 Lady Bonnie such an honor to have you on this podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time out For anyone who doesn't know Bonnie chain on you and with thick she's one of the world's top brand strategists could be civil steel and partners and has just come up with this absolutely marvelous look called the life brief and so Bonnie's very kindly taking his time out stay to To talk with us about the book and how it came about and I'll stop talking But thank you Bonnie for coming and joining us. It's incredible How did this get started? Tell us a little bit more about it and First of all, thank you for having me. It's a real honor and pleasure and thank you for calling me a lady I don't think that's ever happened before especially not in in a public way It's another we'll get the title in the post. I'm gonna have to play that for my kids Yeah, this all Started because I've been doing brand strategy almost with my eyes closed now after three decades and So when I hit a speed bump in my marriage more than a speed bump a ditch a downright ditch it was my natural reflex in my darkest hour and It really helped me almost immediately Shift my attention and my sense of what was possible And I can go into that story if you like or yeah, definitely a minute. I think What struck me when I was reading this book is yeah, how open you are on on the problems you're facing ranging from from the problems he faced in childhood up to To the to the problems in in your own personal relationship and marriage It's amazing and shout out to Chip at the other watches. This all reads it Big fan and and and congrats to you too on marrying such a lovely wife and being so mob So, yeah, please do Share how it came about Brilliant Yeah, thank you for mentioning and giving a shout out to Chip I say he's the strongest man. I know because he's allowing me He's he's embracing the fact that I'm sharing with the world all of our most troubled marriage moments and then also allowing me to write about it and You know, I think that takes a brave soul, especially if you're not the author. You're not the storyteller but in 2010 we were Strapped with three young kids under the age of five and I know you're welcoming in your first. So, please don't let it terrify you Congrats Well, now I have four and they're They're they're all above my youngest one is now 10. So she didn't even exist in 2010 and it was hard as many parents know of That new stage of parenting is it's so much chaos and the kids need so much and It's natural as parents to put yourselves last and We had really different parenting styles You don't know this when you're courting each other, you know, we don't court each other and interview each other on how how the ways we were raised and how differently we were raised how that will shape how we show up in a crisis moment or in the chaos and We had to learn that as many couples do as they enter the parenting stage and I realize that I was carrying a Lot of the load more than what I felt was the fair share of the load. I was the sole breadwinner. I was The the the person nursing and holding and comforting the children I was also cooking and doing the housekeeping and My husband hadn't really been raised in a culture where Those were things he was taught to do or expected of him and so in those early years that really rubbed against each other and He wanted to be helpful. He just didn't know how and in my mind The less sleep I got the more exhausted I was the more critical I became and the more bitter I became but In the fury of parenting and holding it all and doing work and juggling all the things you have to do on a daily basis You don't get a break So it really erodes your sense of communication your empathy your patience all those things and a year and a half into a lot of this chaos I felt Very much that I was at the end of my work. So that was the darkest hour and in my head. I really believe my husband was the problem I think probably a lot of ladies could relate or even husbands too, right? I think it's the first person We point to is the person we are We're gonna play this over and over for her Especially after she gives birth But it was it was hard and I couldn't get past the story in my head It was just it felt like cement and I was certain I held it was such certainty and as a strategist As you know being in the same business is we collect the data points before we Arrive at an answer. Well, we're doing what we're really good at is tuning into our curiosity and Asking a lot of questions Asking it of many different sources and collecting it in many different ways and So in my darkest hour, I opened a notebook Out of panic really and out of despair I didn't know where else to go and I allowed myself to just what I call now get messy Which is what strategists do when we're doing research. We're allowing ourselves to get messy sit with the mess You know here all the perspectives A lot of them are contradictory, but we're looking to connect dots or see what's between the lines and so Late one evening. I unpacked it all. I let it all dump out onto the page and I wrote and I wrote with what I call now naked permission I just freed myself to answer the question that was burning inside me Which is what do I want? With this family in this marriage if I could Change it to make to bring me back to a liveness. What would that take and naked permission meant eliminating the voices Parking away the voices of my parents of my husband even my children's needs my friends opinions and really allow myself to dump it all out and I don't remember how long how many hours I wrote but once exhausted I