Sunny Bonnell: Reveals Lessons From Embracing Defiance and Uniqueness

I think you can get incredible things done, and you can also be very visionary.

And sometimes people don't equate the two.

They think that if you're highly visionary, you're painting a future that is so impossible or so hard to achieve that it makes it impossible to get traction and to get things done.

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mick Unplugged.

And today, We have someone that I could be related to.

We just don't know.

We're going to find out.

She's a rebel with the cause, a visionary who turns defiance into brilliance and a leadership powerhouse rewriting the rules of success.

As the co-founder of Motto, author of Rare, sorry, author of Rare Breed, and a champion for the bold and unconventional, buckle up for an unfiltered conversation with the fearless, the trailblazing, the unstoppable Sonny.

Bonnell.

Sonny, how are you doing today, dear?

How are you?

Thanks for having me.

I am honored to have you.

And, Sonny, you know, huge fan of the work that you do.

We share some connections out there in the world.

And I've been waiting to ask you this question because on McUnplugged, we talk about your because that thing that's deeper than your why.

If I were to say, Sonny, today,

what's your because?

What's that purpose that keeps you driving?

I really believe in helping people and companies and leadership teams find their ultimate potential.

So

in our work, we see a lot of visionary teams, and it's become

notable that not everybody is led by a visionary leader.

And

when you look at some of the statistics out there, a lot of people don't actually understand the vision or the purpose of the mission of the company.

And it ties back to the leader.

And so when you do the data and you look at the math, it means that there's a whole lot of companies out there being ran by leaders who aren't necessarily visionary or can communicate the vision in a clear and compelling way.

And so

my because is I wanted to build a company that would champion the greatest visionary leaders of our time.

and people who dream of a world that doesn't yet exist and who have the

guts to wrestle that vision forward in a world that's trying to stop them.

And so my partner and I co-founded Motto with that intent.

How can we not only empower more visionary leaders, but how do we create more visionary brands?

And how do we steward that thinking through, that mindset through, but also how do we reveal it within the brands that we build?

Sonny, I'm trying to sit here and not come out of my seat because I love every single word that you just said.

And we are in so much alignment about

these are my words and studies that I've done with Forbes and with Deloitte that 74% of most leaders aren't visionary, right?

By nature.

And what happens is you have a lot of leaders who pride themselves on getting stuff done.

And I tell these leaders all the time, I was just, I just spoke at an event two weeks ago, getting stuff done is not a leadership trait, and it's definitely not one that you want to brag about because that's not what leaders do.

Leaders create the vision and the roadmap, and then their job is to make sure that the pieces are in place to make that happen.

If a leader has to get involved in getting stuff done,

and I'm not saying that

you won't ever, there are going to be moments that, yeah, you got to roll up your sleeves and do things.

But if 60 plus percent of what you do is getting stuff done, your team isn't the best team team that they could be because you're doing it the wrong way.

Love your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I think that

both can be true.

I think you can get incredible things done and you can also be very visionary.

And sometimes people don't equate the two.

They think that if you're highly visionary, you're painting a future that is so impossible or so hard to achieve that it makes it impossible to get traction and to get things done.

But in our experience at Motto, it's the exact opposite.

If you have a visionary leader or leaders and a leadership team, and you empower visionary thinkers within the company, you drive that down through the culture, and then you ultimately reveal it in your brand and you have alignment at every level, you move quicker.

Brands and companies that don't have alignment around vision often

spin their wheels.

They lose a lot of traction.

They can't get things done even with an army of people.

And it's because they don't always understand what they're fighting for.

And so the goal is, is when you're leading a team, you have to make it absolutely clear.

This is the hill we're marching towards, and this is the flag we're going to carry.

And more importantly, don't cast your eyes on anything else.

Just focus on the horizon line, focus on the mountaintop.

And when you can do that, and when you can really help people understand how important their work is to in the contribution that they bring to helping you and them realize the true potential of their work in accordance with your work and your dreams and your hopes, you make that shared vision so much more powerful.

because then you remove distraction, you remove indecision, and you ultimately create better, more agile teams.

And it's just something that it takes a lot of work.

It takes a lot of intention, it takes a lot of focus.

