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Leadership Behind the Brand with Sunny Bonnell · We Built This Brand

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And the goal for any modern day company is to not only champion
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those leaders within your company, but also to understand that
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brand vision and culture need to be aligned at every level.
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The way that you do that is to educate, empower, and inspire
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at every level of the organization so that we train visionaries
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into visionary leadership so that they can be better leaders,
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they can be better, you know, culture champions and igniters.
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And also that they can really build the brand inside the company and out.
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Welcome to We Built this Brand, the podcast where we talk to the
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creators and collaborators behind brands, and provide you with
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practical insights that you can use in growing your own business.
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Today we're talking with Sunny Bonnell, co-founder and CEO at Motto, a
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branding firm that helps forward thinking companies harness the power of brand
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to unify leadership teams, drive innovation, and influence modern culture.
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Sunny has been recognized as the winner of the Thinkers50 Radar award, which
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illuminates the brightest minds in the world, named on the cover of Swagger
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Magazine as a visionary brand icon, and has graced such lists as the top 30
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Global Gurus, Graphic Design USA's Top 25 People to Watch, and the Webby Awards.
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The Webby Awards have described Sonny as setting the standard for innovation
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and creativity, and this was certainly evident in our conversation.
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As you can imagine, this was a wide ranging conversation where
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we discussed everything from the origins of Motto through
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to Vision Camp and what it means to be a visionary leader.
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I was very humbled to have Sonny join me for this
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conversation, and I think you'll really enjoy it.
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So without further ado, here's my conversation with Sunny Bonnell of Motto.
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All right, Sunny.
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Welcome to the podcast.
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Thanks for having me.
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Glad to have you here today.
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Got a lot to talk about and really can't wait to dig into Motto.
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As you may know, I always like to start with a bit of an origin story though.
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I like to know where you came from and what
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led you to create the business you're in today.
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So, you know, being a co-founder of the business you're
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in and everything, it's always really good to learn
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that story 'cause you got a unique perspective on it.
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So with that said, where did you get your start in business?
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2005 dropped out of vet school with my co-founder and decide to launch a
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branding company in a small South Carolina town with about $250, and, you
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know, very quickly and audaciously set out to change the conversation around
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brands with purpose and why companies were doing what they were doing, why
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they were doing what they were doing, and just trying to put a new perspective
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on how brands are created, why they're created, and who's behind them.
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That's really cool.
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What prompted that desire to change the conversation to begin with?
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Well, I think that in 2005, a lot of agencies were considered either ad
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agencies or graphic designers or creatives, and there was not at the time,
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a tremendous amount of branding companies, or at least agencies that called
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themselves branding companies or branding people, I guess if you'd say.
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And I think that one of the opportunities was that we're women in business.
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We looked out among the sea of faces and didn't really see a
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lot of women-owned creative companies, and so I thought that
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felt like an opportunity for us to come in and be those fresh
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faces and really steer the conversation in a new direction.
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But also I think there was an opportunity to change brands from what they do
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and sell to what they believe in and what they stand for, and so that really
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became the heart of the company and why we decided to go in that direction.
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That's cool.
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That's cool.
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So as I like to say here, names are intrinsic to branding.
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Why the name Motto?
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Motto is a purpose, a cause of belief, and it feels righteously,
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right that it would be tied to why we were working with companies
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that we believed had a purpose and a desire and a vision, and
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it felt right for a name and a nomenclature that really was as
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meaningful and deep as it was for the work that we were doing.
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And so what we really began to define over time
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was that mottos are sentiments of hope and purpose.
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They've been around from the beginning of time.
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They were etched over a castle doorways.
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People wore them into battle.
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People carried them on their flag, and when you really think about business and
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how business is shaped and where your ideas come from, it's becomes incredibly
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important to sort of have a point of view and to have a mountain that you're
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trying to climb and to put a flag on that mountain and to claim that territory.
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And so it felt really authentic to not only
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who we are, but what we do and why we do it.
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And so it's now become, I would say, the underline of everything that we
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do, and particularly around our concept of big ideas worth rallying around.
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It's really tied back to the name and the origin of the name,
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and so, it's been not only a name that's driven us and seeded
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us in the conversation, but it's also been uniquely tied to
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everything that we do and everything that we do for companies.
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And so it couldn't have been a more perfect name.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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As you were saying, ideas worth rallying around.
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I was like, "Yeah, people do rally around a motto quite often," so there you go.
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Yes, yes.
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That's where it comes from.
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So.
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As you built the business, as you, as you
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were growing and where in South Carolina?
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Can I ask where exactly you were in South Carolina?
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Yeah.
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A little, little town just above Charleston, South Carolina,
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Merle's Inlet, South Carolina, so right in that area.
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Stayed there for a little bit and then relocated to Dallas, and then
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from Dallas to New York City, and then now New York City to global.
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So really kind of a little tiny town story
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to a scalable impact and a global impact.
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Wow.
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That's neat.
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I've, most of the time I hear people moving like that,
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I think of like individuals moving, not a whole company.
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So were you uprooting the company every time?
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Were you starting new locations?
