be a truly good thing? What's kind of like been reflected to you about those things to you?

Well, I think that what's really interesting about these types of traits and why they're so. So compelling is leaders are supposed to possess these kind of conventional leadership traits. Even in my company, I'm expected to be steady and decisive and consistent and calculated and diplomatic and logical. And all those qualities are extremely important in leaders. But I think it's taken me a while to grasp that as a rare breed that we think, act and communicate with an entirely different mindset. And. And growing up, I was lucky enough to have and be surrounded by a few people who encouraged that within me. They weren't trying to break it out of me or silence it out of me, although I think for a lot of people that's not the case. I think there's a lot of people walking around right now who have been conditioned to be ashamed of these traits and to be made to feel that those traits are not going to make them not have the career that they want or the life that they want. And, and I think at different points in our life we're silenced or awakened. And what I have seen in this work specifically is that sometimes we stay silent forever and we never really hear our own voice because we're living the hopes and dreams of other people. And I don't think it's because we intend to do that. But there's studies on animals and conditioning of animals that would have been clawing for their life, have conditioned to put their head in cages and, and submit to ridiculous amounts of testing that is completely out of the wild and out of their nature. And so if you apply that same thinking to the way that we all are conditioned, I think what you see over time is we begin to lose a little bit of who we are in that process. And I think for me, I certainly had moments where, and I still have moments even in a company being a female owned agency that we're like 0.1% of all companies even owned by women in the branding space. And I've certainly been doubted still. I can think of a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago where somebody told me we were working with somebody who we were interviewing to potentially produce a podcast that we were working on. And he emailed me and said that we needed a mail to validate our show. And I just thought that was, I just couldn't believe that that was the thinking that we're in 2021 and that's still that we're telling people that you need a male or a female to validate your credibility. And I just think that it's still happening and it's still a battle. I think being a rare breed for anyone is not the path of least resistance. You're going to take the black eyes, you're going to feel doubtful, people are going to try to suppress you. And I think what you have to remind yourself is that you have to be the rose that grew from the concrete. You have to remember that those parts of yourself are important and those parts of yourself need to be seen, but they need to be obviously harnessed in the right way. And so I'm still a work in progress. I've not perfected this by any means, but I certainly have learned to be more self aware around what, what Those controls are. And when that part of my personality is veering into that dark territory, I'm able to, now that we've written a book on it, certainly studied thousands of leaders, had many, many conversations, received thousands of letters of people who have exhibited one of these traits and have either sort of still struggling with it or have now leveraged it. It's something that you have to constantly work on. So.

Good. So I want to know about how we can kind of turn some of these into our superpowers or spot them. So can you define rebellious for me a little bit and let me know, or tell us how that can be kind of turned into something, how you've seen it be something powerful in somebody's life?

Well, I think that there's a lot of different degrees of rebelliousness. So one thing that we have learned, and I'll use a very famous story, but one of the most famous rebels of all time is Rosa Parks. She didn't bang on the seats and yell and confetti didn't fall when she didn't choose to move. But that was a act of silent rebellion. And there were a lot of little, probably rebellious moves, both large and small, that led up to a decision like that for her to choose not to move that day. But that changed the course of history. And so what we have seen specifically in rebels is that they have a tendency to loathe the mindset that we've always done it this way. They love to sort of throw brass knuckles at convention. They have tells just like they would in poker. They have a knack for making people uncomfortable. They push against those boundaries. They say what others won't. They're willing to, you know, if the workplace social contract says something like, everybody blend in and don't stand out, like rare breeds are going to violate that contract because they can't help themselves. You know, they've been on the payroll two weeks, and they're already telling you what to do, Right? So that's kind of the interesting thing about them. And what. What do we do typically in organizations is we push those people out, or they end up leaving to start something on their own, or they try to seek out another home. And so what is really challenging for organizations, right, is that they know they need the rare breed. They desire the rare breed. They know that rare breeds are the key to innovation, and yet they're not equipped to know how to maximize their potential and really leverage that potential for all of these amazing ways. And so a lot of our work now has become around education about Going into companies and helping them sort of. Not only sort of identify those rare breeds on the team, but also begin to put ideas in place where they can actually help celebrate those dangerous and defiant and different ideas that so often have so many bullet holes. By the time they get to the top, they'll never see the light of day. And that's what we want to change. Oh, my gosh.

