Solopreneurship, Hogan Personality Test, and accessing the sense of freedom.
My Hogan Test insights, experiencing (or not) the freedom, and what's coming next.
Hello, dear readers. This update will not be a typical product breakdown or frameworks collection. I’m using this as a chance to self-reflect on my path and share some observations with all of you.
I usually try to find a space for self-reflection every week, but in the last month, it was almost impossible. Returning after the yoga retreat, having several projects in parallel, talking with companies about potential opportunities, creating content, and living quite an active social life took a lot of time and energy.
As a conscious investment into better understanding myself and navigating my solo path, I decided to take a Hogan Personality Assessment. But what is that? 🧐
The Hogan Personality Assessment is a suite of personality tests designed to predict job performance and identify leadership potential by evaluating key personality traits and behavioral tendencies. These assessments are widely used in organizational settings for employee selection, leadership development, and talent management.
You can ask me — Kate, you’re a solopreneur, why do you need that? My main intention was to look at myself from an external perspective and uncover some blind spots, refresh my understanding of my strengths, and think of how I can apply them to my personal and professional development. It reminded me of a yearly “360 assessment” that I used to have as a full-time employer, and why not create a similar one on your solo track? 😉
This is quite a vulnerable act to share my personal test results here. However, I realized that it’s so hard to build real human connections through the online surface these days, that being more open and vulnerable just makes me more like a human.
So let’s dive in — try to reflect on yourself while looking at my results 👇
[1] Hogan Personality Inventory
The first part of the assessment reveals the bright side of personality that other people see in you. After completing a set of different behavior-oriented questions, my answers were analyzed with Hogan’s proprietary algorithms. The scoring process compared my responses to a large normative database, which allows the results to be contextualized in terms of how they compare to those of other individuals who have taken the test.
The criteria that gained scores of 75+ illustrate “Strengths”, and others that got a score between 0-35 are unveiling some “Blind spots” to pay attention to.
My strengths (score 75+)
Sociability (80): Communication skills and ability to maintain relationships with a large number of contacts.
I didn’t fully realize this till last year. Unconsciously, this skill helped me build connections and host 20+ podcast episodes with people who I couldn't imagine even meeting, building a ≈10k audience on LinkedIn in less than a year, and working with a dozen companies.
Gaining energy from interacting with like-minded people, communities, and deepening conversations. It’s less about the number of connections, it’s more about the quality and depth of each one.
It can get boring to be in one company for a long time, so context-switching is important. This is definitely what solopreneurship helped to double down. Having several streams of activities like B2B (Company Advising, Sponsorships) and B2C (1:1 Coaching, Courses) and constantly changing companies.
Downside ⚡️ I need to manage my focus more carefully, prioritize interactions, and sometimes listen to others more carefully.
Learning approach (75): Achievement orientation, value of education.
To get confidence in a new area, I need to learn it more “formally”. The process of learning itself gives a lot of joy and creates structure.
The other practical side of it is getting pleasure from sharing learnings with others. Now my whole business is built on it: I share synthesized learnings through this newsletter, advising, courses, and company training.
This is different from “Learning by doing”. With this approach, I still need to formalize and create something tangible after each learning — Growthmates Playbook is a good example that illustrates that.
Downside ⚡️ I can have a critical or strong opinion on certain things, and I need to make it more “weakly held” by giving others more space to express their thoughts.
My blind spots (score 0-35)
Adjustment (5): Adequate self-esteem and self-control under external pressure.
Impostor syndrome is not getting away so quickly. I can have a lot of doubts if I’m doing the right thing or not and self-criticism.
“What got you here will not get you there”. If previously this strong self-criticism drove me to chase high quality in everything, now I’m trying to set more realistic boundaries to get away from unfounded perfectionism. Like posting this newsletter issue a day later than my typical schedule 🙃
Prudence (31): Self-discipline and thoroughness.
This is another area that has always guided me toward success on a traditional career path, but it started changing last year. If I’d seen this result a year ago, I’d say that this is a lie.
I started giving more space for uncertainty and creativity, so it shifted that quality to another direction. As a business owner, I don’t have the luxury and time to build a perfect structure around everything I do — I need to prioritize what matters at a time, do it with a “just enough” attitude, and iterate faster.
[2] Hogan Development Survey
This part of the test reveals risks under stress, and uncertainty, in a situation of boredom and fatigue. In my case, I don’t have “burning“ stress signals (score 90+), but I have many signals of an average score (70-80).
If they all get activated at once, I need to be extra careful and understand which one to treat at a time.