was able to sit back with newfound spaciousness and then to reread it all With a little bit of distance emotional distance And what I saw on the page was very different than the story in my head Because the story in my head again was my husband was the problem and What came out on the page was not that my marriage was broken, but it was that my relationship with time was broken And what I longed for in my heart of hearts was time Time with my children time with Chip and dare I admit it but time for myself which was a source of guilt for a mom I had a really deeply seated tattooed Impression or definition of what being a good mom meant and meant putting yourself last You put everyone else first my culture also, you know in Asia really promotes that That's how you're raised society comes first family comes next, you know, and you're there to serve and But I was able to admit these things and once I was able to see that was the aha that Immediately appeared is that oh, it's chip isn't the problem It's how I'm spending my time all the ways. I was running myself ragged and thin and all the things I was saying yes to that I should have been saying no too and so Immediately it shifted my attention to a new problem to solve and It shifted my attention away from the problem I thought was there for a year and a half which was my husband and my marriage and when I shared That first life brief or my distillation of how I wanted To reimagine time in our relationship with time I shared that with chip that night and he immediately texted back YES all caps triple exclamation marks And it was our first moment of alignment in a very long time and our first moment of hope So that's a really amazing story The couple of things came to mind one was did have you ever done that sort of love a language test between two of you It's sort of here. Is it acts of service? I think is one of them and then Are they are the ones that sort of it's acts of affection or something? No, but now I'm I'm gonna do this It'd be interesting to see see but the um, the other thing makes you you did so well And I think actually the book kind of goes into a loss is most of us probably know that we want something to change and We probably think it's one thing that actually is normally something else I think finding out what that other thing is that what's the real Poor deep problem is so difficult to find the anchor to that often and What are some of the exercises that that you've come up with or learn? You've ended up teaching to help find what that true What the true problem or what the true questions are that you're trying to ask all the yeah true problems Well, it's so wonderful being a strategist because you're trained to ask Penetrating questions and you're trained to help when you get in front of consumers or Stakeholders of a company you're trained to help them think about things more creatively or Conceptually so you can break through their normal scripts because that was a script that was running in my head And I had to I had to I had to shatter that script and open up space for a new story And so that's what we're trained to do as strategists and we have a whole tool toolbox, which I know you're familiar with and Really the book is just chock full of them at the end of each chapter and it's taking a lot of different angles At the same, you know With the same objective, right, which is to unpack What are the deeper layers we we talk about it as peeling back the onion, you know Peel back all the layers of onions so that you can get to the essence of What you want get to the essence of what matters most and that's what I love about brand Strategy because it's all about finding the essence in a situation for a company distilling it down to its core and So there's so many prompts and exercises some of my favorites are just getting you to write and capture with naked honesty That daily brain dump Five minutes ten minutes. It becomes less scary less daunting when you just allow yourself to practice Being in relationship with yourself meaning not editing yourself and putting it out there my other favorite one is about writing a eulogy because sometimes we're so We're faced with the urgency of right now. What's calling to us right now And there's so many things in life now in modern life but when you think about The end of your life and what you want people to be celebrating about you and your legacy and Impact that you've had it takes you to a different space and it helps you identify what's truly important and where your values are and mixed with the urgency of now that creates this tension that propels new possibilities and Helps us see our situations differently. I love the eulogy ones So pretty and that the the brain the brain dump Think I thought it was very powerful this sort of idea of You know theme and you mentioned in the book is sort of there's a very big difference between writing things down and pay with pen and paper Versus typing things as well like voice-nating things like there's a I think you absolutely right it does seem to have a big difference and then sort of that the Way you describe the brain dump remember rightly can tell me whether I got this wrong Was was really just to write down all of your your fears your IBS your dreams anything that comes to your conscious or subconscious and and just don't stop until and until it's all out there and if you hit a blank bit I think you you said to just even write down. I don't know what to write until that's right it is so You know so so brilliant and that a very powerful and a very powerful message. So so thanks that I know with with with your industry