Leadership Behind the Brand with Sunny Bonnell

Sunny Bonnell: And the goal for any modern day company is to not only champion those leaders within your company, but also to understand that brand vision and culture need to be aligned at every level. The way that you do that is to educate, empower, and inspire at every level of the organization so that we train visionaries into visionary leadership so that they can be better leaders, they can be better, you know, culture champions and igniters.

And also that they can really build the brand inside the company and out.

Chris Hill:  Welcome to We Built this Brand, the podcast where we talk to the creators and collaborators behind brands, and provide you with practical insights that you can use in growing your own business. Today we're talking with Sunny Bonnell, co-founder and CEO at Motto, a branding firm that helps forward thinking companies harness the power of brand to unify leadership teams, drive innovation, and influence modern culture.

Sunny has been recognized as the winner of the Thinkers50 Radar award, which illuminates the brightest minds in the world, named on the cover of Swagger Magazine as a visionary brand icon, and has graced such lists as the top 30 Global Gurus, Graphic Design USA's Top 25 People to Watch, and the Webby Awards.

The Webby Awards have described Sonny as setting the standard for innovation and creativity, and this was certainly evident in our conversation. As you can imagine, this was a wide ranging conversation where we discussed everything from the origins of Motto through to Vision Camp and what it means to be a visionary leader.

I was very humbled to have Sonny join me for this conversation, and I think you'll really enjoy it. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Sunny Bonnell of Motto.

All right, Sunny. Welcome to the podcast.

Sunny Bonnell: Thanks for having me.

Chris Hill: Glad to have you here today. Got a lot to talk about and really can't wait to dig into Motto.

As you may know, I always like to start with a bit of an origin story though. I like to know where you came from and what led you to create the business you're in today.

So, you know, being a co-founder of the business you're in and everything, it's always really good to learn that story 'cause you got a unique perspective on it. So with that said, where did you get your start in business?

Sunny Bonnell: 2005 dropped out of vet school with my co-founder and decide to launch a branding company in a small South Carolina town with about $250, and, you know, very quickly and audaciously set out to change the conversation around brands with purpose and why companies were doing what they were doing, why they were doing what they were doing, and just trying to put a new perspective on how brands are created, why they're created, and who's behind them.

Chris Hill: That's really cool. What prompted that desire to change the conversation to begin with?

Sunny Bonnell: Well, I think that in 2005, a lot of agencies were considered either ad agencies or graphic designers or creatives, and there was not at the time, a tremendous amount of branding companies, or at least agencies that called themselves branding companies or branding people, I guess if you'd say. And I think that one of the opportunities was that we're women in business. We looked out among the sea of faces and didn't really see a lot of women-owned creative companies, and so I thought that felt like an opportunity for us to come in and be those fresh faces and really steer the conversation in a new direction.

But also I think there was an opportunity to change brands from what they do and sell to what they believe in and what they stand for, and so that really became the heart of the company and why we decided to go in that direction.

Chris Hill: That's cool. That's cool.

So as I like to say here, names are intrinsic to branding.

Why the name Motto?

Sunny Bonnell: Motto is a purpose, a cause of belief, and it feels righteously, right that it would be tied to why we were working with companies that we believed had a purpose and a desire and a vision, and it felt right for a name and a nomenclature that really was as meaningful and deep as it was for the work that we were doing.

And so what we really began to define over time was that mottos are sentiments of hope and purpose. They've been around from the beginning of time. They were etched over a castle doorways. People wore them into battle. People carried them on their flag, and when you really think about business and how business is shaped and where your ideas come from, it's becomes incredibly important to sort of have a point of view and to have a mountain that you're trying to climb and to put a flag on that mountain and to claim that territory. And so it felt really authentic to not only who we are, but what we do and why we do it.

And so it's now become, I would say, the underline of everything that we do, and particularly around our concept of big ideas worth rallying around. It's really tied back to the name and the origin of the name, and so, it's been not only a name that's driven us and seeded us in the conversation, but it's also been uniquely tied to everything that we do and everything that we do for companies.

And so it couldn't have been a more perfect name.

Chris Hill: Yeah. Yeah. As you were saying, ideas worth rallying around. I was like, "Yeah, people do rally around a motto quite often," so there you go.

Sunny Bonnell: Yes, yes. That's where it comes from.

Chris Hill: So. As you built the business, as you, as you were growing and where in South Carolina?

Can I ask where exactly you were in South Carolina?

