What My INTJ Brain and Human Design Taught Me About Running a Business

Show Notes:

In this episode of Here's What I Learned, I’m flying solo to talk about one of my favorite nerdy rabbit holes: personality typologies—and how they’ve helped me design a business that actually works with how I’m wired.

I share what it’s like to be an INTJ, Enneagram 5w6, and Manifesting Generator (4/6 profile, sacral authority), and how these frameworks gave me language for my over-analysis, craving for competency, and need for fast decision-making.

But this episode isn’t just about me—it’s an invitation for you to explore how understanding your own personality can shape how you onboard clients, structure your services, and build a business that supports your energy instead of draining it.

Topics:

• Understanding my Myers-Briggs personality (01:24)
• Exploring the Enneagram (02:07)
• Learning my CliftonStrengths (04:03)
• Human Design and business structure (05:27)
• Discovering my Working Genius (06:55)

What next?

• Follow Here's What I Learned on your favorite podcast player
• Leave a review (it helps more folks find these convos)
• Share this episode with a friend who loves personality deep-dives
• Say hi on Instagram → @jackihayes_obm

Before You Go—Grab the Free Design Your Client Journey Mini Audit

If you’re wondering whether your client journey truly reflects how you work best—this free tool is your starting point.

The Design Your Client Journey Mini Audit blends Human Design insights with ChatGPT-powered prompts to help you evaluate and improve your onboarding, service delivery, and client offboarding process.

It’s not a generic checklist—it’s built to help creative service providers like you spot friction, recognize strengths, and shape a client experience that’s not just seamless, but sustainable and deeply personal.

Whether you're running on Manifesting Generator speed or slow-burning Projector energy, this audit helps you build smarter—not harder.

Grab your free mini audit here →jackihayes.co/freebies

Credits:

Intro and Outro Music: Atomic by Alex-Productions |https://onsound.eu/

Music promoted byhttps://www.free-stock-music.com

Creative Commons / Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0)

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

Transcript

What My INTJ Brain and Human Design Taught Me About Running a Business

Jacki Hayes  00:00

Jacki, Hey there. Welcome to Here's What I Learned. I'm Jacki Hayes, a system strategist, unapologetic, smutty romantasy lover, Dungeons and Dragons geek and your no BS, Guide to building a business that works for you. This is the place where we swap stories, share lessons, and get real about the highs and lows of creating a life and business that actually feels good. No cookie cutter advice here, just honest conversations about what's working, what's not, and how to rewrite the rules to fit your version of success. So grab your favorite beverage, get comfy, and let's dive in. 

Jacki Hayes  00:40

Welcome to another episode of Here's What I Learned. Today's episode is a little personal and a little nerdy. I'm sharing what I've learned about myself through personality typologies, not because I believe they're gospel, but because they've helped me understand how I'm wired, how I work best, and how to build a business that actually fits me. I'll be talking about everything from Myers Briggs and Enneagram to Human Design, CliftonStrengths, Working Genius and even, yes, astrology. These tools have been my care, instructions for my brain, not labels, not excuses, just language. Language to advocate for myself, to design systems that support me and to help my clients do the same. So let's get into it. 

Jacki Hayes  01:24

The first typology I ever encountered was the Myers, Briggs Personality types. There are 16 of them, and yes, I know it's not the most scientifically validated tool out there, but it was the first time I felt like someone had handed me a map to myself. I landed on INTJ, one of the rarest types, especially for women, and suddenly a lot started making sense INTJ is are often described as strategic masterminds. We're long range thinkers who build systems in our heads before anyone else even sees the problem. But there were four traits that really hit home for me. We're natural skeptics. If someone tells me this is how it's done, I immediately want to know who said that, why it's done that way, and whether we can make it better. My curiosity requires questioning. We're emotionally private but deeply loyal. You won't catch me sharing all my feelings in a meeting, but if you're my person, I'll be quietly building systems to support your life in the background, we thrive on competency and get anxious without it. That anxiety, it shows up as perfectionism, as hoarding information, as reworking something that was fine three times just to make sure it's actually solid. And we need independence like we need oxygen. I do not do well with micromanagement or being told how to do something without context. Give me space, give me a goal and get out of my way. It was a relief to learn this wasn't just me being too intense or too much, it was just how I'm wired. 

Jacki Hayes  02:57

Next Up came the Enneagram, and this one, this one cracked me open. I'm a type five with a six wing, also known as the investigator, which is a nice way of saying, I over analyze everything. The core fear of a five is being seen as incapable or incompetent. That fear explained my lifelong sense of I need to know more before I can do this. It's why I read five articles before sending one email, why I avoid podcast guesting, summit speaking, because no matter how much I know, it never feels like enough fives tend to hoard knowledge. We feel safest when we're prepared, when we've gathered enough data to fend off anything unexpected. It's not about arrogance. It's about protection. The six wing adds a layer of anxiety and loyalty. It's scanning for threats, running worst case scenarios, building backup plans just in case. So yeah, pair that with my INTJ tendencies, and you've got someone who can build airtight systems. What I learned from this typology wasn't just why I acted this way, but how to support myself through it, to say, Okay, I feel underprepared. What small action can I take anyways, to build internal trust, not just information banks and in business. It taught me how to structure things so I feel competent without burning out clear expectations, long timelines, room to research, but also boundaries around overthinking. 