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How did that work?
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Yeah.
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Well, at the time, like we were, my co-founder and I are, have really
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been leadership consultants, and so the first decade of the business,
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that's really what we've specialized in was going inside companies
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and really helping them define that big idea, that vision, that
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purpose, that rallying cause and begin to help companies align their
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leaders and steering groups to that and really galvanize and mobilize
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their people around that culture and that culture building tool.
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Brand is a culture building tool, and as we begin to grow in
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significance, in terms of the work we were doing, then we started
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to build a team, and so it was pretty easy for us to move around,
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but in each location we would kind of build a flex team, and then
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as we scaled, now we just have a global team all over the world.
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But back then it was easy to be mobile and kind of move around
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because you were, you're kind of flexing and contracting
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based on wherever you, whatever you needed at the time.
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So it's not uncommon for leadership teams to do that
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and sort of build those agile systems around them.
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Where I live in Knoxville, Tennessee, we've seen some
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agencies kind of grow and expand and move around to a degree.
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So, I've experienced that a little bit,
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observed it a little bit, you should say, but.
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I think it's the modern company, if I'm being honest.
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I think that, you know, at times we had a hybrid workforce
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where we had people in the office and then we had remote people.
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But you know, we were doing Zoom calls, well back then it was a
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different platform, but we were doing Zoom calls before that was
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like a thing, you know, and it was because we never put an address
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on our website, and so you didn't really know where we were.
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That was kind of intentional because we didn't want people to stop and
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think, "Well, because they're not local, we should work with 'em," right?
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So the tricky thing about it, and maybe the genius thing about it,
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was very quickly we were getting clients from like New York and LA
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and big cities because we did not do that, and it allowed us to kind
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of remain agile and flexible, but also we were able to work remote.
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And that became one of our strongest advantages was that it didn't matter what
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time zone you were in or where you were, we could work with you, and that model
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has kind of expanded into everything that we do with the team that we have now.
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You know, we can, we have clients in Singapore, to the UK to, you know, Berlin.
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It is really no longer a barrier to the work that we do, and I
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think it allows you to truly be innovative and work with great
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minds everywhere, no matter where they are or what time it is.
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And one, one thing I noticed is when you tend to place
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a physical address on your business, it does limit you.
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And people are like "Oh, you're where?" I know from experience.
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You know, in our business we work with some tech companies out
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in Silicon Valley and, you know, I'm in the Southeast, so a
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lot of people don't have a positive opinion of the Southeast.
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I kind of have to either overcome that or just kind of play it down until, you
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know, they realize, "Oh, this is a remote team, and they're really professional,
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and it doesn't matter where they're at. They're gonna do the work for us." So.
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Yeah.
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It's true, it's true.
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There, there is some stigmas there, but, you know, I
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also like to think that we can change that narrative.
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And so I like to flip that script around and to reset expectations of
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what you think that is, and I think, you know, with the company that
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you can build wherever they are, I think it just opens up your workforce
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for having great minds and having diverse backgrounds, and really
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that's the competitive advantage for the companies that you work with.
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Yeah.
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Agreed.
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Agreed.
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And I should be clear, I don't try to hide where I live from folks, but
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it definitely was something I was warned about coming into that world
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of tech, of like, "Oh, some people look down on this," and I'm like,
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"Well, I'm just gonna tell people I'm from Tennessee, and I don't care."
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You know, if I get a little southern when I'm talking, it's okay.
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Yeah.
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I've been in Dallas, I've been in Chicago, I've been all
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over, I've been in in California, and so sometimes if I
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get into the south, deep south, you can hear it come out.
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But most of the time, you don't know where I'm from, so.
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Yeah.
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Unless I'm really tired that day, then it really comes out anyways.
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Well that's really neat.
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So y'all have grown a whole lot, and in that growth, there's always that moment,
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there's always that challenge where I call it the moment of validation for
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your business where you really know that like, whatever I'm building here is
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real and coming out of, basically coming outta college and going into this,
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even I know a pretty big career change going from being a vet student to
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all of a sudden being in marketing and branding, like that's a huge change.
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So what was that moment for you where you realized,
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"Okay, this isn't just $250 I put on the table and a big
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risk, but something that was really gonna be something."
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There's probably been a few of those moments,
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but I think there's two that come to mind.
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One is a women's business competition that we participated in.
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Ashley and I went and participated in this, I think it was circa 2007.
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We were pretty young, pretty naive, and didn't have a whole, whole
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lot of money to our name at that point, and we went into this
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competition because the prize package was pretty significant.
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So, if you were to participate and you won, there was an
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entire suite of access that you got, not only to press
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and media, but to funding through American Express.
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You were able to get mentored by some of the best women leaders out
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there at the time who are running multimillion, in some cases, billion
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dollar businesses, and we went to the practice pitch at long story
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short end up flubbing it, getting booed off stage and then thinking
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we were gonna leave and not come back, to actually participate in the
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live competition and ended up coming back and winning the whole thing.
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And it was such a pivotal moment because at that time, the judges
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were pretty critical in that they were like, "You're too young.
