“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction”

Values & Beliefs

Benjamin Mckenna, Type 8

My Story 

For most of my life, I was driven.

As a physician, entrepreneur, and business owner, I understood how to build, lead, solve problems, and make things happen. I was ambitious, determined, and willing to outwork most people in the room. Whether it was building businesses, helping patients, or creating opportunities, I was constantly moving forward.

And from the outside, much of it looked successful.

But success has a way of hiding things.

What I eventually began to realize was that achievement and transformation are not the same thing. You can build businesses, accomplish goals, and create results while still carrying patterns beneath the surface that affect your relationships, leadership, faith, and sense of purpose.

Like many Enneagram Eights, I was naturally decisive, independent, and action-oriented. I could take charge. I could push through obstacles. I could lead. But I also had blind spots I couldn’t see. Areas where strength could become stubbornness. Confidence could become control. Self-reliance could become resistance to vulnerability. What I thought were simply strengths sometimes masked deeper patterns that needed attention.

God has a way of exposing what success can conceal.

Over time, Christ began revealing things in me that no business achievement, leadership role, or professional accomplishment could address. He showed me that true strength isn’t found in controlling outcomes. It isn’t found in winning every battle or carrying every burden yourself. True strength is found in surrender, humility, truth, and obedience.

That journey led me to the Enneagram.

A tool that helped uncover motivations, fears, blind spots, and reactive patterns that often operate beneath our awareness.

What fascinated me wasn’t learning my type.

It was discovering how accurately the Enneagram exposed the places where I needed growth.

For the first time, I had language for patterns I had experienced my entire life but never fully understood. More importantly, I could see how those patterns either aligned with or pulled me away from the person God was calling me to become.

That realization changed everything.

I began using the Enneagram not as a way to explain behavior, but as a way to confront it. Not as an excuse, but as a mirror. Not as an endpoint, but as a starting point for growth.

That’s why I created The Forge.

Because I’ve met too many people who know something needs to change but don’t know what is driving the cycle. Too many leaders who can solve everyone else’s problems but struggle to see their own blind spots. Too many Christians who want to grow spiritually but lack practical tools for understanding how their personality, motivations, and defenses affect their walk with God.

I believe the Enneagram is one of the most powerful tools available for self-awareness. But awareness alone does not change people.

Truth applied consistently does

My mission is to help people uncover the patterns that hold them back, reforge the habits and responses that no longer serve them, and sharpen the character God is developing within them.

Because becoming who you were made to be is not accidental.

It’s FORGED!