Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different

by Sunny Bonnell, Ashleigh Hansberger

Overview

An unconventional business book for the rebels and misfits—the Rare Breeds—who don’t fit the traditional mold, offering an approach that’s anything but business as usual.

“Brazen rant!” — Seth Godin, New York Times bestselling author of This is Marketing and What to Do When It’s Your Turn

In every job you’ve ever had, you’ve been judged, labeled, and made to feel like an outsider. Defiant. Dangerous. Different. A real pain-in-the-ass.The message?

To be successful, you’ve got to fundamentally change.

But what if — instead of conforming — you learned how to punch society’s codes in the nose, run like a hooligan through the corridors of entrenched power, and succeed — not by grinding down your prickly parts, but by going all-in on who you really are?

“A guide for strategic rebellion.” — Mark Levy, founder of Levy Innovation and creator of Your Big Sexy Idea®

Meet Sunny Bonnell and Ashleigh Hansberger, award-winning global brand consultants, founders of Motto. In this book, you’ll come face-to-face with seven controversial virtues that are typically seen as ladder-burning, career-ending personality traits that – convention says — keep mavericks, oddballs, and visionaries like you from getting along, getting buy-in, and getting ahead.

“A beautiful reminder that you are not alone.” — Charlamagne Tha God, New York Times bestselling author of Black Privilege

Sunny and Ashleigh provide singular insight into how you can flip the script and turn your so-called “vices” into your virtues, transforming your most “undesirable” flaws into the high-octane fuel of your success.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062856937
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/03/2019
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

SUNNY BONNELL and ASHLEIGH HANSBERGER are the award-winning founders of Motto, one of the top branding and digital agencies for rule breakers and game changers. They’ve been featured on CBS News and Fox Business and in Entrepreneur, American Express, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, Inc., Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. Between the two of them, they are members of the Young Entrepreneur Council, and have graced lists such as GDUSA’s Top 25 People to Watch and Inc. 30 Under 30, America’s Coolest Young Entrepreneurs. Visit them at ThisIsRareBreed.com.

Editorial Reviews

06/24/2019

This brash and determined ode to the nonconforming entrepreneur from founders of branding agency Motto Bonnell and Hansenberger aims to encourage anyone with a dream and an asymmetrical haircut. The authors, eager to prove their outsider bona fides, discuss how they dropped out of college and built their business by “breaking rules and vandalizing traditions,” and encourage readers to see setbacks as just more proof that they’re special and destined for great things, just as Bonnell and Hansberger were. The book is framed around the seven characteristics specific to “rare breeds” traditionally considered “dangerous and counterintuitive”—rebellious, audacious, obsessed, hot-blooded, weird, hypnotic, and emotional. Each gets its own chapter, which concludes with advice on how to exploit these characteristics to succeed. There’s quite a bit of self-congratulation and reader-congratulation—“nobody ever called you compliant or predictable”—and the resulting execution comes across a bit too much like teenage posturing, since comparing entrepreneurs to Harriet Tubman, or to people who worked to save Jews from the Holocaust, strains the bounds of credulity. Readers who can get past the pandering, however, will draw some inspiration from this shame-free goad to outside-the-mainstream budding creators with a laptop and a dream. Agent: Joy Tutela, David Black Literary Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Rare Breed is a guide for strategic rebellion. If you’re looking to make a difference in your business or in the world at large, wow, have you ever found the right book. Reading it will inspire you into taking big, immediate, spirited action.

Mark Levy

A good dish doesn’t always start with a recipe, but with excellent ingredients, vision and confidence. In this book, through the passionate and talented writers Sunny Bonnell and Ashleigh Hansberger, you will find all the ingredients that shape the path of many successful individuals in their craft.

Daniel Boulud

What traits do brave and unique individuals possess that allow them to achieve the highest heights and do it on their own terms? To explore this question...Rare Breed identifies seven traits that society calls ‘vices,’ to help readers turn them into virtues and achieve stand-out success.

Forbes

See how feistiness can work for you…Rare Breed is like an entire wind storm of fresh air.

USA Today

Entrepreneurs need to know how to really cut through the noise these days in order to grow their business. Sunny and Ashleigh’s book can help by showing them how so-called vices are actually positive building blocks towards success.

Michael A. Smith

To all my Rare Breeds reading this: understand this book isn’t a blueprint to success, as we all have to walk our own paths. But it will give you the strength to keep pushing because it’s a beautiful reminder that you are not alone.

Charlamagne Tha God

There’s a choice—become a rare breed, someone who cares enough to contribute, to speak up and to challenge convention. Not to hustle, which is selfish, but to make a ruckus and to make things better. Take what you need from this brazen rant and go!

Seth Godin

Readers will feel that Bonnell and Hansberger are coaching them personally to redefine their limits, skillsets, talents, and comfort zones in the workplace, and to help them dismantle status-quo practices…this work [is] motivating and helpful in overcoming internal and external barriers to career success.

Booklist

In a business world that’s a vast sea of sameness, you’ve got to be different — really different — to stand out and get noticed. Read this book, and you too will learn the secrets of rare breed leaders who do things differently and make a difference in the world.

Peter Economy

To all my Rare Breeds reading this: understand this book isn’t a blueprint to success, as we all have to walk our own paths. But it will give you the strength to keep pushing because it’s a beautiful reminder that you are not alone.” %COMM_CONTRIB%Charlamagne tha God

Readers will feel that Bonnell and Hansberger are coaching them personally to redefine their limits, skillsets, talents, and comfort zones in the workplace, and to help them dismantle status-quo practices…this work [is] motivating and helpful in overcoming internal and external barriers to career success.

Booklist

See how feistiness can work for you…Rare Breed is like an entire wind storm of fresh air.

USA Today

Readers will feel that Bonnell and Hansberger are coaching them personally to redefine their limits, skillsets, talents, and comfort zones in the workplace, and to help them dismantle status-quo practices…this work [is] motivating and helpful in overcoming internal and external barriers to career success.

Booklist

What traits do brave and unique individuals possess that allow them to achieve the highest heights and do it on their own terms? To explore this question...Rare Breed identifies seven traits that society calls ‘vices,’ to help readers turn them into virtues and achieve stand-out success.

Forbes

See how feistiness can work for you…Rare Breed is like an entire wind storm of fresh air.

USA Today