Ep #138: Elevate Your Parenting: Inside The Hive Membership

Welcome to Real World Peaceful Parenting, a podcast for parents that are tired of yelling, threatening, and punishing their kids. Join mom and master certified parent coach Lisa Smith as she gives you actionable step-by-step strategies that’ll help you transform your household from chaos to cooperation. Let’s dive in. 

Lisa: Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome to today’s episode. Today I am joined, once again, by the lovely Hannah, mother of four children, Hive member, and social media expert, and all around just amazing human being. Thank you for being here today, Hannah.

Hannah: Thank you so much. It’s one of my favorite things to get to come on this podcast.

Lisa: Oh, yay. Well, you are an incredible guest. But today, Hannah is not going to be the guest. Today, Hannah is going to be the host. We are going to switch roles, reverse things around, however you want to say it. Hannah is actually going to interview me today. So I’m going to pass the baton over to Hannah for today’s episode. Enjoy.

Hannah: Thank you so much, Lisa. So I, along with all of your listeners, love coming to your podcast week after week and getting awesome tips and real world examples of peaceful parenting. But what I would love to talk to you today about is your membership community called The Hive that you’ve mentioned before, but we haven’t really dug into exactly what it is and what it’s about. So I’d love to ask you some things about that.

Lisa: Beautiful, yes. Today we’re going to talk all things Hive related.

Hannah: Yes. So first and foremost, what exactly is The Hive? 

Lisa: Well, The Hive is sort of my dream, if you will. It really started as an idea that came to me to bring parents together in community who are like minded and on a similar journey to get parent coaching and in an affordable way. It feels amazing, that allows for accountability and support, and that allows parents to know things like I’m not alone. I’m not broken. Other people are going through similar things. I can do this. There’s someone to hold me accountable. I can report back. I can come every week and make progress. I can support other people who are making progress. 

I have a safe place for consistent parenting without shelling out tons of money and without shame and judgment from other parents. So in thinking about this, I came up with this idea to create this monthly membership, this community, and I named it The Hive. So that’s really what it is.

Hannah: Awesome. You know, I really love that. I think that is so unique to have a community that is not a physical thing where you have to go somewhere and meet with these other moms, which is great too. But I love that this community happens online so that some of my closest friends are in New Zealand or all across the world. So I love that dream of yours. I’m so glad it’s become a reality. Walk our listeners through exactly how this works.

Lisa: Yeah, for some people who aren’t in the coaching world, this idea of a membership might be kind of foreign. So let me explain it. So you join The Hive. What happens is we get together on Zoom. I provide the link via email. We get together on Zoom as a community. People have the option of turning on their camera or not turning on their camera. I could care less. I love seeing their faces. But if people want to be doing other things while they’re on the call, that’s perfectly okay with me. 

We get together at designated times three times a week, and I start the call with an opening. I give a couple tips on something everybody can be working on. Then honestly, we jump right into coaching. For roughly 90 minutes three times a week, parents from all over the world come and ask me questions about themselves, their parenting, their kids, their family, their coparenting, situations that happened at school, how to handle this, this is what I did. Sometimes, I will give a parent a homework assignment. They’ll come back and report how it went. 

I’m helping each parent along their own individual journey along the path to peaceful parenting, but we’re doing it in a community like setting. So we also record the call. Then at the end of every call, we send out the recording to The Hive members. So if you’re not able to make a call or you’re not able to make any calls, you can go back and listen to the recording after the fact and stay in touch with the different topics that we’re coaching on that call.

Hannah: I love that. Yeah, that’s perfect. So you’re talking about the community. Can you tell me a little bit about what the community is like? Because if I’m going to get on a call and get coaching, I don’t want to feel like I’m being judged while I’m getting this help. 

Lisa: It’s a great question, and I have a passion for this answer. Because before I found peaceful parenting, when I was a dominant parent, all I wanted to do was do it differently. No one wanted to have honest conversations about this. It’s very hard to find like-minded people struggling with the same things I was struggling with. It was very difficult to find people who were on a journey of discovery. 

So one of the things that I am the most proud of in this community is the safe place that we’ve created. I say we. I lead the community, but it’s really of the people, for the people, by the people. We have members from all over the world, all over the world, all different time zones, all different cultures, all different races, all different family makeups, right? 

We have single parents. We have coparents that both get on the call. We have parents where only the dad gets on the call. We have parents where only the mom gets on the call. We have two mom families where only the mom gets on. We have grandparents raising their grandchildren. We have grandparents and daughters who get on together and brainstorm. We have a little bit of everything. 