So that makes me wonder, is there a way to. Because whenever I hear that, especially someone who's rebellious like that, and it's hard to keep people on board for that, is do you think they ever stay.

Somewhere because they do want to start.

Things on their own?

Or are there people who love to still work at companies and have this, or do you think it, like, actually pains them to be working for someone else? Does that make sense?

It does. I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, I think rare breeds, power, innovation, because they're motivated by different things than a typical employee. So that's part one of that. They care less about fitting in, being liked, climbing the ladder, avoiding criticism, than they do about being who they are and loving who they are and being true to themselves. So they want to be appreciated and to belong because we're human. But if being part of the tribe really means pretending to be something that we're not, they're going to ditch the tribe. And that's what's really challenging, is that rare breeds are our greatest assets because they approach those design questions, those technical problems, the financial conundrums from a direction that no one else in the organization is even going to think to consider. They're really a secret weapon. And yet, as I said, most organizations are not equipped to help them thrive. We don't create the conditions to allow them to thrive. So I do think that they eventually get frustrated and they perhaps go and start their own thing. And then you're like, wow, we knew that person was different, but had no idea that they were going to put people on Mars. You know what I mean? So it's kind of like, yeah, it's those audacious thinkers that we're the most afraid of and yet that were compelled by them. And they're often made up of quirks and odds, angles and a bit obtuse. They're not generally what I would call AKA normal, if there is such a thing. But sometimes they are very obvious, and then other times they are not obvious at all. And sometimes they're the quietest one in the room, and yet they're the most dangerous one in the room, find them.

And go work for them. Just kidding. All right, so I want to know about yours, Audacious. Tell me about this one. Tell me about the shadow side. Tell me about how you've harnessed it.

So audacity is the ability to realize visions that other people identify as outlandish. A lot of times you'll hear with audacious people, it can't be done. They kind of do the impossible. And for somebody like me, I see, I see possibility where others see boundaries. And I have a tendency to always reach beyond my grasp. So it's hard to tell me that it can't be done. It's hard to tell me, it's hard to convince me that I should not be reaching far, far beyond the grasp and that my ambitions and ideas can't be fully realized. You kind of look around, you're like, why does that seem impossible? And everyone else is just trying to bring you back down to earth. When it's. When it starts to get into the dark side is when the dark side of audacity would be something like being hubris. So being hubris is when you've drank your own Kool Aid. A great example of that is Adam Newman's from WeWork. Here was somebody who is audacious, a powerful visionary, changed the face of remote working and co working. And here was somebody who eventually unraveled because of being hubris. So that is where you start to see a lot of that dark side. And it's that adage of Icarus flying too close to the sun. Those stories are real. And I think people that are audacious, who try to move the world forward in incredibly game changing ways, have the ability to not only persuade, So I think they have a lot of hypnotism there. So one of the traits is hypnotic. And these are people with disconcerting levels of charisma who find it very easy to sway and spellbind others and up to the sometimes beyond the point of manipulation, where you will almost be cult like in your ability to follow them, because they're sort of showing you a world that does not yet exist. And you will happily follow them wherever they may lead you, no matter what it costs you. And that's what's really interesting about audacious people. They often have a very hypnotic and charming side and they can veer off into those dark traits, if you will, the shadow side, as you called it. But very much at work. And some of the greatest visionaries of all time have also been some of the most evil. So that's what you got to kind of look out for.