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"You're," you know, "everyone here is more mature," and they're pretty harsh.
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You know, they were pretty direct about it, and they were telling the truth.
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I mean, we were the youngest women there.
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We didn't quite know our business that well yet, and we were outnumbered in
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terms of the amount of gravitas in the room and the experience in the room.
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What I think they didn't consider was that we were ferocious in our
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belief and self-belief, and so I think that the courage to come back
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and to not only present the business in a new and exciting way, to
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repackage with that feedback, and within 24 hours had turned that
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around and now got a standing ovation was a pretty significant moment.
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And I think the reason that that was so significant is because
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in every entrepreneur's journey there's these moments where
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you have a moment to sort of fall back or throw the knockout
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punch, and I think that that's what we did in that moment.
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And I think the second time was when we earned a book deal.
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And the book deal was really significant because the first iteration of the
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book got rejected by every major publisher, and we didn't take no for an answer.
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We rewrote it and came back and ended up having it go to a bidding
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war, and the reason that's significant is because it propelled
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our thought leadership and our perspective and point of view of
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what we had been able to do over those many years of being able
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to be doubted and again come back and throw that knockout punch.
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I think that that allows you to earn some wisdom and also
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a few black eyes to where you can now begin to understand
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entrepreneurship in a really powerful and profound way.
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And then it allows you to now become a steward and a champion of other
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people that come after you, and so it allowed us to also now become great
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mentors and coaches to our team, but also to give back to the community.
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We mentor a lot of women in business and, you know, mentor the women on
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our team and really help them understand like, "Look. You are a vessel of
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possibility," and if we can be the leaders that allow you to be seen and to be
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championed and to reveal yourself within the company, that's what we wanna do.
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And we do that for everybody.
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But of course we have a special place for women in our heart, simply
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because we were very new to that industry and we didn't see many women
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out there doing what we're doing, and still, creative agencies are,
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I think 0.1% of all creative agencies are still only owned by women.
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So the fact that that is a statistic that women need to be in
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these positions and to be leading companies and to be at the
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forefront and really diversity at its at its core, it's great to
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be a steward of that in some way or to be a part of that, you know?
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Because we have a lot of young women who are trying to own their, you
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know, start their agencies and I think they look to us as inspiration.
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So that really is exciting.
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Yeah.
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Been fortunate to know some great women creatives locally
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running agencies and such and have a lot of respect.
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I know it's a hard field to be in.
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It is.
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It is.
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Yeah.
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But I think we're making change.
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I think we're, you know, really starting
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to show up in all sorts of diverse voices.
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So I see some hope out there and some optimism about, you know,
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we're just too stubborn to be that quiet, so I think that,
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you know, that's what it is.
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Like we just have to trust in the, you know, voices are, if they're loud
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enough and they're multiplied enough, they can become powerful forces.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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Well, it's good work that you're doing there,
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and I think That kinda leads into the main topic we wanted to talk
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about today, which is talking about leadership behind the brand, because
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you're talking about how this book has helped you lead your team, and now
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we're talking about even with branding, how leadership is so important.
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So you mentioned to me when we were doing the pre-call here that, you know,
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branding isn't just a marketing function, it's a leadership responsibility.
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What does that mean?
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Help me understand.
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Well, I think the culture that you build today is the company that you
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have tomorrow, and brand is no longer left to the marketing department.
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It is an all-company job.
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It is an all-company initiative, and where it starts is in
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the heart of the home, which is in within the culture, but it
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also happens within the leadership and the leadership mindset.
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What we have seen over the years working with now some of
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the biggest brands on earth, we've worked from everybody from
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Virgin to Microsoft to Google to the Minnesota Vikings, and one
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commonality is true, in that, leaders can come from anywhere.
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It is not based on title or rank, and the goal for any modern day company
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is to not only champion those leaders within your company, but also to
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understand that brand vision and culture need to be aligned at every level.
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And the way that you do that is to educate, empower, and
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inspire at every level of the organization so that we train
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visionaries into visionary leadership so that they can be better.
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They can be better leaders, they can be better, you
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know, culture champions and igniters, and also that they
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can really build the brand inside the company and out.
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And you want to have that alignment at every level because
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then it allows you to have a great brand internally,
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but it also allows you to have a great brand externally.
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And they're closer than you think in terms of their alignment.
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They must be aligned because if you have a great culture inside, but your
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brand does not suit you or does not reflect that, then you have a disconnect.
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And that can be really hard to push a culture and a brand if those
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things aren't aligned because you're working counterintuitively, right?
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You want the people that are your champions and you're
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igniters to also be pushing out the right brand on your behalf.
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And you want your audience to understand who you are through
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that work and through the cultural lens, but also the brand lens.
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And so it is absolutely every part of the business inside and out.
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And we really preach that, and we really believe it.
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That's really cool.
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So when it comes to that leadership, that vision, does it start with
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the, and I'm just trying to think through this and kind of apply
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it more applicably here, but like, does that mean as a leader, like
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I'm saying, "Here's my brand, here's what I want the company brand
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to be," I have to embody it first before anybody else will follow.
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Would that be kind of a fair?