But when we have worked with brands and organizations that have that and really understand that and they prioritize it, it is unbelievable what they are able to accomplish.

Yep.

Yep.

And to clarify, I wasn't saying that the organization couldn't get things done.

I just meant like the leader, that individual leader themselves.

Right.

That should not be your responsibility.

Yes.

Your vision and the things that you're doing should get things done, but like you should not be the catalyst physically to make that thing whatever that is done.

So I totally agree with you there.

Yeah.

And visionary leaders usually are the why people and they're not the how people.

And that's something that's really important.

And it's an important distinction because a lot of people think that.

Visionaries are just up in the clouds and they dream really big and they're radically bold.

And a lot of times that's true.

They're not always great operationally.

They're fantastic fantastic at helping inspire and cultivate what we call at Motto a culture of possibility, which is like what you dream, you can achieve, but they're not always good at telling you how they need you to do that.

And so you kind of need at Motto, for example,

I have a quote unquote, a COO, an operator, my co-founder and partner Ashley, who is the exact opposite to me in terms of she's a big idea person, but she's also an operational

master.

And so, what she allows the two, you know, the two of us are able to do is be able to,

while I'm dreaming big and trying to drive the company towards that visionary leadership, she's also helping make those how things happen.

And that's what you need a lot of the time.

You need that sort of operational excellence to mirror that visionary thinking because they're so important.

And whoever that is, whether that's a chief of staff or somebody who just is a little bit more strategically minded, and also in your company, you need both what I call visionaries and stabilizers, meaning the boat, if you have a bunch of visionaries on the boat,

the boat's probably going to go in circles, right?

And but if you have stabilizers in the boat, they're able to kind of understand and chart the course, they're able to rote in the right direction, and they help the visionary team move where they're trying to go.

And so, you kind of need both.

And that's just something that we've seen time and time again in our work: how important it is to have both the visionary and both the stabilizers within the company and the culture because they both have such powerful roles.

Totally agree.

Totally agree.

And I want to go back to something you said early on too, about making sure that there was alignment with the mission, the vision, the core values and all that.

So, you know, I told you two weeks ago, I was speaking at a conference and it was for

a U.S.-based, I'm trying not to get them in trouble, so I need to go down the list.

Safely U.S.-based Fortune 75 company, right?

So that way I'm not getting anyone in trouble.

And so I had

shareholders of the company were there, not all of them, but some.

Chairman of the boards were there, all the senior leaders, and then like two rungs below the pecking order, right?

So there's, you know, a good 300 people in the room.

And I always do this exercise, sonny.

And here's where I want your feedback because I know based on who you are, we align with this.

I had the CEO come on stage with me, and I said, You have to promise me you won't get upset, and no one gets fired.

And so we agreed.

I like that.

I like the caution tape.

Of course.

And I said, Okay, everyone, not looking at your phone, not looking at your laptop.

Look me in the eye.

If word by word you can recite the mission statement of the company, raise your hand.

Three people raise their hand.

And this includes shareholders, chairman of the board, senior leaders.

I said, if you can recite all of your core values, raise your hand.

15 people had their hands up.

None of them were chairman of the board.

None of them were shareholders.

So I looked at the CEO and I said, this is the problem.

Because if your team has zero idea.

what you and your shareholders and your board of directors believe and feel.

There's no way they could ever deliver to your expectation.

And I'm not saying that they're not doing a great job.

I'm just saying you're doing too much by doing nothing at all.

And so we went through this exercise, and I do this with most of my clients, is we create because statements.

I don't care about your mission at the end of the day.

I care about your vision, but it needs to be based on a because statement.

So I would love your feedback on when you're working with organizations and when you and Motto go do what you do.

How often are you finding it that people are misaligned with the mission and vision simply because they don't really know it?

Complexity.

So most of the teams that we work with, we work with really big iconic brands, everybody from Google to Microsoft to the Minnesota Vikings to really up-and-coming teams like Aptos and Omni and Cresta.

Andela, brands like that that are really innovating in this space.

And the biggest challenge that they have in helping people understand the vision, the purpose, the mission, the values is oftentimes there's too many values, the values aren't clear enough or tied to behaviors and actions, or it's just complicated.