Sunny Bonnell: Yeah. A little, little town just above Charleston, South Carolina, Merle's Inlet, South Carolina, so right in that area. Stayed there for a little bit and then relocated to Dallas, and then from Dallas to New York City, and then now New York City to global.

So really kind of a little tiny town story to a scalable impact and a global impact.

Chris Hill: Wow. That's neat. I've, most of the time I hear people moving like that, I think of like individuals moving, not a whole company. So were you uprooting the company every time? Were you starting new locations?

How did that work?

Sunny Bonnell: Yeah. Well, at the time, like we were, my co-founder and I are, have really been leadership consultants, and so the first decade of the business, that's really what we've specialized in was going inside companies and really helping them define that big idea, that vision, that purpose, that rallying cause and begin to help companies align their leaders and steering groups to that and really galvanize and mobilize their people around that culture and that culture building tool.

Brand is a culture building tool, and as we begin to grow in significance, in terms of the work we were doing, then we started to build a team, and so it was pretty easy for us to move around, but in each location we would kind of build a flex team, and then as we scaled, now we just have a global team all over the world.

But back then it was easy to be mobile and kind of move around because you were, you're kind of flexing and contracting based on wherever you, whatever you needed at the time. So it's not uncommon for leadership teams to do that and sort of build those agile systems around them.

Chris Hill: Where I live in Knoxville, Tennessee, we've seen some agencies kind of grow and expand and move around to a degree.

So, I've experienced that a little bit, observed it a little bit, you should say, but.

Sunny Bonnell: I think it's the modern company, if I'm being honest. I think that, you know, at times we had a hybrid workforce where we had people in the office and then we had remote people. But you know, we were doing Zoom calls, well back then it was a different platform, but we were doing Zoom calls before that was like a thing, you know, and it was because we never put an address on our website, and so you didn't really know where we were. That was kind of intentional because we didn't want people to stop and think, "Well, because they're not local, we should work with 'em," right? So the tricky thing about it, and maybe the genius thing about it, was very quickly we were getting clients from like New York and LA and big cities because we did not do that, and it allowed us to kind of remain agile and flexible, but also we were able to work remote. And that became one of our strongest advantages was that it didn't matter what time zone you were in or where you were, we could work with you, and that model has kind of expanded into everything that we do with the team that we have now. You know, we can, we have clients in Singapore, to the UK to, you know, Berlin. It is really no longer a barrier to the work that we do, and I think it allows you to truly be innovative and work with great minds everywhere, no matter where they are or what time it is.

Chris Hill: And one, one thing I noticed is when you tend to place a physical address on your business, it does limit you. And people are like "Oh, you're where?" I know from experience. You know, in our business we work with some tech companies out in Silicon Valley and, you know, I'm in the Southeast, so a lot of people don't have a positive opinion of the Southeast. I kind of have to either overcome that or just kind of play it down until, you know, they realize, "Oh, this is a remote team, and they're really professional, and it doesn't matter where they're at. They're gonna do the work for us." So.

Sunny Bonnell: Yeah. It's true, it's true. There, there is some stigmas there, but, you know, I also like to think that we can change that narrative. And so I like to flip that script around and to reset expectations of what you think that is, and I think, you know, with the company that you can build wherever they are, I think it just opens up your workforce for having great minds and having diverse backgrounds, and really that's the competitive advantage for the companies that you work with.

Chris Hill: Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. And I should be clear, I don't try to hide where I live from folks, but it definitely was something I was warned about coming into that world of tech, of like, "Oh, some people look down on this," and I'm like, "Well, I'm just gonna tell people I'm from Tennessee, and I don't care."

You know, if I get a little southern when I'm talking, it's okay.

Sunny Bonnell: Yeah. I've been in Dallas, I've been in Chicago, I've been all over, I've been in in California, and so sometimes if I get into the south, deep south, you can hear it come out. But most of the time, you don't know where I'm from, so.

Chris Hill: Yeah. Unless I'm really tired that day, then it really comes out anyways. Well that's really neat.

So y'all have grown a whole lot, and in that growth, there's always that moment, there's always that challenge where I call it the moment of validation for your business where you really know that like, whatever I'm building here is real and coming out of, basically coming outta college and going into this, even I know a pretty big career change going from being a vet student to all of a sudden being in marketing and branding, like that's a huge change. So what was that moment for you where you realized, "Okay, this isn't just $250 I put on the table and a big risk, but something that was really gonna be something."

