How to Rebuild a Business After Betrayal: Kim Bode on Resilience

2 hours ago

6 min read

Kim Bode's napkin, written in makeup pencil, says find comfort in the uncomfortable. It's also tattooed on her arm. Kim has run 834, her communications firm, for close to 20 years. In 2024 her bank called about a check her HR and finance manager was trying to cash. That call unraveled what a friend estimated at around $265,000 taken from the business, unpaid vendors, and a two-year legal battle. People told her to close the doors and declare bankruptcy. Instead, 834 had its best revenue year ever, and Kim was named woman owned small business of the year. Then she made a harder decision. She chose to change the business, because the betrayal had changed her. For any owner whose old way of working still gets results, her story asks a useful question. Does that mask still fit your face?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38wn_Gtij_Y

Inspired by Paper Napkin Wisdom Episode 379 with Kim Bode.

What happens when the person you trust most takes from the business

Kim started 834 in her twenties. It's named after the house numbers on the first home she bought herself, which she lost when the housing market crashed. She grew up very blue collar, and her dad worked at GM for thirty years. After losing the house, she went to work for other people for about a year until good friends sat her down. The clients were hers, they told her. The value was her. Stop it.

Years later, she finally handed off HR and finance. That person had been with her for three and a half years. As Kim tells it, on February 28th, 2024, she was at an event when her bank called. Her HR and finance manager was trying to put through an $8,000 check to herself, with Kim's signature on it. Kim hadn't signed it.

Her friend Jen, another business owner, dug into the books that weekend. Her estimate was around $265,000. The line of credit had been maxed out. Vendors hadn't been paid in a year, and none of them had told Kim, because they trusted her. Kim says "people do business with people, not logos."

On the day of the call, she didn't have enough to make payroll two days later. A friend offered $30,000. She didn't need it. A big new client chose to pay by ACH, which none of her clients ever did, and the money landed the day payroll ran. Within three months she had the vendors paid back.

The person was her older sister. Kim lost her family through it.

Why survival can leave you feeling like you don't deserve the win

The next two years were a legal fight. The former employee sued her with what Kim describes as a false claim. She spent close to fifty or sixty thousand on a forensic investigation by Bill, who spent thirty years in the FBI's white collar unit. He called it the most clear-cut case he had worked. Kim says the prosecutor turned it down three times. All in, she estimates almost a hundred grand went to legal costs.

People told her it was too much, and she should walk away. She refused. That same year was her company's best ever in revenue, and she was named woman owned small business of the year.

Standing on that stage, she kept thinking about everything she still owed and every struggle she was still having. Why am I here? I don't deserve this.

Kim is open about where that comes from. She has ADHD and was a hard kid to raise. A book she read says kids with ADHD hear 20,000 more negative messages than other kids, and that matches what she heard. She tied her self-worth to her achievements. All she wanted was for her parents to say they were proud of her. Her line now is that trauma may have built you, "but it doesn't define you." She tells the story publicly because she knows others are doing the same thing.

Why your business has to change when you do

After the best year, Kim pivoted. The embezzlement changed her at her core, she says, and when you own a business, it has to evolve with you.

The Small Business Association in Michigan, where she sits on the board, had asked her to build a program for second stage women-owned small businesses. These are companies already successful and growing fast, often in the most stressful stretch of the business. Kim says women in that stage drive themselves into the ground. They won't ask for help or get out of the business to work on it. She built the program she needed. Nine months, focused on getting owners out of their business so their health wasn't damaged and they could look 10 years out.

She ran it in the heart of the embezzlement. Watching those women show up every month gave her purpose when she was drowning and felt alone. She says it saved her life. So she expanded 834 around that work and a program called Big Deal Energy, about owning who you are. It put her back at the startup stage.

I notice how often this shows up with second stage owners. The mask that built the business has receipts. Kim could go back to the version of herself who wore every hat and did every role, the one it would take four people to replace. It would still work. It just doesn't fit her face anymore.

She is honest about the cost of her wiring, too. Seeing everything as a threat helped her plan for the worst case, and it's why 834 grew during COVID. It also keeps her on a razor's edge, and she has seen that pressure hurt the health of women business owners. So she asks herself a harder question before taking something on. "Are you doing this because it matters or are you doing it because somebody told you you can't do it and you need to prove them wrong."

How to build belief before you have the evidence

Kim's practices are small and specific.

Her happy board started as a vision board she never finished. She loves snail mail and sends notes, snarky postcards and stickers of her eight rescue dogs to friends she has turned into pen pals. Every note that comes back goes on the board, right where she gets ready each morning. On days she thinks everyone hates her, it reminds her that people see her for who she is.

She tells people to write down something good about themselves, or something someone said, and say it to themselves in the mirror every day. Use I. I am amazing. It feels weird and uncomfortable, which is the point.

She gets up at 4:30 every morning, and it isn't to start work. In a giant chair in a room she turned into a library, dogs piled on her, she reads, underlines, writes, and lists three things she's grateful for. The world isn't awake yet and no one needs anything from her.

The way I see it, we start each day like an empty vessel, and negative energy loves to fill a void. Kim fills hers on purpose, every day, before anything else can. She describes the confidence part as faking it at first, though what she means isn't faking ability. It's acting on belief before the evidence arrives. Her other line is worth keeping. "The only people who are not dealing with imposter syndrome are imposters."

How to apply this in your business this week

Pick the ones that fit where you are.

Check who can see the money. If one person controls HR, payroll and vendor payments, add a second set of eyes this week.
Call two vendors and ask if anything is outstanding. Kim's vendors stayed quiet out of loyalty.
Name your people. Kim had friends who told her the hard truths and a friend who dug through the books. Who are yours?
Start a happy board. Pin up the notes that remind you who you are.
Protect one block of time each morning where nobody needs anything from you.
Before your next big push, ask her question. Does this matter, or am I proving someone wrong?

And look honestly at the mask that built your business. It may still get results. Kim's napkin suggests the discomfort of putting it down might be pointing you toward who you are becoming.