and and Well, a lot of people who are probably listening to this are also in advertising or marketing or some way shape and form and There's a that does seem to be in and it with creative people that you mention this as well I think they tend to have a kind of more of a And Tell me where the candy spirit is necessarily the right way But they tend to be more optimistic particularly if you're a creative because I think you have to deal with failure a lot and and that and in regards to changing your life it sort of Maybe a big stumbling block seems to be to help you help him give people get past the limiting beliefs How are some of the ways that you've managed Well, you mentioned, you know the creative spirit and I think before we got on the podcast You were talking about being in South Africa at Ogilvy and That office in particular having an especially rebellious spirit I find creatives are non-conformists people who are artistic in any form or Love creativity or love solving problems. They're always seeking a New answer a new solution a different way of thinking about things So I think it's a mindset that they've cultivated over time I like to call the life brief a practice that anybody can do I believe creativity is a practice as well. It's the practice of Seeing situations differently So that you can meet them with new answers, right and you can navigate them differently So creativity always starts with seeing something Slightly differently than what convention would have you see Unfortunately, I think we're conditioned from our earliest stages of life to Flow with Expectation to show up and color inside the lines not be disruptive Follow the rules be really good at jumping over the bars that are set in front of us and It's all given to us these maps out of love and good intention to keep us safe and help us succeed But it does eventually narrow the space In our muscles for creative thinking, which is what could a different possibility look like Another exercise is just playing with what ifs coming up with as many what if scenarios Positive what ifs because I think there could be negative what ifs at your limiting beliefs take you down these rabbit holes but playing with just In a light-hearted free permissive way What if I did that? What if I looked at that this way? What if I've related to money in this way or what if I saw this? Divorce is one one of the things that I talk about in the book. It's through someone else's story Someone was held in a really toxic relationship because her definition of marriage and also her definition of divorce kept her in something that was increasingly unhealthy for her Yet when she was able to reframe and this is something that strategists do really well, right? Reframe a situation to see it differently when she was able to stop seeing divorce as failure and Was ready to explore divorce as a new beginning not just for her But her also her partner that this could be a new beginning and adventure for both of them Then she was able to start Imagining new possibilities and turn from this really the sensation of being trapped in her life to a Sort of a lifeness and excitement for what could be if she could face and confront this fear head-on It's so lovely and and there was a very powerful story I think you've got it got other stories like that in the book as well as Another reason why everyone needs to buy the book immediate and read it. Um, so there's one thing. I thought that it was very Brilliant in the book as you talk about the power of Starting things small and how to remind me a bit of an MVP I think like with a lot of the concepts who we're talking about it can seem very overwhelming It's like okay, I'm gonna get a divorce and start a new life. I'm gonna change the way I'm doing this Would it be okay to talk a little bit more about that the sort of the power of that I think it just makes it more much more approachable Yes, I think the reason people are terrified about Doing practices like this is that they're gonna unearth big change and yes, so we just talked about divorce But for me and my husband it really helped us get back in Untrack with each other and it kept us together and I've had two long-standing relationships in my life One is with my husband for 23 years and the other is with my agency could be Silverstein partners where I've been there for 25 years But there are many chapters in each of those long-term relationships. It isn't just one arc that has a constant there are a lot of mini chapters in there and This practice has helped me define each of those chapters in a way that Feels deeply engaged feels exciting Satisfies and serves my own growth while being able to serve those relationships in new ways and starting small is really a Beautiful act because I find when we make tiny shifts in how we speak how we show up it Automatically sends an invitation out to everyone else around us in that situation or in that relationship to also shift how they respond how they react to you and Without Lecturing or without telling them or whether forcing It's this organic way of inviting them in to change How they show up and then the whole dance changes and You know a lot of people talk about the ripple effects. I find amazing ripples in the smallest acts of change In fact, there's a story. It's one of my favorite stories in the book. It's it's just a small one It's not one of those big momentous ones, but it's a writer Who was working on her novel and she's just found herself? Paralyzed it's daunting to write but Much less a novel which I've written nonfiction much easier for me than to imagine all these characters and storylines