Sunny Bonnell: There's probably been a few of those moments, but I think there's two that come to mind. One is a women's business competition that we participated in. Ashley and I went and participated in this, I think it was circa 2007. We were pretty young, pretty naive, and didn't have a whole, whole lot of money to our name at that point, and we went into this competition because the prize package was pretty significant. So, if you were to participate and you won, there was an entire suite of access that you got, not only to press and media, but to funding through American Express. You were able to get mentored by some of the best women leaders out there at the time who are running multimillion, in some cases, billion dollar businesses, and we went to the practice pitch at long story short end up flubbing it, getting booed off stage and then thinking we were gonna leave and not come back, to actually participate in the live competition and ended up coming back and winning the whole thing. And it was such a pivotal moment because at that time, the judges were pretty critical in that they were like, "You're too young. "You're," you know, "everyone here is more mature," and they're pretty harsh. You know, they were pretty direct about it, and they were telling the truth. I mean, we were the youngest women there. We didn't quite know our business that well yet, and we were outnumbered in terms of the amount of gravitas in the room and the experience in the room.

What I think they didn't consider was that we were ferocious in our belief and self-belief, and so I think that the courage to come back and to not only present the business in a new and exciting way, to repackage with that feedback, and within 24 hours had turned that around and now got a standing ovation was a pretty significant moment.

And I think the reason that that was so significant is because in every entrepreneur's journey there's these moments where you have a moment to sort of fall back or throw the knockout punch, and I think that that's what we did in that moment. And I think the second time was when we earned a book deal.

And the book deal was really significant because the first iteration of the book got rejected by every major publisher, and we didn't take no for an answer. We rewrote it and came back and ended up having it go to a bidding war, and the reason that's significant is because it propelled our thought leadership and our perspective and point of view of what we had been able to do over those many years of being able to be doubted and again come back and throw that knockout punch. I think that that allows you to earn some wisdom and also a few black eyes to where you can now begin to understand entrepreneurship in a really powerful and profound way.

And then it allows you to now become a steward and a champion of other people that come after you, and so it allowed us to also now become great mentors and coaches to our team, but also to give back to the community. We mentor a lot of women in business and, you know, mentor the women on our team and really help them understand like, "Look. You are a vessel of possibility," and if we can be the leaders that allow you to be seen and to be championed and to reveal yourself within the company, that's what we wanna do. And we do that for everybody. But of course we have a special place for women in our heart, simply because we were very new to that industry and we didn't see many women out there doing what we're doing, and still, creative agencies are, I think 0.1% of all creative agencies are still only owned by women. So the fact that that is a statistic that women need to be in these positions and to be leading companies and to be at the forefront and really diversity at its at its core, it's great to be a steward of that in some way or to be a part of that, you know?

Because we have a lot of young women who are trying to own their, you know, start their agencies and I think they look to us as inspiration. So that really is exciting.

Chris Hill: Yeah. Been fortunate to know some great women creatives locally running agencies and such and have a lot of respect. I know it's a hard field to be in.

Sunny Bonnell: It is. It is. Yeah. But I think we're making change. I think we're, you know, really starting to show up in all sorts of diverse voices. So I see some hope out there and some optimism about, you know, we're just too stubborn to be that quiet, so I think that, you know, that's what it is.

Like we just have to trust in the, you know, voices are, if they're loud enough and they're multiplied enough, they can become powerful forces.

Chris Hill: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, it's good work that you're doing there,

and I think That kinda leads into the main topic we wanted to talk about today, which is talking about leadership behind the brand, because you're talking about how this book has helped you lead your team, and now we're talking about even with branding, how leadership is so important.

So you mentioned to me when we were doing the pre-call here that, you know, branding isn't just a marketing function, it's a leadership responsibility. What does that mean? Help me understand.

Sunny Bonnell: Well, I think the culture that you build today is the company that you have tomorrow, and brand is no longer left to the marketing department.

It is an all-company job. It is an all-company initiative, and where it starts is in the heart of the home, which is in within the culture, but it also happens within the leadership and the leadership mindset. What we have seen over the years working with now some of the biggest brands on earth, we've worked from everybody from Virgin to Microsoft to Google to the Minnesota Vikings, and one commonality is true, in that, leaders can come from anywhere. It is not based on title or rank, and the goal for any modern day company is to not only champion those leaders within your company, but also to understand that brand vision and culture need to be aligned at every level. And the way that you do that is to educate, empower, and inspire at every level of the organization so that we train visionaries into visionary leadership so that they can be better.