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Yeah, I mean, it is.
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I think that the thing that we see probably the most
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commonly is that there's multiple visions happening within
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the company, and it kind of ladders up to, like, confusion.
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So, a lot of times we'll have companies come in and they'll be
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like, "We have a vision for this department, a vision for this
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department," and we're all chasing these different rabbits.
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And the reason is because we have not defined the overarching vision.
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Then how your role ladders up to that, the mission of your
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department and how that then ladders up to that overarching vision.
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So the goal is to make sure that you have alignment at every level, meaning
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if you have a powerful visionary, CEO or a co-founders, for example, do they,
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and have they articulated the direction of the company enough times, clearly
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enough and powerfully enough and succinctly enough that everyone from top to
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bottom in that organization understands it, believes it, and can support it?
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And then it's abou the people that are, you know, say you have a bigger company
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and you have multiple people in departments, how are they then leading their
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teams up to that vision, reinforcing that vision, but also making sure that
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their missions and that the work that they're doing is laddering up to that?
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So, it's really about defining it at every level, but you know, it usually
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does start with a strong visionary or co-visionaries at the top who
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set the direction of the company and reinforce it through the company.
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I mean, there's great examples of that all throughout history.
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And the trick is to make sure that the vision doesn't just live in
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the visionary's head, that it's actually pulled out and can be really
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acted upon and understood, because that's probably the thing that's
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the challenge for most companies is that the vision, it's not that they
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don't have one, it's that it's misunderstood all the way down the chain.
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And that is what you have to course correct because you want
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everyone, no matter how long they've been at the company to
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understand, and be able to articulate back to you, what it is
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that you're fighting for, what you're fighting against, and why.
21:36
Yeah.
21:37
So for example, I think the more I'm hearing you talk
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about this, I'm thinking of like Southwest Airlines
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and their company culture and how it impacts everybody.
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I've got a good friend who, she's a stewardess with Southwest, and she loves it.
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She loves it there.
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She loves the culture, she loves everything, and she very much,
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knowingly or not, is embodying what I think of when I think of Southwest.
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And when I think of that brand, she's embodying it, and that's coming
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from a place of developing that culture that makes her buy into it.
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I've also worked at AT&T, where people don't buy into the culture.
22:15
Yeah.
22:15
it's really a cultural thing, and it's
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also a leadership thing, and you're right.
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Like when a culture is very intact, you can feel it
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because the people that represent that company embody
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it, and then they're championing it out in the world.
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It becomes part of that broader identity and
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ecosystem, and it's a powerful, powerful thing.
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WD-40 was well known for this.
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There's lots of companies that have that, and we take on the
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behaviors of the company that we work with because we spend
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a tremendous amount of time in the culture of that company.
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The people that we work with, we're closer to them.
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We spend time with them, sometimes more than we do our own family, so it's
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important to get that right and to make sure that it's really authentic,
23:04
and it's clear, and it's easily understood because that's probably, as I
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said, the biggest challenge for any company as they grow, as they scale.
23:14
It splinters off, and it's not by choice, it's just that the company
23:21
grows and scales in such a profound way that you have to remember,
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you just keep turning that vision into every conversation that
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you're having, and you need those army of lieutenants out there
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essentially being the vessel for that vision, so that they can run it
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down into their departments, into their teams, and into their work.
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I mean, I can, I can see that in things as simple
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as like what we do with my company, HumblePod.
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And this is not intended to be a plug, it's just me tying together
23:55
loose ends here, but you know, thinking about our tagline of, "We make
23:59
podcasting easy," talking to my team and saying, "This is what we do.
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This is how we do it," and wanting to encourage my team
24:05
to remember that motto and seeing them come back to me at
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times is like, "Well, we make podcasting easy, right?" Yes!
24:11
You know, to see them get that, to see them understand
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that at a small level is really good, and then at a bigger
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level it can also have a negative impact too, right?
24:20
I mean, we see what's going on, we try to stay pretty neutral
24:23
here, but we see what's going on in America right now.
24:25
And when you have someone like Elon Musk who's in leadership at Tesla
24:31
doing what he's doing, and saying what he's saying, we
24:33
see a negative fallout both in the community and probably,
24:37
I would imagine, internally in the ranks as well.
24:39
When you see, "Well, this is what our leader's doing, how do
24:42
we now follow that? "So that plays in a brand a lot as well.
24:46
Yeah.
24:47
Well, I think that we're in a really interesting time where the CEO is
24:52
the new logo, and you have, you know, undoubtedly, Elon Musk is one of
25:00
the greatest visionaries ever to walk this earth, and yet, there's a,
25:09
we call it in Rare Breed, and in our book, Rare Breed, we
25:11
actually dig into this quite a bit in our book, Rare Breed:
25:14
A Guide to Success for The Defiant, Dangerous and Different.
25:17
And one of the seven so-called vices in the book.
25:21
So in the book we talk about seven so-called vices that society teaches you
25:25
are counterintuitive to your success, and they can often have a dark side.
25:31
And so one of the virtues in the book is audacity.
25:34
The audacity to dream, to believe, to change the world, to do the impossible.