And our human brains can't handle complexity, especially now in this modern landscape.

So a couple of years ago, we launched at Motto a program called Vision Camp.

Vision Camp is a two-day workshop for executive leadership teams to not only help you codify and crystallize your vision, but we have something called a vision script, which basically is a seven-step process to help you take your team to realize that vision.

So vision without action is just a daydream.

So we really created Vision Camp to

essentially solve this problem because we were seeing so much of it.

Teams were coming in, and they had a very clear ambition, and sometimes an incredible product.

They were filling a niche in the market, but they didn't know where to plant their flag.

And more importantly, they didn't know how to get everyone else rallied around that flag.

And so, we designed Vision Camp for that.

One of our pilot

teams that came through Vision Camp was the Minnesota Vikings.

And we worked with them to define their 2025 strategic vision through Vision Camp.

And one of the most powerful things that comes out of that is it's not enough to have a statement or a set of values if you do not tie actions and behaviors to the things that you want people to demonstrate.

So at Motto, for example, we have very clear values and we reward and kudo based on the demonstration of that value.

So if you ask anyone in our company what our values are, they can recite them immediately.

And then, more importantly, if we ask what we do here, everyone will tell you we do big things.

And that is such a big idea, but it's so simple and it's easy to understand.

And when they're measuring their performance and their work, you want them to ask the question, is this big enough?

Is it audacious enough?

Am I doing everything that I can to make this work succeed?

And that's what that is.

That's how you embed that into your team.

I love that.

I might have to borrow that.

Like one of the things when people ask me what I do, I'm just going to say, I help you achieve big things.

Exactly.

You're not looking for big things.

I'm not the person for you.

Sonny isn't the person for you.

Sonny.

I told you we were related.

I know.

I knew that.

No, it's feeling, I'm feeling a kinship.

It's unbelievable.

I like it.

We're going to have to hang out after this.

Oh, for sure.

For sure.

So I want to go to this amazing book of yours, Rare Breed.

And one of the themes that's recurring throughout that book is the fact that people need to embrace

their uniqueness, their differences, those things that make them the rare breeds.

These are the words of Mick and Mick only.

Society is going to tell you it's an outlier.

Society is going to put you in boxes.

Society is going to try to frame who you are.

But Sonny's trying to help you understand that you need to embrace it and you need to put that forward.

So I'd love for you to talk about

why you wrote the book.

Like what compelled you to just say, you know what, I'm going to put pen to paper and put my thoughts down.

And then, holy crap, I have a book.

I'm writing the book.

So walk us through that journey.

Yeah.

So Ashley and I started Motto in 2005 in our early 20s with $250 in a very traditional town.

There were really established players at the time that were advertising agencies mostly.

And

being women in a creative industry in general is

rare.

There's only still 0.1% of all creative agencies are even owned by women.

So imagine back in 2005, how even more of seeing a zebra with spots that might have been.

And

we got to a point in the first couple of years where we didn't think we were cut out for entrepreneurship because it was really hard.

We were bootstrapped.

We didn't, we were very young.

We'd both dropped out of college and we didn't really have any

other

business owners per se in the branding space that we could really look up to.

And so we had this really pivotal conversation with my dad.

And he's also, you know, was entrepreneurial and started his business really young.

And one of the things he said was, well, you two are a rare breed.

Not everyone's going to understand you.

Not everybody's going to love you.

And you have to succeed because of who you are, not despite who you are.

And we kept that phrase

in our

realm for a very long time and then decided to pitch it as a book in 2019 and got the book deal.

The book went to a bidding war.

And the concept of the book is really simple.

What What if the parts of yourself that other people criticize, traits they call defiant, dangerous, indifferent, are

supposedly counterintuitive to your success?

What if those same seven so-called vices were your selling points?

And so we wrote a book about taking seven so-called vices and how to flip them into the thing that you become known for in your industry, your career, your business.

And it just shot off like a moonshot.

And it really resonated with so many people because we were essentially saying, no, you're not flawed.

You have to learn how to harness the power of a vice because technically, and I'll talk through the seven vices in a minute.

We call them virtues, but you think about traits like rebelliousness, audacity, emotion.

obsession, hot-bloodedness.