They can be better leaders, they can be better, you know, culture champions and igniters, and also that they can really build the brand inside the company and out. And you want to have that alignment at every level because then it allows you to have a great brand internally, but it also allows you to have a great brand externally.

And they're closer than you think in terms of their alignment. They must be aligned because if you have a great culture inside, but your brand does not suit you or does not reflect that, then you have a disconnect. And that can be really hard to push a culture and a brand if those things aren't aligned because you're working counterintuitively, right?

You want the people that are your champions and you're igniters to also be pushing out the right brand on your behalf. And you want your audience to understand who you are through that work and through the cultural lens, but also the brand lens. And so it is absolutely every part of the business inside and out.

And we really preach that, and we really believe it.

Chris Hill: That's really cool. So when it comes to that leadership, that vision, does it start with the, and I'm just trying to think through this and kind of apply it more applicably here, but like, does that mean as a leader, like I'm saying, "Here's my brand, here's what I want the company brand to be," I have to embody it first before anybody else will follow. Would that be kind of a fair?

Sunny Bonnell: Yeah, I mean, it is. I think that the thing that we see probably the most commonly is that there's multiple visions happening within the company, and it kind of ladders up to, like, confusion. So, a lot of times we'll have companies come in and they'll be like, "We have a vision for this department, a vision for this department," and we're all chasing these different rabbits.

And the reason is because we have not defined the overarching vision. Then how your role ladders up to that, the mission of your department and how that then ladders up to that overarching vision. So the goal is to make sure that you have alignment at every level, meaning if you have a powerful visionary, CEO or a co-founders, for example, do they, and have they articulated the direction of the company enough times, clearly enough and powerfully enough and succinctly enough that everyone from top to bottom in that organization understands it, believes it, and can support it? And then it's abou the people that are, you know, say you have a bigger company and you have multiple people in departments, how are they then leading their teams up to that vision, reinforcing that vision, but also making sure that their missions and that the work that they're doing is laddering up to that? So, it's really about defining it at every level, but you know, it usually does start with a strong visionary or co-visionaries at the top who set the direction of the company and reinforce it through the company.

I mean, there's great examples of that all throughout history. And the trick is to make sure that the vision doesn't just live in the visionary's head, that it's actually pulled out and can be really acted upon and understood, because that's probably the thing that's the challenge for most companies is that the vision, it's not that they don't have one, it's that it's misunderstood all the way down the chain.

And that is what you have to course correct because you want everyone, no matter how long they've been at the company to understand, and be able to articulate back to you, what it is that you're fighting for, what you're fighting against, and why.

Chris Hill: Yeah. So for example, I think the more I'm hearing you talk about this, I'm thinking of like Southwest Airlines and their company culture and how it impacts everybody.

I've got a good friend who, she's a stewardess with Southwest, and she loves it. She loves it there. She loves the culture, she loves everything, and she very much, knowingly or not, is embodying what I think of when I think of Southwest. And when I think of that brand, she's embodying it, and that's coming from a place of developing that culture that makes her buy into it.

I've also worked at AT&T, where people don't buy into the culture.

Sunny Bonnell: Yeah. it's really a cultural thing, and it's also a leadership thing, and you're right. Like when a culture is very intact, you can feel it because the people that represent that company embody it, and then they're championing it out in the world.

It becomes part of that broader identity and ecosystem, and it's a powerful, powerful thing. WD-40 was well known for this. There's lots of companies that have that, and we take on the behaviors of the company that we work with because we spend a tremendous amount of time in the culture of that company. The people that we work with, we're closer to them.

We spend time with them, sometimes more than we do our own family, so it's important to get that right and to make sure that it's really authentic, and it's clear, and it's easily understood because that's probably, as I said, the biggest challenge for any company as they grow, as they scale. It splinters off, and it's not by choice, it's just that the company grows and scales in such a profound way that you have to remember, you just keep turning that vision into every conversation that you're having, and you need those army of lieutenants out there essentially being the vessel for that vision, so that they can run it down into their departments, into their teams, and into their work.

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Chris Hill: I mean, I can, I can see that in things as simple as like what we do with my company, HumblePod. And this is not intended to be a plug, it's just me tying together loose ends here, but you know, thinking about our tagline of, "We make podcasting easy," talking to my team and saying, "This is what we do. This is how we do it," and wanting to encourage my team to remember that motto and seeing them come back to me at times is like, "Well, we make podcasting easy, right?" Yes!

