Kim Bode Coaches

Schooling & Tooling

We tell the stories people remember and develop the humans living them.

The learning side of 8THIRTYFOUR includes coaching, training, program development, workshops, and events for business owners and the people they employ.

Our methodology is fun, entertaining, and influenced by Leslie Knope, Julia Sugarbaker, Ron Swanson, The Goonies, and Star Wars (the OGs).

We don't do boring.

We build engaging, interesting, and hella good programs for established business owners, high-powered executives, you professionals, and the inbetween. If we can’t sit through it, we sure as hell ain’t going to make anyone else.

What is Big Deal Energy?

Our Programs

Skills Survival School

Our Skills Survival Training is a 90-day employee development program combining in-person facilitation, eLearning, and internal mentor development. Employees from multiple small businesses learn together in cohort sessions, building skills alongside peers from different organizations. A designated person at each company is trained as a mentor to ensure skills transfer to the actual job.

Survival School addresses the structural gap: we train the mentor. The company retains internal capability to continue development after the 90-day program ends, and employees have access to the 8THIRTYFOUR Schools Hub for ongoing professional development. This is not a one-time intervention but an investment in people, for the long term.

Women's Entrepreneurial Fellowship

The Fellowship is a cohort-based program for women business owners ready to stop second-guessing themselves and start operating like the big deals they already are. Every person from the first cohort recommends this program because we thought through every nuance to make it meaningful, not just another networking event with name tags and lukewarm coffee.

Big Deal Energy™

When you own your quirks, show up authentically, and give without expecting, the good comes your way. The things making you different aren’t liabilities; they’re your competitive edge. Flip the script, so the people with half your talent and brains stop getting the space meant for you.

It’s time to get uncomfortable and define what makes you unique, quirky, and weird…cause that’s your Big Deal Energy™.

The Next Level Training

The generation entering manufacturing now missed crucial hands-on learning experiences, collaborative problem-solving, and the discipline required for complex production environments. We built The Next Level Program to stop teaching backwards, because handing complex technical skills to people who can’t listen effectively or think critically is a waste of everyone’s time.

Our hybrid approach combines our Learning Management System for flexible, self-paced digital learning with structured face-to-face application sessions and mentorship. Every lesson, exercise, and assessment is grounded in real-world manufacturing scenarios, including shift communication and handoffs, quality documentation and continuous improvement, safety incident reporting and prevention, equipment troubleshooting, and team-based problem-solving in production environments.

KNOw When We Launch

The Swanson Method

The Swanson Method teaches you to run your business the same way Ron Swanson, (he’s right up there with Leslie Knope) runs his life: with decade-long clarity, unflinching boundaries, and zero tolerance for the bullshit keeping you stuck in reactive mode.

You’ll learn to say no without the three-paragraph apology, delegate the work dragging you down, block real time off, and defend it like Ron defends his shop hours, and finally figure out what you actually want your business to do for your life ten years from now. This program is for business owners done being owned by the thing they created and are ready to operate with intention instead of exhaustion.

“Give 100%. 110% is impossible. Only idiots recommend that.”

KNOw When We Launch

Are You Standing Out for the Right Reasons?

The QUIRKS™ you’ve been told to hide are the things that make you memorable. Your story matters. All of it… the messy, the hard, the unconventional. The moment you decide to own what makes you weird is the moment you start to own your Big Deal Energy™.

Find out if you’ve been embracing your quirks with Main Character Energy or living in Ghost Mode.