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How have you so, because these are traits that are obviously I, you know, as, as you're explaining them to. I think they're so powerful and needed in order to go somewhere new because you almost have to be okay, so I'm just gonna go like, we're just gonna like go off here and say okay. So you almost have to like be a bit like that and naive to get something that doesn exist. You almost have to drink your own Kool Aid so that you are so convinced by it in order to lead this charge and get other people to activate on this mission with you. So how do you balance that? How do you know when you've gone too far? What do you do to ground yourself?

Well, I think for me personally, I think a lot of it. So I just want to back up and kind of comment on what you said, which is I do think audacious vision is so needed and is part of some of the greatest visionaries of all time. Yet I think that some of them have also been abusive and sometimes, as I said, manipulative and obstinate and all of the sort of things that you. They've been able to change the world, but as I said, at great cost to perhaps those around them. So I think what's really challenging about and what we talk about greatly in the book, and I think what we're sort of advocating for is that you can be a force for good. And we have seen a lot of visionary entrepreneurs and worked with visionary leaders and certainly have tapped into that and seen it at work. Where there's servant leadership, there is leadership that is wholesome, that is truly authentic and genuine. And you're sort of not leading anybody into. Into a dark place. I think there's a fine line between being a leader who embodies one of these traits and is using that as a force for good versus somebody who is letting it unravel and it's leading to things like destructive tendencies. A great example of this is, and I'll kind of run through the seven traits, but audacious can make you this sort of prophetic visionary unless you it spirals into sort of reckless hubris. Being obsessed can help you create these detailed masterpiece pieces or it can doom you to failure by impossible ideals of perfection and inflexibility. Being hot blooded, for example, it's far beyond passion. It brings those fiery ideas to the table, but it can also lead to burnout and very destructive tendencies. And then, of course, being weird, you could be an obtuse oddball, you know, for the sake of it, or you can actually really have strange and weird, bizarre ideas and be kind of the Tim Burton of the world that, you know, got fired for developing Frankenweenie at Disney. You know, the king of weird got pushed out of Disney because they were like, this guy's super odd, but look what he was able to create. A world unlike we've never seen, you know, and iconic movies and films that are truly, truly one of a kind and emotion. You know, emotional rare breeds, I think can be used for purpose and maximum impact. You know, obviously emotional rare breeds feel life and the situations around them on a very different frequency, but they can also be incredibly sensitive to the point where, you know, they're, they're, they're reading into situations that aren't maybe there. And so there's all these sort of fine lines between where the light and the dark sides of this and how murky and indistinct those borderlands can be between them.

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So I want to know a little bit more about each one. Just a tiny touch, because I'm so curious, because I feel like I either know people feel these traits and would also love to know how I can harness them for myself and within my company. So I'm going to read the book, obviously, as well, but tell me a bit about obsessed, weird, hypnotic and emotional. As far as just the ways that you think they're really powerful, that you've seen just even in your life and in your company, and then where you kind of, if you see it going too far, you feel it going too far. The awareness of something that you can do in order to kind of get back into the good side.

Sure. So we'll start with rebellious. I mean, the kind of descriptors of that are defiant, you're disruptive, you're ungovernable, you're rogue, you're insubordinate. It's really a virtue when that rebellious spirit is harnessed to push those boundaries and confront great wrongs and to give a voice to the voiceless or really birth something unprecedented. It's also a vice when it's expressed with malice or bitterness or for no other reason than just to kick up trouble, to create unnecessary chaos or even get revenge. So I see a lot of rebels and certainly have been and worked with many who are sort of like change agents, and yet that they've never really harnessed the good sides of that trait. They've only caused trouble and not with any cause. And I think that's what we're really fighting for. When you actually see a rebel at work and you're able to kind of tap into that and they're able to break through and get some of those rebellious ideas heard and seen, and perhaps even we call them kind of rare breed moves. When you're able to actually tap into that and build it, you can do some really extraordinary things. So I think that that's one of the. Nobody ever really sees the rebel coming. Right. And I think a lot of established players in the industry, I think that where rebels are really beneficial is that most of these larger sort of entities are a bit sluggish and content, and rebels are defiant and swift and hungry, and they're daring and they're defiant and they kind of blindside the competition. And that's what I love about them the most. And where I see in organizations where they truly, truly thrive. I mean, we've been doing a lot of work recently with a huge global brand. And the person that actually brought us in was a rebel who had picked up the book in an airport in New York. He had touched down in la, and by the time he had read the book, he had us on the phone and he was like, can you bring this thinking to our entire organization? And. And we were like, oh, this is really interesting, because there was no workshop. There was nothing.