You know, to see them get that, to see them understand that at a small level is really good, and then at a bigger level it can also have a negative impact too, right?

I mean, we see what's going on, we try to stay pretty neutral here, but we see what's going on in America right now. And when you have someone like Elon Musk who's in leadership at Tesla doing what he's doing, and saying what he's saying, we see a negative fallout both in the community and probably, I would imagine, internally in the ranks as well.

When you see, "Well, this is what our leader's doing, how do we now follow that? "So that plays in a brand a lot as well.

Sunny Bonnell: Yeah. Well, I think that we're in a really interesting time where the CEO is the new logo, and you have, you know, undoubtedly, Elon Musk is one of the greatest visionaries ever to walk this earth, and yet, there's a, we call it in Rare Breed, and in our book, Rare Breed, we actually dig into this quite a bit in our book, Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for The Defiant, Dangerous and Different. And one of the seven so-called vices in the book. So in the book we talk about seven so-called vices that society teaches you are counterintuitive to your success, and they can often have a dark side. And so one of the virtues in the book is audacity. The audacity to dream, to believe, to change the world, to do the impossible. He has absolutely done that. But what's the dark side of audacity? The dark side of audacity is hubris, and when you get where that becomes murky, and it can, because visionaries can be very murky, and this is a big conversation that we're opening here, but.

Chris Hill: That's okay. We got time.

Sunny Bonnell: I think what's interesting is what we're seeing is the effects of that audacity and that vision and where that murkiness, the borderland between those two things, between the light and the dark sides of a vice versus a virtue, we dig into this deeply in the book, but it's a great example of where someone might argue or put on the table that Elon is perhaps, you know, this audacious visionary, and yet what the world now thinks is perhaps like, "Well, he's visionary, but there's this other side too," and everybody's kind of wrestling with that.

And that's what's interesting about a vice and a virtue is that it's probably the key to your success, and yet there are such dark sides to that that when you understand that trait at work within your life and your career, that you begin to understand that it can veer off and it can become, there could be disadvantages to it, and it can open the door as quickly as it can close the door. And the power of that is really, really interesting. And we dig, we go into the psychology of this in our book, but the seven traits are, audacity is one of them. Emotional is one of them. Hypnotic is another. Hot blooded is another. You know, all of these seven traits, they're known to be the thing that propel you to greatness, but they're also the thing that can undo you. And it's interesting to uncover that and explore that. But I think CEOs now we're finding, but bring, to bring it all back, I think the truth of the matter is what we're seeing is we're seeing a lot of visionary leaders, and powerful leaders and CEOs, who now become almost indistinguishable from the companies that they run. When you think of Skims, you think of Kim Kardashian. When you think of Amazon, you think of Jeff Bezos. When you think of Tesla, you think of Elon Musk, and that is really interesting.

That's kind of been there, but I think it's more prevalent now than ever.

Chris Hill: Yeah. I wonder if that is because of the way a lot of these organizations were started or the way the mythos behind these organizations and how they were started. I mean, there's a lot, you know, for, I can think of the, just the three you mentioned, like Kim Kardashian specifically.

I can think of her as someone who is just her name, face brand alone, brings a lot to the table. You know, regardless of what she does, she kind of has the Midas touch wherever she goes. And, you know, people follow that, and when I think of someone like, you know, Bezos, like he just has that history behind him.

He has whatever you think of him, like he has that history. And same with Musk. I mean, I would say out of all those, Musk is probably arguably the, I know you said visionary earlier, but I would argue he's almost the least visionary of the few if you look at like how he acquired the companies he did. He does do audacious things to be clear, and he does claim audacious things, but there's a lot there that's like, just a how much of his fact versus how much of his fiction? And you can ask that of any of these people. I mean, I'm sure Kardashian's life is very curated, for instance versus the reality of what she's living through right now. So.

Sunny Bonnell: I think she's underestimated, if I'm being honest. I think that a lot of people think they know what she is, and it's hard for them to think outside of that, but I think she's very underestimated, and I think she's a very savvy businesswoman and probably far more underestimated than you would think.

But I also think that there's a tremendous amount of need for understanding and where we're going in terms of leadership and how leadership is being developed and how visionary can you be and can you learn it? Because it's really an interesting thing that I'm exploring now with visionary leadership.