But her tiny daily commitment was not even to write But it was to open her document every morning just to open it So that was as small and inexcusable and irresistible That she could get to from a commitment standpoint and every time she opened it something would happen Sometimes she just write a sentence or two Sometimes she would write 250 words or 500 words and After just six weeks of doing that she realized wow The progress she made was enormous But it started with a really tiny inexcusable irresistible commitment that she held on the daily So it's a Realigns me a lot of the kind of advice that you get from atomic habits I mean, how is the book writing for you? I mean, I take it you haven't written many many other books before but how did you how did you get into this? What was the how did you find the process? Well, I didn't pursue it. So it was an invitation. I'd been teaching the life brief for 10 years already and It was my I call it joy hustle or way of giving back How do I give back and serve in lasting and meaningful ways? And it really was a joy to do it every time I was invited So I had a promise to myself that anytime I got an invitation I would say yes, and that's how it kept going for a decade. I met a literary agent the just Incredible Rachel Newman with this incredible agency called the idea architects and They had an interesting model and she said I think it's time to write the book the life brief and I was Terrified immediately because I'm a strategist. I distilled my job is to distill things into one word Maybe three words or one sentence one single-minded idea the thought of writing an entire 250 book a page book was It seems so daunting to me, but she helped me find my way of doing it and it and it coincided with the pandemic because I also am a parent to four kids so running the agency leading client work and Having four kids in a pandemic was really hard, but it removed all the Flights across the country the barbecues the happy hours the soccer games. Sorry the football games Gymnastics meets and I wrote it over three and a half years on Friday nights Sunday mornings in the slivers of time That I could break free from my other responsibilities. So my encouragement to writers is that you can do it You can do pretty big things in the tiniest slivers of time Yes, I would thank or to break it. Thank you And that house you get deep chaperot to rice on as well. That's amazing I mean how the I think it's part of a general crest is where is this taken you? I mean you and they're before the bookkeeping running these as workshops You must have some fantastic stories and meeting amazing people nearing Incredible things from people all over the world how to mention Well, the beauty of advertising is it's a industry of breadth, right? You study so many different categories and industries and you meet a Dizzying array of leaders and I think stepping into the publishing world It just open so many of those doors, but my secret is is I haven't told anyone else I've never met Deepak Chopra. So it you know, just like the advertising world and marketing world It it's it's small and there it's its relationship So someone passed him my proposal and and and the manuscript and he he read it and wrote a beautiful endorsement of it That was a reminder sort of the power of like not being scared to ask people for things even if you time time I had to learn that Very you know, I in the book launch period and the book creation period I had to ask a lot of people of other things and that was that was my weak spot. That was my Achilles heel I was too shy too proud Too nervous, I didn't you know, I didn't want to be turned down But you learn in any startup and I think a book launch and a book creation is very much its own startup You just have to learn to ask everyone for everything Yeah, I mean there's so many things in life, but I think it's sort of Encimal unsurmountable and then when you ask for a little bit of help normally my experience so far in life Is that normally most people are lovely and they always do help so true It was interesting talking about the shyness in the book you go into a lot about that your childhood It seems like you you've sort of gone through periods in your life where You are sort of maybe a very extra versus and then other that maybe and maybe going against what you What how you really felt because of Maybe stereotypes or positions that you found yourself in house Well, I'm a practiced extrovert. I say that And and there were years in my career where I believed I am an extrovert But as a child, I was a very shy I didn't know the language when I immigrated to the US and that furthered my inhibitions and then There were a couple really dark moments of trauma, you know that I experienced I think There was a lot of casual racism and then they were just growing up in the 70s As a latchkey kid just not being safe in a community as a young young girl and I think those all contributed to my shyness or my introversion But my longing to belong was so great that it It really fueled Me getting clarity in eighth grade to show up differently. I didn't want a life on the periphery Or in the corner. I wanted to taste All the things I wanted to experience so many things and I guess I did have this motivation to come out of my shell and That propelled me Forward it was my first act of discovery the power of clarity When you do get very clear about what you want and you are able to express it and if not declare it to yourself it automatically shifts your attention and then action and that's what happened to me at a very young age now It also cost me because that