25:40
He has absolutely done that.
25:42
But what's the dark side of audacity?
25:44
The dark side of audacity is hubris, and when you get where that
25:52
becomes murky, and it can, because visionaries can be very murky,
25:56
and this is a big conversation that we're opening here, but.
26:00
That's okay.
26:00
We got time.
26:01
I think what's interesting is what we're seeing is the effects of
26:06
that audacity and that vision and where that murkiness, the borderland
26:12
between those two things, between the light and the dark sides of a
26:16
vice versus a virtue, we dig into this deeply in the book, but it's
26:22
a great example of where someone might argue or put on the table that
26:30
Elon is perhaps, you know, this audacious visionary, and yet what the
26:37
world now thinks is perhaps like, "Well, he's visionary, but there's
26:41
this other side too," and everybody's kind of wrestling with that.
26:45
And that's what's interesting about a vice and a virtue is that
26:48
it's probably the key to your success, and yet there are such dark
26:53
sides to that that when you understand that trait at work within
26:58
your life and your career, that you begin to understand that it
27:01
can veer off and it can become, there could be disadvantages to
27:06
it, and it can open the door as quickly as it can close the door.
27:10
And the power of that is really, really interesting.
27:13
And we dig, we go into the psychology of this in our
27:17
book, but the seven traits are, audacity is one of them.
27:21
Emotional is one of them.
27:22
Hypnotic is another.
27:24
Hot blooded is another.
27:25
You know, all of these seven traits,
27:30
they're known to be the thing that propel you to
27:32
greatness, but they're also the thing that can undo you.
27:36
And it's interesting to uncover that and explore that.
27:40
But I think CEOs now we're finding, but bring, to bring it all back,
27:46
I think the truth of the matter is what we're seeing is we're seeing
27:49
a lot of visionary leaders, and powerful leaders and CEOs, who now
27:54
become almost indistinguishable from the companies that they run.
27:58
When you think of Skims, you think of Kim Kardashian.
28:02
When you think of Amazon, you think of Jeff Bezos.
28:05
When you think of Tesla, you think of Elon Musk, and that is really interesting.
28:11
That's kind of been there, but I think it's more prevalent now than ever.
28:16
Yeah.
28:16
I wonder if that is because of the way a lot of these organizations were started
28:21
or the way the mythos behind these organizations and how they were started.
28:25
I mean, there's a lot, you know, for, I can think of the, just
28:28
the three you mentioned, like Kim Kardashian specifically.
28:32
I can think of her as someone who is just her
28:36
name, face brand alone, brings a lot to the table.
28:40
You know, regardless of what she does, she
28:42
kind of has the Midas touch wherever she goes.
28:44
And, you know, people follow that, and when I think of someone
28:50
like, you know, Bezos, like he just has that history behind him.
28:53
He has whatever you think of him, like he has that history.
28:56
And same with Musk.
28:58
I mean, I would say out of all those, Musk is probably arguably the, I
29:04
know you said visionary earlier, but I would argue he's almost the least
29:07
visionary of the few if you look at like how he acquired the companies he did.
29:11
He does do audacious things to be clear, and he does claim
29:15
audacious things, but there's a lot there that's like,
29:19
just a how much of his fact versus how much of his fiction?
29:22
And you can ask that of any of these people.
29:24
I mean, I'm sure Kardashian's life is very curated, for instance
29:29
versus the reality of what she's living through right now.
29:32
So.
29:33
I think she's underestimated, if I'm being honest.
29:35
I think that a lot of people think they know what she is, and
29:43
it's hard for them to think outside of that, but I think she's
29:47
very underestimated, and I think she's a very savvy businesswoman
29:50
and probably far more underestimated than you would think.
29:55
But I also think that there's a tremendous amount of need for understanding
30:05
and where we're going in terms of leadership and how leadership is
30:09
being developed and how visionary can you be and can you learn it?
30:16
Because it's really an interesting thing that
30:18
I'm exploring now with visionary leadership.
30:21
Because I've trained in it.
30:23
I'm writing on it.
30:25
We're writing on it.
30:26
We speak on it all the time, and it's really interesting that there's very
30:30
little resources out in the world that teach you visionary leadership.
30:36
There's, you can go learn leadership, you can go learn transformational
30:40
leadership, servant leadership all sorts of leadership books, but very few
30:47
can identify and teach you whether or not something is visionary or not?
30:53
Or are there traits to visionaries, and how does that impact your company?
30:57
And it's a really interesting thing, and it's why we
30:59
launched an executive leadership workshop called VisionCamp.
31:03
So it's under the Motto ecosystem, but we do two day workshops with
31:08
leadership teams and steering groups to help teach in day one, what is vision?
31:17
The fundamental definition of "vision" is actually misunderstood.
31:21
So teaching that, and then also sharing, well,
31:24
what are the traits of visionary leaders?
31:26
Can anyone be a visionary?
31:29
Can more people be visionary than they are, and can you learn it?
31:32
You know, it's really interesting to explore that.
31:36
I think that we underestimate our capability set because we say,
31:41
"Oh, only visionaries come around a few times in a lifetime," right?