We're going to quick get back to.

You tomorrow when we have our workshop.

We're going to get back to you after Christmas. So literally, literally slogged away at trying to create this workshop from scratch and go in and train some of the top minds of one of the biggest brands on, like, the top three brands in the world. And no pressure, right? You write a book and then the next thing you're in one of the top organizations in the world trying to share this thinking that is very recognizable.

I just have to take a minute for that. That itself is crazy. And I love how things are crazy.

It was crazy. It was crazy.

It's so unexpected. What comes out of your vision to write this book out of this thing that used to be perceived as maybe not great. Like all these different traits that all of a sudden one idea flips it all and it opens up this entire world and all of a sudden someone's calling you to go in and have this conversation that you were bold enough to say yes to without no. I'm sure you probably said yes before you had it made.

We did.

Because that's how it works.

That's audacious. You know, we're in. I have no idea what we're doing. But look back to you totally done.

That before someone be like, you have an opportunity to speak in front of 15,000 people, but we need this.

They needed like a course.

And I was like, yeah, I have one. Totally didn't have one.

Totally didn't have one. Yeah, totally. That's what makes you that probably what makes you truly a rare breed. I mean, I think that, you know, that's the beautiful thing about these traits is that moment right there. You know, I'm so curious to know what you. What you would be if you. I don't know if you've taken the quiz yet.

I'm going to take it.

I take it. Right? Please tell me and then tell everybody on the show. But I think that those Are the moments where that virtue is at work in you. And a lot of times we just don't recognize it. A lot of times we don't know. And what I think this book really does is it sort of brings. It's giving language to the sort of things that didn't have language. As I mentioned earlier, something that I found really interesting is the way we described. And I'll kind of explain the traits here in a minute just to get back to your early question. But I wanted to. To make this note, which is the way we describe people who are different. We often default back to terms like, oh, they're a misfit, or they're flawed, or they're a little bit of an oddball, or they're kind of a weird. We sort of just go in these negative terms. And I think what Rare Breed does is it's actually a very honorable word. I mean, it means by definition, unordinary, among the kind that you are, in fact, by your very existence, like the only one. And there will never be another you, and there will never be another me. And that's the beauty of why we should lean into that and really own that. Because that is a power in and of itself. It's a wonder in and of itself. And if one of these traits can help you kick down every door that anyone has ever put in front of you, if you can, and use your emotion to read the room and to operate on a frequency and be an empath and use your heart to lead people or use your hypnotic charm for all of the right ways to spellbind your audience as forces for good, or use your obsession to create beautiful masterpieces of whatever it is, your product, your service, your life. I think that that is what you hope to see with a piece of work like this, is that you begin to change the conversation about how we ident ourselves and how other people identify us. Because first we have to see it in ourselves before we can see it in someone else. And so what I tell a lot of people is like, after this, after you hear this and you've heard about Rare Breed, and hopefully you get the book or you do some more research on it, or perhaps you even identify with one of these traits is to pick up the phone and call somebody that you believe is a rare breed and tell them that you see them. It's the most beautiful thing you can do for somebody is to actually be a witness and say, you know what? You are a bit of an oddball. But I love that about you. And I see you who you are and don't change a thing. And that's what I have seen. I've gotten so many, Ashley and I have gotten so many letters from people who have read the book and done crazy life changing things, radical career changes and all because they finally heard their own voice. And I had no idea we would write a book that would have that kind of impact. But I can tell you that it's one of the most rewarding things we've ever done.

