Rare Breed

June 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.