These are traits that are typically seen as counterintuitive to success.

These are things that close more doors than they open doors.

They get you fired.

And

we reframe that and said, but what if you learned how to harness the power of that vice, turn that vice into a virtue, and

use it to your advantage?

That doesn't mean that it doesn't come with prickly points.

And that certainly doesn't mean that

you're not

the standout in the room a lot of the time.

But when you learn to understand when it's at work, when it's working for you versus against you, you can be really unstoppable and very powerful.

The key in that book is to know the difference between the light side of that trait and the dark side of that trait.

Because just as powerful as these traits are, they're very perilous.

They can undo you.

So in work, if you are consistent, you know, consistently like rebelling and rebelling in every meeting that you're in, and you're consistently like a jackhammer at people,

you aren't gonna be welcomed in the room.

So, you have to learn how to temper some of the sharp edges of these traits and learn to use them in the right moments and at the right time so that they become a force for good.

They open doors, they help you achieve all the things that you hoped to achieve.

And that's really what the book does.

And it was really built on

12, 13 years of running a company that so many people said would fail because we were women, because we were too outspoken, maybe we're too audacious, you know, all the crazy things that we were hearing.

And we just didn't listen.

And I think that many rare breeds just don't hear that and they don't hear no.

And sometimes they hear several no's before they can turn it into a yes.

But it's the tenacity of being able to do that and to withstand that pressure that truly makes somebody

a true rare breed.

And more importantly, that's why we called it a guide to success for the defiant, dangerous, and different.

Freaking love it.

I could talk to you all day about this book because I have so many things I want to uncover there.

But I know we don't have a ton of time.

You mentioned a lot, or not a lot, but a couple of times that failure, and I'm going to use it as lessons learned.

are part of the journey.

It's part of the rare breed journey, right?

To learn lessons.

So for you personally, what was the lesson that you learned in your rare breed journey?

That

you have to be thankful for really small minds because I have this saying, that's how the rose grew from the concrete.

You have to believe in yourself.

And a lot of us don't believe enough in our own potential and capability.

So it goes back to my because.

I love igniting possibility in other people.

And I'm surprised at how many people don't believe that they have something important to contribute or something important to say.

And so when you think of that lesson,

your voice demands to be in the room.

It should be in the room.

And you have to grab your moment.

And that is one of the biggest lessons is you deserve to be there.

You have to grab grab the moment.

You can't wait.

You have to grab the moment.

And you have to

believe enough in yourself and what you're going to contribute that it allows you to define your own future.

And it's really powerful.

Sonny, I could talk to you all day.

You know that, right?

Let's do another one.

We could do a couple of these, couldn't we?

No, wholeheartedly.

What I want to do, because I have a ton of subscribers, I want to do a subscriber only episode with you.

And I want my subscribers, so my listeners and viewers that subscribe, I want you to message us questions that you have.

And we're going to let Sonny, the expert, answer those questions because we also have a huge parallel on modern leadership, traditional leadership.

It's not even outdated.

It's just actually wrong.

Like, I could go on a rant just on traditional leadership it's just wrong.

But I'd love to bring you back on, Sonny.

We have to do that.

I think we do.

I'd be honored.

Where can people follow and find you?

So you can follow us at wearmotto.com on Instagram, We Are Motto on LinkedIn, Motto.

You can also find me.

I'm a keynote speaker.

And so you can find me at sunnybonnell.com.

And if you're really curious about Vision Camp, which a lot of people are becoming very very curious about that offering that we've just launched, it's visioncamp.io.

Love it.

Sonny, I'm going to chat with you offline.

I might need you to come speak at one of my events.

I'd love to.

I'd be honored.

All right.

We're going to make it happen.

Sonny, thank you so much.

I'll make sure we have links in the show notes and description for everyone.

Check out Sonny, check out Motto.

It's totally worth your time.

A lot of resources that they provide.

Just an amazing spirit.

And it's because, you know, she's got the Carolina connection as well.

Sonny, thank you so much for taking time.

You guys, for all the viewers and listeners, remember, you're because

is your superpower.

Go unless you

thanks for tuning in to this episode of Nick Unplugged.

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