Oh my God.

Well, I love it because it truly is. I think self awareness is completely one of the most powerful things ever. Especially when if we've been told something is a negative thing and trying to avoid the very thing that is going to create and you know, all of like the very place that we are meant to be. If we're wondering why we feel like we don't fit or we feel suppressed or we're just not, you know, we're just not in the right position. And I think creating a quiz and a book that just says, hey, look at all of these super powerful things that you have that you've been hiding. Kind of like what you said, it's been caged. So you know, I think recognizing that, just like you said, recognizing that in someone and letting them also see that it's pure freedom, like to free yourself and to not feel that suppression anymore is like it's a whole other chance at truly life. So I think you're giving people a whole other chance at this life that they were actually put here for. So that's so freaking exciting. And I love me a good quiz, so I love it.

Well, I know that there's, you know, seven other traits and quite a bit, you know, we talked about sort of the vice virtue and each one. And I can touch on that a little bit more or we can jump to something else. But I think the book does a beautiful job of just really going into great detail of when it's a vice, when it's an asset, when it's a weakness, questions to ask yourself, tools and techniques or even developing out some workbooks for folks who are in a career perhaps where one of these traits has been leading them to hit the ceiling again and again. And maybe they haven't quite found the environment to help them thrive. And we're creating workbooks on how to be more rebellious at work, how to be more audacious at work, and then also how to change systemically the conversation at the leadership level and the organizational level. Because it has to happen in both. It has to happen from us as entrepreneurs or perhaps employees, where we're working for a company, we have to be able to communicate those ideas and communicate our differences and not be ashamed of them. But most importantly, we need to have organizations that don't make us chunk a good bit of ourselves at the door. I think it's like 10% of us feel like organizations practice nonconformity. So what that tells me is I want you, I want your ability to perform for me, but I don't want anything else. I don't want any of your personality, I don't really want any of your drama. I don't want to know about your family. And not all organizations operate this way. I've been in quite a few organizations. There are very few, I'll be honest, where the cultures are incredibly intact and there is diversity of thought, not just diversity of skin color, like one brown person on the executive board. These are really, truly diversity of thought companies. And they feel safe, they've created safe environments and these people are thriving. I have been in so many more companies that are incredibly toxic, that people are miserable, that are working there and that do not feel, feel seen. And so to kind of be a voice for the voiceless in that way at times is really rewarding because you want to be able to go in and try to change that and you want to be able to change that mindset to be more rare breed. In other words, like, think like a rare breed, communicate like a rare breed, operate like a rare breed, and then hire for those people on your team so that you can not only work with them better, but they can work together also better because they recognize it, the differences within each other and they will respect those differences versus seeing them as a threat, which is often what happens in a lot of companies. You know, we're always kind of looking over our shoulder and thinking somebody's trying to take your job, when the reality is they're thinking the same thing about you.

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Okay, Sunny, so you run a company. I, I have employees. I run a company. My husband and I, I run other companies. How do you integrate it all? So I know that you do workshops as well, but let's say in your company you recognize, maybe you even haven't recognized the traits yet, but you see some different things that maybe are not working, but you know that this person has potential or maybe communication styles are not working, or maybe amongst your team, you're just trying to make it all. You're trying to figure out how it can all be cohesive when you have all of these different personalities, whether they fall under these or not. I find that life is literally just about trying to learn more about other people and how everything works and how it can all fit. It's all just relationships and understanding people. So for you, how do you integrate. This is such a big concept. How do we actually integrate it into our businesses and our life?