My emotional risks (score 70+)
Excitable (83):
It has a positive side of being “passionate” about most things I do.
However, it can exceed the optimal limits and get “too much”. It leads to mood swings that I need to observe and take under control.
How to treat 🌿 Pause before getting “too excited” and create more moments of calmness and concentration through medications.
Reserved (87):
Under stress factors, I can hide much inside myself. It’s hard to share with the external world how I feel, or even have a connection with my emotions myself.
Getting into the “stoic” mode — resisting feelings and holding empathy for others.
How to treat 🌿 Open up to people, share how I feel, ask for help if needed, and be vulnerable.
Imaginative (88):
Becoming too creative and having a million ideas that get rarely executed.
It reminds me of “reactiveness” under stress — you need to find a creative solution for imaginary problems immediately.
How to treat 🌿 Saying “No” to things more often, not overthinking problems that haven’t appeared yet, checking on the practicality of my ideas, and following up on them after launching.
[3] Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory
It was my favorite part of the assessment, as it helped to refresh professional values and motivations and give them more clear definitions.
The main observation — I have many values. 6/10 things are important for me professionally, such as Recognition, Power, Hedonism, Security, Commerce, and Aesthetics.
However, they don’t need to be covered by just one thing as “work”. As a solopreneur, I have optionality and flexibility to choose how I want to cover each value. As a business owner, these values reflect the environment that you create around yourself and your team.
My values (score 65+):
Aesthetics (99):
Attention to detail, quality, and beauty.
It’s important to choose clients, partners, and podcast guests who share my eagerness to create high-quality artifacts.
It comes beyond work: the art of noticing beauty in interiors, food, clothes works like creative fuel for more business-oriented things I typically do.
Where I find this 💫 Interiors, nature, food, architecture, visual art, interfaces music, and digital products.
Reсogntion (98):
Desire to be recognized and to have public praise for achievements and the opportunity to be visible and noticeable.
However, I don’t have to always chase this external validation. Internal supporting systems are more important than external ones
Where I find this 💫 Public speaking, visibility of work, thought leadership, teaching, workshops, and creating value that can be useful for broader communities.
Hedonism (97):
Work hard, play hard, and rest enough. I was surprised I had this value, as work and career were always a bigger priority for me. However last year taught me that for a “marathon of sprints” I need to create a more balanced “work-life” integration.
It is very important to focus not only on a job, but also on a LIFE that is fun, spontaneous, and informal at the workplace as well.
Where I find this 💫 Travelling, social gatherings, organizing parties with friends, or solo-time activities like silent cooking or practicing yoga.
“Having” vs “Feeling” the freedom
I’ve been on a solo path for almost 10 months. Before that when I was thinking about solopreneurship having a personal business from the perspective of a full-time employee, I imagined my daily life would look something like this 😅👇
Yes, these days also happen, but they will not happen without intention. You become the primary holder and owner of your time. I personally sometimes didn’t use the opportunity to feel the full spectrum of freedom that I tried so hard to bring into my life.
Freedom doesn’t feel like freedom if you’re consciously not creating opportunities to experience it.
This place in Normandy (a beautiful region in France) is just a 7-hour road trip from Amsterdam. We finally created an opportunity with friends to get away for a long weekend and visit this place.
It’s hard to be spontaneous if it’s not something that is perceived as “normal”. But the norms are subjective, and the feeling of freedom is something I want to normalize. Because with that attitude, it unlocks more creativity, boldness of thinking, and dreaming big.
More updates
Looking for an Assistant for Growthmates 🤓
As I’m growing a variety of projects I’m working on and building Growthmates, I’m looking for a reliable and like-minded assistant who could support me with content co-creation and social management. As a bonus, there will be a lot of direct interactions with me, and the chance to learn from what I’m doing. If you’re interested or know some relevant candidates please reach out to hello@growthmates.club | Role description here.
Coming to Berlin on 4-6 September for Hatch Conference 🇩🇪
If you’re in Berlin and would like to meet, feel free to drop me a message on LinkedIn and I’d be glad to see more people from the community in person.
The new cohort of Self-Service Onboarding course starts on September 16 🗓️
If your team is working on Onboarding and wants to uncover new impactful changes — this course is for you. With the promo code “team” you can get a 100$ discount for you and the team member you’re bringing with you.
Join the cohort → (the group is limited to 20 participants).
This is all for today, dear readers. If you found this helpful — please share this with your like-minded colleagues and friends, it would give a huge support for me to continue creating this 💜
Connect with me on LinkedIn and learn more about my work on Growthmates.club.
With best regards,
Kate Syuma