Jacki Hayes  04:31

Then came CliftonStrengths, and honestly, this was just confirmation. My top five strengths are input, achiever, learner, intellection and relator basically, I collect information. I have to finish things. I want to understand the why. I think deeply, sometimes for fun, and I build relationships that go deep, not wide. What I love about cliftonstrengths is that it doesn't just path. Apologize any of this. It says, these are your strengths. Use them. And suddenly my learning obsessions, my tendency to go down rabbit holes, that wasn't distraction, it was fuel. And the relator piece helped me understand why I love co creating with clients in deep, collaborative ways, not surface level interactions. It also helped me design my services to give space for clients to think, to have fewer but richer check ins and to avoid performative professionalism. 

Jacki Hayes  05:30

Now we're getting into my favorite Human Design. I'm a manifesting generator with a sacral authority and a four, six profile as a manifesting generator, I move fast, like obnoxiously fast. I get an idea, I check in with my gut, and if I get a yes, I'm building a whole ass offer in a weekend. But that speed doesn't come without research. The learner and input sides of me love to dig deep, so I do both. I research until something clicks, and then I take action like I've been planning it for years, my sacral authority means I rely on gut instincts to guide decisions. If something lights me up, I move, if it drains me, that's a no. That gut knowing has been huge for me in business, because I finally learned to trust what feels right in my body instead of what looked good on paper, the four six profile that's the deep connection builder meets lifelong observer. The four wants real community, and the six gathers knowledge and shares it later. It's no coincidence that I host a podcast called here's what I learned. It's literally baked into how I'm designed to operate. What Human Design helped me see more than any other tool was how to structure my business around my energy, why I hate daily calls, why I thrive with async communication, why I need big blocks of time to research and think, and why I pivot quickly when something stops feeling aligned, it gave me a permission slip to work in a way that actually honors my rhythm instead of fighting it. 

Jacki Hayes  07:04

Just when I thought I had a complete picture of how I work, I was introduced to Working Genius, a model that identifies how you contribute to work in its different stages. My top two wonder and discernment. Wonder is the genius of asking big questions, of scanning the horizon and saying, What if and is there something we're missing? And discernment is the ability to evaluate, to look at a problem or idea and instinctively know what's going to work and what's not. And when I tell you this combo unlocks something in me, I mean it. I've always felt the tension between dreaming and filtering, I'll get ideas at 5am and by 5:05, I've already sifted through which ones are viable. It's also why client strategy sessions are my favorite thing. I ask the expansive, open ended questions, and then I immediately help narrow in on what's aligned and sustainable. This explains why I'm not the person to churn out content every day just for the algorithm I want space to wonder, to refine, to align, and it's why the way I work with clients is so collaborative. I'm not just showing up with one size fits all systems. I'm co creating, curating and filtering with them based on their energy and vision. So working genius added another layer to the care. Instructions give me time to think, trust my gut filters, let me ask the big questions. 

Jacki Hayes  08:32

First, of course, before all of this, before Enneagram, CliftonStrengths, Human Design, I was reading astrology. I'm a Capricorn sun, Pisces rising Virgo moon, ambitious, imaginative, constantly editing myself. When I looked at the full chart, it didn't just feel spooky accurate. It felt like someone had taken all the threads of me, practicality, overthinking, sensitivity, and woven them together into one picture. I know astrology isn't everyone's thing, and that's okay, but for me, it helped normalize the contradictions in my personality that I can be structured and dreamy, strategic and intuitive, and honestly, it helped me understand why certain business decisions felt good on paper but made me miserable in practice. 

Jacki Hayes  09:20

So here's what I've learned through all of these systems, Myers, Briggs, Enneagram, CliftonStrengths, Human Design, astrology and working genius. They don't define me. They inform me. They help me explain how I work, what I need and how to design a business that doesn't burn me out. They give me the language to support my own capacity and to design systems that support my clients unique wiring. So if you've ever felt like you don't fit into a typical way of working, or that you're just bad at business stuff, maybe it's not you. Maybe you just haven't found your care instructions yet.

Jacki Hayes  09:57

And if you want help designing your business a. Around your wiring. That's exactly what I help people do. So get in touch. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week. Thanks for hanging out with me on Here's What I Learned. If today's episode gave you an aha moment, a laugh or something to think about, make sure you're subscribed to my email list. That's where I share even more tips, stories and behind the scenes insights to help you simplify and thrive and remember you get to do business and life your way until next time, keep experimenting, keep simplifying and keep learning.