Well, I think that first, first you have to recognize that we're all sort of desperate to innovate. And how you innovate is really kind of key to this question, what you're hiring for. And most importantly, what are they getting when they come in that door both virtually and or in person? The first commandment of modern business is like innovate or disappear. And so while I Think. I think a lot of us as corporate leaders know innovation is the lifeblood. We don't always know, as you said, how to do it. There's actually a really good book called, I want to say it's called the Inversion Factor. And she's also the author of a book called Provoke. Are you familiar with that? Well, anyway, I'll DM you the link to these books. Yeah. But she talks a lot about the importance of disruption as kind of a catalyst for innovation and, and what we also get and what she gets. And she was talking at great length about this is. So many people ask, is there a secret formula? How do I innovate? It's shocking that the way of thinking that should be the core of many companies is still such a mystery. And I think the truth is that it's not a mystery. The corporate world has always been full, in my opinion, like a stew of contradictions. As leaders, we're occupied with fit the idea that hiring folks whose personalities and values really click into their culture like Legos, is the key to building this tribe of warrior poets who's going to lift you to that billion dollar market cap. We end up talking like an Apple's think different ad copy about all the rebels and troublemakers and having it tattooed on your forearm. We all ache to be swashbuckling, and I think we all ache to be visionary and to define eras and transform markets and essentially squirrel away enough innovation and IP that we can change the world. But I think the challenge is that sometimes we're hiring for the wrong things, where we're asking the wrong questions. And what you almost have to look for is not like, are they crazy? But are they crazy enough? Yes.

I don't know if I would hire well off of are they? Great. I hired another crazy one. Perfect, let's see how they work.

I love that. Well, that's the thing. Most companies would be terrified of that. Right? They would be sort of like, no, we cannot let the lunatics out of the asylum. But you want people to question business as usual. You want people to help you be better. What you don't want is people who are disruptive for disruptive sake. In other words, they're tearing down the very foundation of happiness. And you don't want that. You want people chipping away at the woodblocks, humming in their heart because they've found a problem. They found something that they're working on and you're allowing them to get the fuck out of their way. See, our problem is that the way we identify And I say we. I'm just talking collectively. I think this is a pain point for so many people, which is we're sort of like, here's our culture. Pour yourself into it. And we ask all these difficult questions for people coming in, and then what do we do? We micromanage them. We tell them who we want them to be. We sort of set them up up. We set them up for failure. And so what I think you want to try to do is to not just look for fit, but again, you're looking for that diversity of thought. You're looking for someone who you're not necessarily turning loose and just letting them run through the hallowed halls and sort of vandalizing tradition. But what you're wanting them to be able to do is have the safe space to take risks and not be fired for it. The problem is we fire people for even trying. And so if we can try to develop that disruptive mentality and import more of that by bringing those rare breeds into your organization and really allowing them to have the chance to sabotage that mediocrity, but also not let them sort of run rampant, you need other people who are like the stable sort of folk, you know, you kind of need like that balance you can't have. I don't think you can have an organization full of ruckus makers who are just, I think sometimes each of these traits, if they're not harnessed in the right way, like, you could have an organization that's just a really fucked up pirate ship that essentially is going in circles. So there has to be some sort of checks and balances there. But I think that what you're looking for is just that fresh framework to really look through. You want to change how you think as well. You want to be open to ideas that seem incredibly outlandish at first, and you want to give room and budget and time and energy to the ideas that seem absolutely crazy. And then you want to be able to not punish them for trying. And so again, there's no real sort of checklist of saying, okay, this is exactly what you need to do, but rather philosophies and ethos of things to implement and also things to look out for. And it's about dialing it in as you go.

So good.

This is probably under something like things to look out for, but I have a question for you, and I've asked so many different entrepreneurs and it's always just, yep, I'm going to go for it. So if you have somebody that you have hired and this was just something from the past, actually no longer working with us. But it was just such a. It was such a, like learning lesson for me. If you have someone who's so good at something that they do and they bring so much value in this particular area that you have not seen in other areas, like a true, like disruptor, where you're just like, wow, this person is so freaking amazing. But they struggle potentially to get along with others. Do you kind of harness, like, do you create an environment that they are really not working with people much or do you look out for more of the company culture to see how it's impacted overall? It's such an interesting line to think.