longing for belonging was so intense That I didn't know it at the time but it forced me to assimilate and shed the parts of my heritage and my identity that Now I look back with some shame, you know in the ways that it cost me because I was really leaning into what I thought the world wanted of me in order for me to be worthy and I played into that and then leader as an adult in Advertising in my career. I learned that the art of assimilation Also was the way to play the game and get to the top and I did it really really well not in a Not in a manipulative way, but you know you you learn that the system wasn't designed for women of color So you adapt and you start, you know taking on the behaviors and it does become its own Performance, you know Which relationships to cultivate where the political currency is, you know all those things and you try to do it as Authentically as possible, but in 2020, you know with the global pandemic and all the things that were happening in that the unrest and the violence in the US I Had to really take a deep hard look and Examine the ways that I was defending and serving a system that wasn't designed for people like me and I had a choice as a leader What I was what am I gonna do about that and How am I going to make those tiny shifts or maybe not so tiny but bigger and braver and bolder shifts? So that I can open up the system to include more people. I think you were saying that I Hope I'm remembering it was right But you you run something with your teams to sort of on a weekly or a monthly basis or something I remember I need to do if there was some something that you do to check in at the meetings or something that To find out what people are really feeling and give them space. I think yeah, I don't know I don't even remember how much I talked about it in the book, but I did flip my time because as a leader you tend to spend a lot of your time with the other Leaders because you have to make decisions, but that becomes your kind of circle of people and That's where the power center is and I realize that I need to get in touch with people who are Underrepresented I needed to get in touch on a regular basis with my most vulnerable employees And so that they had a direct line to power and I had a direct line to what happens in the microcosms of daily agency life daily company experiences daily client interactions and so It was really important for me to shift Where I spent my time who I spent my time with so I could learn from them yeah, they Shared a lovely story of Think it was someone in a and one of your briefs or one of the creative meetings And they they were saying there's an ad that you had of a doctor and it was going to be a White doctor and they're like why do we have white doctors? Oh, we have a person color as a doctor instead. Oh, yeah, good idea. Like there was such a brave it was such a brave thing for a junior employee to advocate right and What we don't see is how quickly these meetings operate and how the same voices Get the most space and it's very hard for someone who doesn't feel safe because of either past traumas They've experienced past biases not even in our agency, but from their Previous experiences because you carry those traumas with you and it's hard to break through and and especially to add an idea that might be taken the wrong way or counter-cultural and so it was the leader in the meeting and It was this wonderful account director, but he just created a simple pause Before the meeting ended and just said okay Let's I just want to ask are there any other thoughts that didn't get expressed in the meeting and that just allowed a spaciousness for someone to bravely share their comment and this young strategist Who raised the question about yeah, shouldn't the doctor be a black doctor because wouldn't that be meaningful and powerful and It's just these tiny shifts again. We're going back to the Doing it in small ways, but they have big outcomes big ripples So for leaders to just really be intentional and conscious about creating space For other voices who might have hesitation Because in a creative company one of the biggest threats is self-editing when your employees don't feel safe to share their bravest boldest wildest most Unexpected and innovator ideas When they keep it to themselves That's a huge cost to any innovation driven or creativity driven company and the biggest Danger in it is you can't measure it You'll just never know when people hold back and so these Small but significant ways that leaders can shift how they show up in their work in every meeting in every conversation has a massive impact on the future of a company That's totally agree and so lovely that you're Giving the space for these people to tell them become braver. I think advertising is one of these things where it's It's it's in the scale of importance of things in the world It's not massively important, but it has a dramatic effect on on culture and the way we perceive things So these things even these small things that you're talking about there have have a Disproportionate effect I think on culture and society. It's a huge effect I know advertising is being challenged right now and it's a smaller part of the you know Marketing pie and you know, lots of industry debates around it, but think about the media Dollars we have to work How much gets amplified, you know, how much reach we get an exposure and we are Trained in the art form of persuasion of behavioral change, you know about And just the the business of creativity. How do we shape our collective consciousness? There's so much power in that and so there is So much we can do