Amy Poehler’s podcast Good Hang makes me ridiculously happy. Go listen to every single episode. I’ll wait.
In every episode, she talks about the Enneagram; there is always another reference to types and wings and integration paths. So I dropped $20 bucks and took the “official” test, and honestly, everything now makes sense.
Type 8: The Challenger. Score: 25.
My second highest scores were a tie between Type 2 (The Helper) and Type 7 (The Enthusiast) at 22.
This explains literally, and I mean literally, everything about how I run my business (life) and why I cannot stop myself from calling out gender bias in banking while simultaneously trying to save every dog, small business owner, person I meet.
Eights walk into a room and immediately clock the power dynamics. We see who’s getting steamrolled, who’s doing the steamrolling, and we physically cannot stop ourselves from evening the score. We don’t even know we’re doing it; it’s compulsive.
The test says we’re “strong, assertive, resourceful, independent.” What that actually means:
We build things because waiting for permission makes us physically ill.
I started 8THIRTYFOUR 19 years ago because I saw how things should work and couldn’t stand watching them not work that way. I am expanding the business this year to meet another need; we can’t help ourselves.
We protect our people with terrifying intensity.
The embezzlement in 2023? The betrayal wasn’t the money. It was that someone I protected and cared about weaponized that protection. The Eight response: rebuild stronger, document everything, turn the pain into fuel for protecting others better.
We cannot tolerate BS.
Our bodies reject it. This is why 8THIRTYFOUR focuses on consistency over trends and why I can’t be anything but authentic, I don’t know how else to be. It’s why I write in my actual voice instead of corporate speak.
That 2 wing means we’re trying to save everyone.
While also maintaining Seven-level energy that exhausts everyone in a three-mile radius. I’m simultaneously the person who will fight your bank for you AND organize your entire business while you’re in the bathroom.
The QUIRKS Assessment measures exactly this – how authentically people show up, because watching brilliant humans dim their light to fit into spaces that were never built for them makes me want to flip tables.
Amy Poehler built an empire on refusing to make herself smaller, more palatable, or less complicated. She leads with her whole self – the bossy parts, the caring parts, the parts that make people uncomfortable. That’s Eight energy; it’s also a masterclass in personal branding.
I run toward the fights others avoid – gender bias in banking, capital access for women-owned businesses, women ruining workplaces, and all the other ways people want to keep us small. I get louder when someone tells me to calm down.
I’ve built a business by leaning into every single one of these traits instead of apologizing for them.
The market doesn’t need another consultant or professional who sounds like everyone else. It needs you, in all your complicated, authentic, sometimes-too-much glory.
Own that eight energy. Make us proud.