31:48
And there's probably some degree of that is true, but I think
31:51
there's a lot of visionary leaders that you've never heard of.
31:54
So there's just, there's just some interesting territory there around
31:58
that, but I think it's one of the most fascinating topics right
32:02
now is visionary leadership, and what does it take to be visionary?
32:05
How can you teach your team to be more innovative and more visionary?
32:10
Does it only belong to someone at the top?
32:13
Is it only somebody that can, you know, do the impossible?
32:17
Does that mean that they're visionaries?
32:20
it's just a fascinating subject for me,
32:22
and I really, I spent a lot of time on it.
32:25
It reminds me of like, I guess where in my mind, like thinking of the contrast
32:28
between the great man theory of leadership, versus what you're talking
32:33
about, which is the visionary, I think those two could often get conflated,
32:36
and when I hear "great man," I think of like, you know, that may be what
32:40
you're, what some people think of like an Elon Musk or someone like that.
32:43
But what you're saying is like you can be visionary without having to have just
32:47
been that magical person at the right time in the right place to be that person.
32:52
You can be visionary without all that.
32:54
So that's really interesting.
32:56
Yeah, and I think that also there is some truth to, "What is a 'vision?'"
33:01
A vision is a hope for the world.
33:04
It's a vision of the world that you hope to achieve for
33:07
those that you hope to serve, and it's a future state.
33:11
It's not ego driven.
33:12
It's not selfish, it's not selfishly motivated it.
33:15
A lot of people mix it with like a mission or a purpose, but vision
33:19
is very specific, and it's the world you're trying to build for
33:24
other people, and it's a world that probably doesn't exist yet.
33:28
And the key difference with vision in particular and with
33:32
organizations is that there is a great need to articulate at
33:39
its fundamental level, "I work for you. Where are we going?"
33:47
And if we can get that right, it allows buy-in because
33:52
then we're now there and we understand why we're there.
33:55
A lot of people, if you look at statistics around, I think
33:59
it was a, I can't remember which study it was, it might have
34:01
been Harvard Business Review, but they said like 80 to 90% of
34:04
people don't even know the company's purpose that they work for.
34:08
That means that there's a whole lot of confusion
34:12
in the companies that you're working for.
34:14
Just the fundamental basics of, "Why are we here?" "What are we
34:18
fighting for?" "Who do we serve?" "What are we fighting against,"
34:24
and, "What world do we hope to build," are fundamentally unanswered?
34:28
So if that's the one thing that you can figure out,
34:35
you got a huge advantage because most
34:37
companies do not actually articulate that well.
34:41
Yeah, I mean, I've worked in enough companies
34:44
over the year to say, yep, you're right.
34:47
And even in my own business, like, just thinking through that, I wanna dig
34:52
more into that because for me that's something I'm still learning is how do
34:55
we become better at setting vision for a team, setting vision for a company?
35:01
One of my biggest refrains right now with the way the world
35:04
is, the way life is and everything, is that leadership matters.
35:07
Who's at the top really does matter, even if you don't think it does.
35:11
And there's a lot of fallout from that, and so when I say
35:15
that, I am hyper aware I'm saying it about myself too.
35:19
Oh, a hundred percent.
35:19
I mean, we're all works in progress, right?
35:22
And leaders in training.
35:23
I don't claim to know, I fumble all the time.
35:27
I think the one thing that I am clear on is that you have to continuously
35:34
repeat and really drive in your values, your vision, and what you want to
35:41
achieve with the team that you are building, and that fundamentally, if you
35:46
can get that right and you can build a culture where people really want to,
35:49
who believe in you, because they believe in themselves, and they feel that
35:54
their contributions matter, I really do believe that you can do incredible
35:58
things with small teams, with big teams, with every team in between.
36:02
If you get a couple things right, it's incredible what these teams can
36:05
do, and I think the thing about leadership is there is no perfect leader.
36:11
There's only leadership and training.
36:13
Like there's just leaders in training all
36:14
around the world trying to figure this out.
36:16
I'm one of them.
36:17
You're one of them.
36:18
Everyone on my team who's trying to become a better leader is one of them.
36:21
So it's about understanding that.
36:25
Also have an empathy for the fact that we are trying to do our best, and
36:29
sometimes we don't give enough of that to the leaders that we're actually
36:33
training or being mentored by, that they're just trying to do their best.
36:37
Now, that doesn't, obviously there's caveat there around
36:40
toxic leadership and bad managers and all that, right?
36:43
That it's definitely out there, but for the people who are really
36:46
trying to be a good leader and to do good and to champion people
36:51
within their culture, to grow people within their team, they really
36:54
are trying, and you just try to get better and better each time.
36:58
There is no real handbook for it, and that's why I think visionary
37:02
training is also really important is that there's, there's not
37:06
a lot of places that you can go that you can be with your peers,
37:10
but also you can learn from, and you can help each other grow.
37:15
And so that's really what why we started VisionCamp was to help
37:19
other people who see themselves as visionary or perhaps don't
37:22
see themselves as visionary and their teams come in and learn.