in the stories we tell the way we tell them and who we're telling them for I was turning to someone say that he was in the war in a sort of PR space and He was saying so it's really interesting He said that if you think about in the last kind of five ten years in particular the news just in general that we all listen to has been Probably fair to say negative It's not it's not been great. There's been you know lots of an understatement That's an understatement of lots of wars and very strange people in Positions of power all over the world and and that then I think people are very fatigued by that And it's interesting. He had his sort of thing was like Brands and and advertising in a way has an opportunity to Be an antidote to that to to sort of share something that's uplifting that's positive. That's interesting and I think one of the things he had done was He worked out that in the UK the average cost of living per month something was 750 pounds one of his clients was a was a company called easy jet and he worked out that With them if they did a survey on this They found out that you could go to Egypt and spend 500 pounds for the entire month Yeah, they do your laundry you've got all your meals and everything So it's actually it was cheaper to move to another country and have a holiday for a month and to just live in your Our own country. I thought those kind of things is yeah, it's something that's quite quite fun And it's it's a nice up. It's a nice thing to read in the way It's like taking something is depressing but putting a positive funny spin on Yes, and it has the effect though of getting that message across right? It's one of those reframes that is It's packaged in lightness and humor and entertainment. But wow the truth underneath is Blaring yeah, but it's um, I mean there was another one he did which was brilliant was some in the UK. We love tea and So we have tea and biscuits and then he was saying that thank you was doing some work from at vitties and that they they've hired a Chief biscuit investigator or something. It was a chief dunker So they worked out how long is she unkeech biscuit for how many seconds the optimal done? If anyone's listening now, so it's about 2.5 seconds. I think there's the about the idea Hard Well, I I mean, you know goodby silvers and partners I'm so lucky to have been there for for the majority of my career because They really understand the power of humor to help people see, you know some really deep Insights about culture about how about human behavior Yeah, and you know, we've done it for a lot of B2B businesses, which tend to be really dry when they communicate Adobe is one of my favorite ones that we worked on but you know helping marketers understand and Kind of laugh at themselves And you know at the beginning of data and science that they didn't know what they were doing It was all bullshit, you know, and we're all bullshitting each other and so I think there's such power in humor and We call it mass intimacy like when you when you reveal an insight that everyone knows Everyone shares but we don't talk about and then you highlight it in an entertaining way and you get everyone to really laugh at themselves or See an opportunity to act differently and have shared language around it It's really powerful and That still exists in what we do and and thanks. It looks like we're getting a bit more And we're getting more of the sort of humor side of things and advertising as well in doing some judging Recently for some different awards. I'm seeing a lot more humor work this year So I hope you get that more of that Out of interest do you have a favorite favorite ad that you've worked on or or that even if you've not worked on it Well, I mean we we just came out of and this is very US centric So we apologize about that, but we just came out of the Super Bowl and we had four different clients, you know And I think what I love was the range of Work that we did which is what I love about our agency is that it just doesn't have one type one style You know, we did everything from BMW with Christopher walk into Yes, Rich Silverstein and in some South African creative directors. Oh, wow, so many people Contributed to the making of that spot, but that was a highlight and then on the other end of the spectrum Dean Amida for Doritos the two grandma the abuelas, you know and Jenna or take a so just I love The range that we bring to different clients. We had mullets for Kawasaki and Mountain Dew with Aubrey Plaza. So it was really fun. It's a really fun showcase of where creative creativity can go Wow, so if anyone's listening you need to read the book and then and then phone Bonnie and try and get a job Give me a silver plate. You might be able to make some Super Bowl ads with Chris Norwalk and This would be amazing like I know you've been so kind Sharing so much time with us and I just want to take take the moment to say thank you so much for writing this book and Thank you for so much for to being so open and honest with with everything and open with your life and Yeah, I really really appreciate it and it I think yeah, this this book I can I can see it's already helped a lot of people and I hope it continues to help many many more and Say thank you for being here lady Bonnie. You're you're up. You're here, right? I'm I want to be in conversation with you all the time. I know you have a baby on the way So my window is short but being called Lady Bonnie is such fun But it was really fun also to just a move back and forth from the book and life To creativity and what we do in our industry. So thank you for hosting me. Thank you. Thank you You