Building Community, Trust, and Impact Through Conscious Leadership with Kim Bode

**Stephen Sakach** (0:00)
Bode, and you can print.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:18)
Well, welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here with my co-host Tullio Siragusa, and we've got a special guest who will introduce in a moment. So business is often described through language of growth, and competition, and efficiency, and always profit. But organizations people trust most are also being asked to demonstrate something deeper.
Clear values, social responsibility, authentic communication, and genuine commitment to the communities they serve.
That is where conscious capitalism becomes especially relevant. Challenges leaders to view profit not as the sole purpose of business, but as one part of a larger responsibility to employees, to customers, partners, and your society and community. Today, we are exploring building community trust and impact through conscious leadership. Tullio, introduce our special guest today.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:17)
It'll be my pleasure. Our guest today is Kim Bode. She's the CEO and founder of 8thirtyfour, a communications and learning company.
She has led for more than 20 years. Kim's work has earned recognition as a Forbes Top 200 PR for Michigan's woman-owned small business of the year and one of Michigan's 50 companies to watch. She has also been recognized for her leadership in diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice center communication.
Beyond her company, Kim is an advocate for small businesses and entrepreneurs. She serves on the board of the Small Business Association of Michigan, including the Leadership Council, Advisory Board, and the Women's Business Council, the Women in Defense National Council, and has held board level and advisory role with Women Impact Public Policy and the American Marketing Association. Kim is also a speaker, writer, podcast host, rescue dog enthusiast, and a leader known for bringing honesty, humor, and hard-earned experience into conversations about entrepreneurship. I feel like we have royalty with us today. Kim, welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast. We're excited to have you.

**Kim Bode** (2:27)
Thanks for having me. I do have, you can see one in the background. Another one will pop up at some point, and probably annoy me, so.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:37)
We love bringing mine in here, but as we've talked about in recent podcasts, he just got a poor haircut recently, and so my daughter has, as I mentioned, was referring to him as triangle head, so.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:49)
We saw the triangle head, and it looked more like gizmo from the.

**Kim Bode** (2:55)
You're going to have to send that to me now.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:58)
I will.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:58)
Very cute.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:01)
Kim, Conscious Capitalism, it's often discussed, I think, in examples from very large companies. I mean, this is kind of where we're always pulling examples from, but what does it look like when it's translated into one of the daily decisions of a small or mid-sized business?

**Kim Bode** (3:18)
I think it's even harder in a small business, if you ask me. I mean, I will be totally honest. I was like, I don't know that I've heard that phrase before, and then so I Googled it. When I was like, oh yeah, to me, it's putting the whole before the self.
We have a core value that's like we are not assholes. The whole point of it is, you set your ego aside.
It's the team before self. It's not a client, it's not customers, but it's like knowing how the actions you take impact others around you. I think when you are a small business, we have less than 10 employees. I think that's especially hard because you are thinking about everyone obviously in the room, and I think it makes it all the more personal. To me, it's always just thinking, what is the impact I'm having on the world, and then what is the impact I'm having on others around me, and then how am I making the right decisions for the entire company? Not myself, not for my bottom line, which is what I really think is awesome about the definition of Conscious Capitalism. It's essentially saying, if you do the right thing, you'll make money.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:41)
Yeah. I love the way you put that like the whole before the self. I mean, that's a very easy way to think about it because it is this sort of empathetic exercise for companies that they're kind of going through. It's like not just the investor ownership, what's good for them, it's what's good for those other stakeholders in the business. Yeah, definitely.

**Tullio Siragusa** (5:03)
Now, the big challenge, Kim, is being aspirational or being genuine and authentic. I'm assuming as a communications firm, I mean, you help shape how organization present themselves, how they show up to the world.