Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different
Sunny Bonnell and Ashleigh Hansberger
HarperOne/An imprint of HarperCollins (September 2019)
How and why being “defiant, dangerous, and different is a gift”
Helen Keller once suggested, “Life is either a great adventure or nothing.” Opinions are divided about the value of that affirmation, if taken literally. Few lives are a daring adventure or nothing. Most are somewhere in between.
Sunny Bonnell and Ashleigh Hansberger are convinced that, with rare exception, world changers are defiant, dangerous, and different. Steve Jobs agrees: “When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world — try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader [and much deeper] once you discover one simple fact: everything around you that you call life was made up by people who were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things…Once you learn that, you’ll lever be the same.”
In this context, I am again reminded of this passage from Alan Watts’s The Book: “We need a new experience — a new feeling of what it is to be ‘I.’ The lowdown (which is, of course, the secret and profound view) on life is that our normal sensation of self is a hoax, or, at best, a temporary role that we are playing, or have been conned into playing — with our own tacit consent, just as every hypnotized person is basically willing to be hypnotized. The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.”
Bonnell and Hansberger would add, indeed insist, that you must own who you are. Who you really are. That is, whatever makes you different, whatever others consider to be weaknesses or vices, can in fact be the sources of your greatest strengths. They know from extensive personal experience. After they launched their company, they soon learned the hard way “that vision, dangerous thinking, and defiance of the status quo come with a price.” Consider:
o The number of times they were sabotaged: Sixteen.
o Times they they got fired for the exact reason they were hired: Twenty.
o Times they were told their ideas were absurd: Hundreds.
o Times they were written off: Thousands.
Sunny’s father offered this advice: “You two are a rare breed. “Not everyone will love you. Some may hate you. But the ones who get you will never forget you. Now, just dust yourselves off and get back in that saddle.
They wrote this book to share an insight, an epiphany really, that hit them like a lightning bolt: “Being defiant, dangerous, and different is a gift,” one that you can give to yourself whenever your self-confidence seems to be crumbling. Over time, their independent, strategic branding and digital agency, Motto, began to thrive. Meanwhile, consider the fact that no publisher was willing to consider the manuscript for what became this book. Eventually, after several minor revisions, however, it was finally accepted and has become a bestseller.
According to Bonnell and Hansberger, “At the heart of this book are seven ‘vices’ — seven traits that conventional wisdom regards as dangerous and counterintuitive to your success — that we’ve called Virtues. They are the keys to becoming a Rare Breed.” They are best revealed in context, within their lively narrative. A separate chapter is devoted to each.
In this context, I am again reminded of James O’Toole’s suggestion that the strongest resistance to change is usually cultural in nature, the result of what he so aptly characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.” Those who possess the seven Virtues are indeed a Rare Breed who are most likely to lead, create, inspire, and provoke change…and do so on their own terms “by harnessing all of who they are, not just the pretty parts.”
It is important to keep the adjective “rare” in mind. Sunny Bonnell and Ashleigh Hansberger would be among the first to acknowledge that very few people who read Rare Breed now possess all of the seven traits or “virtues.” However, they can be inspired by it to take ownership of who they are now and become more defiant, dangerous, and different when interacting with challenges today, challenges in a global marketplace that is more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I can recall.
Danny Bonnell reminds all of us of the power of sincere encouragement when it’s needed most. I intend to provide more of it in months and years to come.