It is an interesting question. Yeah. Yes. So there's a couple of things that we have learned that help navigate this. So I mentioned the quiz. So operationally and organizationally we have had teams who have had someone who has been disruptive. We've been able to take the quiz and sort of get a sense of what are the real sort of what are we working with here. And also when you begin to channel those folks and then when you begin to protect the rest of the organization, but from those more disruptive and antisocial tendencies. There are literally entire departments in tech companies made up of people who have high functioning Asperger's. There's a company that I just learned about that their entire employees are people that have autism and they are high, high performers, completely focused. And this is a thriving company. But in any other environment they may not do so well. So I think that it's a lot about what, what the organization's temperament is, who's at the helm of that, who's the captains of those ships or captain of the ship. What is kind of the philosophies and ethos of what you are trying to accomplish and is this person, you're kind of creating an island of misfit toys. You're trying to tap into those important of the most potential that they have. While also you don't want somebody who is so oppositional and so disruptive that they're making everyone in the organization miserable. I think that's usually the result of bad leadership. So I actually don't always think it's the person's fault. I think it's the way that they're being managed. And that's really hard because people are just bad leaders and they don't know what to do with somebody like that. And there's a lot of tools and techniques that we go into also in the book. And then of course, in the workshops where we sort of mitigate some of that. But there's no one size fits all to this type of question. I think it's more sort of based on who that organization is. How is everybody working together? What is the sort of communications that are happening between each one? Are we turning somebody loose on a specific problem, that they prefer to be isolated and we can harness the best of their ability by not having them interact in those team settings? Is that how they prefer to work? And can we give ourselves the permission to do that? Some companies are just like, no, please come to our happy hour. You must be there. It's mandatory that you're there. And this person is literally having a panic attack because they're not social in any way, shape or form. And because we want to celebrate with our Christmas hats on, we expect that everyone else in our company does. And sometimes I think those are really unfair stipulations that we put on people. And in turn, because of that bad leadership, we in turn create bad employees.

It's so interesting because I would not want to go to the Christmas party.

I'm not putting my ass in the Santa hat.

It's really interesting, though, because this conversation just opens up so much more possibility. I mean, yes, it is. Of course, it's a lot more work, but anything great is typically a lot more work. And just understanding so many other things that it opens up opens you up to for opportunities for your company, for yourself, for just expansion of everything. So I'm so grateful for this conversation and I know that you also do workshops and all of the things. So tell us where we can find you, follow you, and get the book.

Yes. So if you're interested in kind of the branding work that we do, you can find us@wearemotto.com and if you're interested in more of sort of the rare breed thinking and the leadership and the work that we're doing around both the quiz and sort of leadership training and alignment culture building that is@rablebreedleaders.com and you can take the quiz@rablebreedquiz.com okay, we will.

Link all of that up because I know this is definitely the podcast for people who want to take quizzes. They can't get enough. We'll make sure everybody wants to learn about themselves. So we'll make sure that we link that all up. And I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful that you took the time to do all this work and all of the research that is not in my personality, and I'm grateful to be able to research it.

Yeah. Thank you. Yes.

So everybody can go find you and follow you as well. So what are the Instagram handles as well? Because we'll have them tag you.

Yeah. So I'm unnnybonnell. And then Ashley is at AshleyHansberger. Yeah, AshleyHansberger, but her name is spelled a little bit different, so it's a S, H, L, E, I, G, H. And then Handsberger. And I'm sure you'll link to that. You can follow us at we are motto. And then for rare breeds specifically, you can follow us at thisisrarebreed.

Amazing. And you guys, as always, you know that one of the biggest things that you can do for our guests is to give them a tag. Upload this to your stories and let Sunny know what your biggest takeaway was like if you had a moment, a massive aha moment.

Or if you're gonna go take the.

Quiz or tell her what you are on the quiz. She probably do probably love that.

Love it, guys.

So go ahead and share that.

And until next time, everyone earn your happy. Bye.

Bye.