37:27
What can you learn from some of the journeys
37:30
that great visionaries have taken and achieved?
37:34
So I think, if there's one practical takeaway here from this
37:39
idea of being a visionary leader, what is one practical step
37:41
someone could take today just to get further down that path?
37:45
I think spending a little bit of time defining what it is
37:51
that you want from the work that you're doing and from the
37:56
people that you are trying to have to help support you.
38:00
Because we all want our work to matter.
38:03
We want to feel like we're contributing to something greater, and
38:07
the best thing that you can do is to define that for yourself, for
38:12
others, and really start to reinforce it in little ways and big ways.
38:18
In other words, in staff meetings, bring it up.
38:21
Remember why we're all here.
38:23
We're trying to build this world, and we're all, you know, "We
38:28
crushed it this week," and the couple things that we did here.
38:30
Boom, boom, boom.
38:31
Like that actually is, we're one step closer.
38:34
Like measure what you're trying to do and reinforce it through your values.
38:38
Something that Motto has that we do is, we have kind of rituals and
38:42
behaviors, but we really tie everything to values, and we reinforce
38:47
those values and we reinforce the vision on a day-to-day basis.
38:51
If you ask anyone in the company what is our
38:53
big idea here, we'll say, "Do big things.
38:55
We sign off everything.
38:56
We do big things." In every piece of work that we do, even when we're
39:00
failing, and we're winning and succeeding, what is at the root of it?
39:04
"Do big things." So, it's so simple, and
39:07
yet it's so easy to remember and to recall.
39:10
And that simple thing, like if just driving it all the
39:14
time through the business, over and over and over again is
39:17
now everybody, you know, they're wearing shirts with it.
39:20
It really becomes a mantra, becomes a motto, and that's what you want.
39:24
You want people to understand why they're there.
39:27
They're there to do big things in little
39:29
and big ways and and everything in between.
39:33
And so that builds an innovative culture where then you
39:35
become helpful to saying, "Look, we have a failure budget.
39:41
You can come to to us and ask us for a thousand dollars, or $1,500,
39:46
or a couple grand you can just say, "I have this crazy idea. I wanna
39:51
explore it. I need a few grand to get going." Great, here you go.
39:56
Go see if you can fail, and then what did you learn, right?
40:00
Because the next thing might be the thing
40:03
that becomes something really powerful.
40:05
I think in Amazon, there's a story about, I think out of
40:09
like seven to ten experiments that none of them, many things
40:14
failed, but like AWS became the one thing that worked, and
40:18
now it's like a bazillion dollar brand or something crazy.
40:21
But that's the kind of thing you're looking for.
40:24
You're looking for not everything to be the winner, but you
40:28
are looking for a few things to be the thing that you land
40:32
on, and you're like, "Wow, that was really, really cool.
40:34
Let's go over that.
40:35
Let's explore that.
40:36
Let's try to build that." That allows your team to also feel safe.
40:39
That you won't get fired because you failed.
40:42
You'll get fired for not trying, but you won't get fired because you failed.
40:50
Thanks for that two grand.
40:50
I'm just gonna go chill.
40:53
Bye.
40:53
I am off to Mexico.
40:55
Yeah.
40:55
No, no, not at all.
40:56
But, you know, there's guardrails around those kinds of things, but
40:59
generally speaking, you wanna create an an environment where you
41:03
really encourage people to dream really, really big, but you also allow
41:07
them to fail and to not, you know, and to allow to see possibility.
41:11
So if I were to say, you know, where can you have the most effect?
41:16
It's in trying to really culture and nurture the leaders that you have.
41:21
Really teach them about vision.
41:23
Teach them how to have vision, how to communicate that
41:26
vision to others, and how to build and act on that vision.
41:29
And then the second piece of that advice is really around possibility.
41:32
Seeing the possibility in others.
41:34
Sometimes we're too quick to make an assumption about someone.
41:39
Sometimes they're in the wrong seat, sometimes they're in the wrong
41:42
role, sometimes they haven't been seen yet, and our job as a leader is
41:47
to awaken that potential within them and to cultivate that possibility
41:52
so that they can become the best, best versions of themselves.
41:55
Because all that ends up doing is helping you become a better
41:59
leader because you helped grow them and see them, but also they
42:02
give back to the company in really profound and exciting ways.
42:06
And so it's just a win-win all around.
42:08
And so it's smart business to be a smart and a heart-centric leader.
42:14
That's really awesome.
42:16
Well, Sonny, thank you.
42:18
As we wrap up here, this is, there's just so much here.
42:20
I just am, I'm probably gonna be like, "I'm mad I didn't
42:23
ask this. Oh my gosh." But no, this has been really great.
42:27
We always like to wrap up with just a few more generic
42:30
questions, and the one I always like to ask the most is,
42:33
you know, what brand do you admire the most right now?
42:35
We've talked a lot about brands and people that
42:37
envision brands, or, sorry, not envision, embody brands.
42:41
So what brand would you say that you're the most admirable of right now?
42:45
I'm gonna go with Goorin, but only because I wear Goorin hats, so.