Because I've trained in it. I'm writing on it. We're writing on it. We speak on it all the time, and it's really interesting that there's very little resources out in the world that teach you visionary leadership. There's, you can go learn leadership, you can go learn transformational leadership, servant leadership all sorts of leadership books, but very few can identify and teach you whether or not something is visionary or not? Or are there traits to visionaries, and how does that impact your company? And it's a really interesting thing, and it's why we launched an executive leadership workshop called VisionCamp. So it's under the Motto ecosystem, but we do two day workshops with leadership teams and steering groups to help teach in day one, what is vision? The fundamental definition of "vision" is actually misunderstood.

So teaching that, and then also sharing, well, what are the traits of visionary leaders? Can anyone be a visionary? Can more people be visionary than they are, and can you learn it? You know, it's really interesting to explore that. I think that we underestimate our capability set because we say, "Oh, only visionaries come around a few times in a lifetime," right? And there's probably some degree of that is true, but I think there's a lot of visionary leaders that you've never heard of. So there's just, there's just some interesting territory there around that, but I think it's one of the most fascinating topics right now is visionary leadership, and what does it take to be visionary?

How can you teach your team to be more innovative and more visionary? Does it only belong to someone at the top? Is it only somebody that can, you know, do the impossible? Does that mean that they're visionaries? it's just a fascinating subject for me, and I really, I spent a lot of time on it.

Chris Hill: It reminds me of like, I guess where in my mind, like thinking of the contrast between the great man theory of leadership, versus what you're talking about, which is the visionary, I think those two could often get conflated, and when I hear "great man," I think of like, you know, that may be what you're, what some people think of like an Elon Musk or someone like that.

But what you're saying is like you can be visionary without having to have just been that magical person at the right time in the right place to be that person. You can be visionary without all that. So that's really interesting.

Sunny Bonnell: Yeah, and I think that also there is some truth to, "What is a 'vision?'"

A vision is a hope for the world. It's a vision of the world that you hope to achieve for those that you hope to serve, and it's a future state. It's not ego driven. It's not selfish, it's not selfishly motivated it. A lot of people mix it with like a mission or a purpose, but vision is very specific, and it's the world you're trying to build for other people, and it's a world that probably doesn't exist yet. And the key difference with vision in particular and with organizations is that there is a great need to articulate at its fundamental level, "I work for you. Where are we going?" And if we can get that right, it allows buy-in because then we're now there and we understand why we're there.

A lot of people, if you look at statistics around, I think it was a, I can't remember which study it was, it might have been Harvard Business Review, but they said like 80 to 90% of people don't even know the company's purpose that they work for. That means that there's a whole lot of confusion in the companies that you're working for. Just the fundamental basics of, "Why are we here?" "What are we fighting for?" "Who do we serve?" "What are we fighting against," and, "What world do we hope to build," are fundamentally unanswered? So if that's the one thing that you can figure out, you got a huge advantage because most companies do not actually articulate that well.

Chris Hill: Yeah, I mean, I've worked in enough companies over the year to say, yep, you're right. And even in my own business, like, just thinking through that, I wanna dig more into that because for me that's something I'm still learning is how do we become better at setting vision for a team, setting vision for a company? One of my biggest refrains right now with the way the world is, the way life is and everything, is that leadership matters. Who's at the top really does matter, even if you don't think it does.

And there's a lot of fallout from that, and so when I say that, I am hyper aware I'm saying it about myself too.

Sunny Bonnell: Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, we're all works in progress, right? And leaders in training. I don't claim to know, I fumble all the time. I think the one thing that I am clear on is that you have to continuously repeat and really drive in your values, your vision, and what you want to achieve with the team that you are building, and that fundamentally, if you can get that right and you can build a culture where people really want to, who believe in you, because they believe in themselves, and they feel that their contributions matter, I really do believe that you can do incredible things with small teams, with big teams, with every team in between. If you get a couple things right, it's incredible what these teams can do, and I think the thing about leadership is there is no perfect leader. There's only leadership and training. Like there's just leaders in training all around the world trying to figure this out. I'm one of them. You're one of them. Everyone on my team who's trying to become a better leader is one of them.

So it's about understanding that. Also have an empathy for the fact that we are trying to do our best, and sometimes we don't give enough of that to the leaders that we're actually training or being mentored by, that they're just trying to do their best. Now, that doesn't, obviously there's caveat there around toxic leadership and bad managers and all that, right?

That it's definitely out there, but for the people who are really trying to be a good leader and to do good and to champion people within their culture, to grow people within their team, they really are trying, and you just try to get better and better each time. There is no real handbook for it, and that's why I think visionary training is also really important is that there's, there's not a lot of places that you can go that you can be with your peers, but also you can learn from, and you can help each other grow. And so that's really what why we started VisionCamp was to help other people who see themselves as visionary or perhaps don't see themselves as visionary and their teams come in and learn.

What can you learn from some of the journeys that great visionaries have taken and achieved?

Chris Hill: So I think, if there's one practical takeaway here from this idea of being a visionary leader, what is one practical step someone could take today just to get further down that path?

Sunny Bonnell: I think spending a little bit of time defining what it is that you want from the work that you're doing and from the people that you are trying to have to help support you. Because we all want our work to matter. We want to feel like we're contributing to something greater, and the best thing that you can do is to define that for yourself, for others, and really start to reinforce it in little ways and big ways.

In other words, in staff meetings, bring it up. Remember why we're all here. We're trying to build this world, and we're all, you know, "We crushed it this week," and the couple things that we did here. Boom, boom, boom. Like that actually is, we're one step closer. Like measure what you're trying to do and reinforce it through your values.

Something that Motto has that we do is, we have kind of rituals and behaviors, but we really tie everything to values, and we reinforce those values and we reinforce the vision on a day-to-day basis. If you ask anyone in the company what is our big idea here, we'll say, "Do big things. We sign off everything.

We do big things." In every piece of work that we do, even when we're failing, and we're winning and succeeding, what is at the root of it? "Do big things." So, it's so simple, and yet it's so easy to remember and to recall. And that simple thing, like if just driving it all the time through the business, over and over and over again is now everybody, you know, they're wearing shirts with it. It really becomes a mantra, becomes a motto, and that's what you want. You want people to understand why they're there. They're there to do big things in little and big ways and and everything in between. And so that builds an innovative culture where then you become helpful to saying, "Look, we have a failure budget.

You can come to to us and ask us for a thousand dollars, or $1,500, or a couple grand you can just say, "I have this crazy idea. I wanna explore it. I need a few grand to get going." Great, here you go. Go see if you can fail, and then what did you learn, right? Because the next thing might be the thing that becomes something really powerful.

I think in Amazon, there's a story about, I think out of like seven to ten experiments that none of them, many things failed, but like AWS became the one thing that worked, and now it's like a bazillion dollar brand or something crazy. But that's the kind of thing you're looking for. You're looking for not everything to be the winner, but you are looking for a few things to be the thing that you land on, and you're like, "Wow, that was really, really cool. Let's go over that. Let's explore that. Let's try to build that." That allows your team to also feel safe. That you won't get fired because you failed. You'll get fired for not trying, but you won't get fired because you failed.

Chris Hill: Thanks for that two grand. I'm just gonna go chill.

Sunny Bonnell: Bye. I am off to Mexico. Yeah. No, no, not at all. But, you know, there's guardrails around those kinds of things, but generally speaking, you wanna create an an environment where you really encourage people to dream really, really big, but you also allow them to fail and to not, you know, and to allow to see possibility.

So if I were to say, you know, where can you have the most effect? It's in trying to really culture and nurture the leaders that you have. Really teach them about vision. Teach them how to have vision, how to communicate that vision to others, and how to build and act on that vision. And then the second piece of that advice is really around possibility.

Seeing the possibility in others. Sometimes we're too quick to make an assumption about someone. Sometimes they're in the wrong seat, sometimes they're in the wrong role, sometimes they haven't been seen yet, and our job as a leader is to awaken that potential within them and to cultivate that possibility so that they can become the best, best versions of themselves.

Because all that ends up doing is helping you become a better leader because you helped grow them and see them, but also they give back to the company in really profound and exciting ways. And so it's just a win-win all around. And so it's smart business to be a smart and a heart-centric leader.

Chris Hill: That's really awesome. Well, Sonny, thank you.

As we wrap up here, this is, there's just so much here. I just am, I'm probably gonna be like, "I'm mad I didn't ask this. Oh my gosh." But no, this has been really great. We always like to wrap up with just a few more generic questions, and the one I always like to ask the most is, you know, what brand do you admire the most right now?

We've talked a lot about brands and people that envision brands, or, sorry, not envision, embody brands. So what brand would you say that you're the most admirable of right now?

Sunny Bonnell: I'm gonna go with Goorin, but only because I wear Goorin hats, so.