42:50
Okay, tell me more.
42:53
Well, I love that they've been around since like the 1800s, and
42:56
they've just done everything the way that they've done it for
42:58
a very, very long time, and they're just so authentically them.
43:03
And I think it's really hard to retain that kind of spirit over
43:06
such a long period of time across modernization and, you know,
43:11
all the things that a company withstands over that amount of time.
43:17
And they just have that kind of vibe, you know?
43:21
It's like they are authentically who they are and they're very
43:24
much been able to sort of weather all of the world, you know, and
43:28
their placed within it, and they've stood firmly in who they are.
43:31
And so I just love that about the brand.
43:33
And I love the brand.
43:35
I wear the brand, and I tell people about it when I can, you know.
43:39
Fedora is not for everybody and not everybody can probably pull
43:42
it off, but it's definitely a brand that I'm really a huge fan of.
43:46
I think they've done a really good job of just being able to be truly
43:51
that deep motto and hold onto it and carry it through so much time.
43:58
And how do you spell Gorrin?
43:59
Because I'm, I'm trying to, as you're talking
44:01
Gorrin, G-O-O-R-I-N.
44:04
Gorrin Brothers.
44:05
Gorrin Brothers.
44:05
Okay.
44:06
Yeah, they got some, they got some cool just caps too.
44:10
Yeah, they got cool caps, and yeah.
44:11
Fedoras and fun stuff like that.
44:13
Yeah.
44:13
Don't wear it to work.
44:14
But I typically do wear a hat.
44:16
I wear one every day.
44:18
It's like my thing.
44:18
I was doing this before, I was like in third grade wearing hats.
44:22
I used to wear for paper Boys when I was in third grade, so I've always done it.
44:27
So yeah, just a thing.
44:29
An old podcast host of mine was telling me about another company.
44:31
He's like, "You need to get them on the podcast. You need to
44:33
interview them." That's another hat company that he's a big fan
44:37
of, and he's the one who wears all the newsy caps all the time.
44:41
But yeah, this is, that's neat.
44:42
I love, I love old fashioned.
44:44
I'm old fashioned.
44:46
I don't know how to say that better.
44:50
I'm old fashioned.
44:50
Yeah.
44:51
I feel like it's true.
44:53
I feel like I'm an old spirit or old soul or something, you know?
44:56
Should have been around the '20s.
44:57
Yeah.
44:58
But it's a neat look, and something I'm slowly but surely
45:02
getting more interested in is like male fashion and how all
45:06
that works together and how all that gets created and stuff.
45:10
Yeah.
45:11
Gotta have a look, you know?
45:13
Gotta have a style.
45:14
Yeah.
45:14
Yeah.
45:15
I've watched a YouTube video recently, and I did not expect it to capture me.
45:20
In fact, a friend texted me and said, "I'm texting you this.
45:22
So I remember to watch it later,"
45:26
and I was like, "What is this?" And I clicked on
45:28
it, and it was the title of it was very unassuming.
45:31
It was something like, "Why I Hate Jordan Peterson
45:34
in Fashion," and I'm like, "Okay, I'm intrigued."
45:36
Interesting.
45:37
Interesting.
45:38
It ended up being this, I'll send you a link to it.
45:40
It ended up being this hour long diatribe, and it was just fascinating 'cause
45:45
they actually talked about fashion and why Peterson's fashion, specifically from
45:50
a philosophical standpoint, was horrible and just all this fascinating stuff.
45:58
Well, and you become known for the things you wear, don't you?
46:00
I mean, like, yeah, like, you know, and some people just like
46:02
have a uniform and that's a whole podcast in and of itself.
46:05
Yeah.
46:06
Personal branding is a big thing.
46:07
I was actually thinking, "I was like, I should
46:08
get that guy on the podcast at some point."
46:12
Not Peterson, but the fashion dude that was mentioned.
46:16
But yeah, it's always really interesting to me when
46:21
you know, because yeah, that's even a part of it too.
46:23
It's how you look, how you dress, how you show up for
46:25
work, when you show up for work, all those things.
46:28
Yes.
46:29
A hundred percent.
46:30
So, absolutely.
46:32
that's wonderful.
46:33
Well, Sonny is there anything, how can people get connected with you?
46:38
They can find me on, yeah, LinkedIn.
46:41
LinkedIn, Sonny Bonnell.
46:42
You can find us at wearemotto.com and on Instagram at wearemotto, and
46:47
then also on LinkedIn we are, well actually it's Motto on LinkedIn,
46:52
and also you can get the book at an Amazon or wherever books are sold.
46:56
Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different.
47:01
Excellent.
47:01
Well, Sunny, it's been a pleasure talking to you today.
47:04
So much fun.
47:05
Absolutely.
47:06
Hopefully we have a chance to have you back, and I appreciate your time.
47:09
Absolutely.
47:10
Thanks for having me.
47:11
Thanks for checking out this episode of We Built This Brand.
47:14
Don't forget to like, follow and subscribe on your player of choice, and
47:17
you can also keep up with a podcast on our website at webuilthisbrand.com.
47:22
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47:26
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