Chris Hill: Okay, tell me more.

Sunny Bonnell: Well, I love that they've been around since like the 1800s, and they've just done everything the way that they've done it for a very, very long time, and they're just so authentically them. And I think it's really hard to retain that kind of spirit over such a long period of time across modernization and, you know, all the things that a company withstands over that amount of time.

And they just have that kind of vibe, you know? It's like they are authentically who they are and they're very much been able to sort of weather all of the world, you know, and their placed within it, and they've stood firmly in who they are. And so I just love that about the brand.

And I love the brand. I wear the brand, and I tell people about it when I can, you know. Fedora is not for everybody and not everybody can probably pull it off, but it's definitely a brand that I'm really a huge fan of. I think they've done a really good job of just being able to be truly that deep motto and hold onto it and carry it through so much time.

Chris Hill: And how do you spell Gorrin? Because I'm, I'm trying to, as you're talking

Sunny Bonnell: Gorrin, G-O-O-R-I-N. Gorrin Brothers.

Chris Hill: Gorrin Brothers. Okay. Yeah, they got some, they got some cool just caps too.

Sunny Bonnell: Yeah, they got cool caps, and yeah. Fedoras and fun stuff like that.

Chris Hill: Yeah. Don't wear it to work. But I typically do wear a hat.

Sunny Bonnell: I wear one every day. It's like my thing. I was doing this before, I was like in third grade wearing hats. I used to wear for paper Boys when I was in third grade, so I've always done it. So yeah, just a thing.

Chris Hill: An old podcast host of mine was telling me about another company. He's like, "You need to get them on the podcast. You need to interview them." That's another hat company that he's a big fan of, and he's the one who wears all the newsy caps all the time. But yeah, this is, that's neat. I love, I love old fashioned. I'm old fashioned. I don't know how to say that better.

Sunny Bonnell: I'm old fashioned. Yeah. I feel like it's true.

I feel like I'm an old spirit or old soul or something, you know? Should have been around the '20s.

Chris Hill: Yeah. But it's a neat look, and something I'm slowly but surely getting more interested in is like male fashion and how all that works together and how all that gets created and stuff.

Yeah.

Sunny Bonnell: Gotta have a look, you know? Gotta have a style. Yeah.

Chris Hill: Yeah. I've watched a YouTube video recently, and I did not expect it to capture me. In fact, a friend texted me and said, "I'm texting you this. So I remember to watch it later," and I was like, "What is this?" And I clicked on it, and it was the title of it was very unassuming.

It was something like, "Why I Hate Jordan Peterson in Fashion," and I'm like, "Okay, I'm intrigued."

Sunny Bonnell: Interesting. Interesting.

Chris Hill: It ended up being this, I'll send you a link to it. It ended up being this hour long diatribe, and it was just fascinating 'cause they actually talked about fashion and why Peterson's fashion, specifically from a philosophical standpoint, was horrible and just all this fascinating stuff.

Sunny Bonnell: Well, and you become known for the things you wear, don't you? I mean, like, yeah, like, you know, and some people just like have a uniform and that's a whole podcast in and of itself.

Chris Hill: Yeah. Personal branding is a big thing. I was actually thinking, "I was like, I should get that guy on the podcast at some point."

Not Peterson, but the fashion dude that was mentioned. But yeah, it's always really interesting to me when you know, because yeah, that's even a part of it too. It's how you look, how you dress, how you show up for work, when you show up for work, all those things.

Sunny Bonnell: Yes. A hundred percent.

Chris Hill: So, absolutely. that's wonderful.

Well, Sonny is there anything, how can people get connected with you?

Sunny Bonnell: They can find me on, yeah, LinkedIn. LinkedIn, Sonny Bonnell. You can find us at wearemotto.com and on Instagram at wearemotto, and then also on LinkedIn we are, well actually it's Motto on LinkedIn, and also you can get the book at an Amazon or wherever books are sold. Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different.

Chris Hill: Excellent. Well, Sunny, it's been a pleasure talking to you today.

Sunny Bonnell: So much fun.

Chris Hill: Absolutely. Hopefully we have a chance to have you back, and I appreciate your time.

Sunny Bonnell: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Chris Hill:  Thanks for checking out this episode of We Built This Brand. Don't forget to like, follow and subscribe on your player of choice, and you can also keep up with a podcast on our website at webuilthisbrand.com. If you like this episode, please give the podcast a five star review and make sure to tell all your friends about it so we can continue to build this brand.