We have people going through divorce. We have people that had never been married. We have people that have multiple children. We have people that have little kids, adult kids, teenagers, blended families, multiple children families, single parents, or single child families. We really have it all. It is a cross section of the planet, I would say. Everyone is united in their quest for progress, not perfection. 

The one thing I can promise you is there’s no judgment. It is a completely safe space. It is full of support. It is a place where you can come and celebrate your victories. It’s a place where you can come and ask for help. It’s a place where you can come and openly discuss your setbacks and get support and love and understanding.

It is not a place where we discuss polarizing topics like religion or politics or vegan versus meat eaters, or none of that happens in this place. This is a place that is united in support of progress, not perfection, on the path to peaceful parenting. For as long as I run this membership, it will always be that way.

Hannah: I could not agree more. I think everything you said just hit the nail on the head. I think you would agree that everyone is so respectful and genuinely loving of all the other members in the group.

Lisa: It’s true. I personally don’t know if I’ve ever been a part of something that is filled with so much love and support. It warms my soul. My heart smiles. I say it all the time to you all in The Hive. My heart smiles when we come together in community.

This isn’t to say that every call is rainbows and unicorns. I mean, sometimes we discuss some really big important topics. Sometimes people are going through a lot of stuff cancer, divorce, loss of a parent, loss of a co-parent. A child is struggling with mental health or got in trouble and needs to find their way. I mean but underneath all of it is being united in that quest to find the path to peaceful parenting.

Hannah: Yes. All of the people that are coming together and bringing those struggles are having massive transformations. I would love for you to talk a little bit about some of the transformations that you’ve seen from really dire circumstances and really people that come to you with so much pain and hurt and confusion. I would love for you to just touch on how you’ve been able to help them move into the parents that they’ve always dreamed of being.

Lisa: Yeah, it really is. Some of the transformations are pretty incredible. We’ve had people that are verbally abusive, physically abusive to their kids, overly permissive. We’ve had people that are just completely dysregulated, melting down on their children all the time. It’s interesting to watch it. 

I’d love to hear you comment on this too because sometimes people come in skeptical that well this might have worked for other people. I’m going to give it a shot, but I’m kind of doubtful that I’m really going to be able to make any progress. They come in very dysregulated, very upset, and not knowing what to do. 

One of the things I offer to all of my clients, including people in The Hive, is I always encourage you to borrow my hope that the change is possible. Borrow my hope and belief until you get there. So I’m always loaning out hope and belief to new Hive members. Time and time again. 

I mean, we could just go through story after story of a mom of three little kids, two twins and a little boy, and just complete chaos in the home to fast for 90 days and there’s just tons of cooperation. Or a mom that’s struggling with some depression and doesn’t think she can ever stop yelling at her kids, really being able to communicate with them in a way that the kids feel connected to the mom. They’re getting a lot of cooperation in the home.

To a mom who is separating from the co-parent. The coparent is moving out, and there’s a lot of dysregulation to the mom being able to be the most emotionally intelligent person in the room. Really helping the kids work through their struggle of the parents separating and now living in different homes. 

Then the beauty is so we’ll have all of that, and the parents will transform. At some point, they’ll come and I call and say, “Wow, I can’t believe where I’m at. I can’t believe where I’ve started. I can’t believe how far I’ve come, Lisa. Just this week, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah happened. I was able to stay completely regulated, come alongside my kid, and coregulate.” Really feel the progress that they’ve made. We all get to observe it and cheer them on as well. So that is one of my favorite things. 

Then we have other parents that come in, and they want to talk about, “Hey, how do I get my kids to get their shoes on in the morning and get school on time? How do I get my teenager do their homework? How do I help my kid understand this?”

So another thing I really love about The Hive is no challenge is too big or too little right? I love that I could have coached on something really big. Then next person comes along and says how do I get my kid to get their shoes on? There’s no shame or fear or uncomfortableness about asking that question just as much as the person asks the question about something really big and intense. 

Everybody feels welcome to ask for coaching. Everybody gets coaching. It really is a community that supports each other. I just can’t say that enough. There is no hierarchy of challenges to face. Some challenges are not more important or better than others. Everybody feels welcome to ask their question. Wouldn’t you agree Hannah?

Hannah: I completely agree. I feel like I could talk about the benefits of The Hive forever. But I think one of the main things that comes to my mind is that sometimes someone offers something, and it seems too good to be true. A lot of times it is. It’s like take this pill and get shredded in 30 days, or it looks too good to be true. 

I think that’s what happened to me when I first joined The Hive. I was excited, but I was tentative. I was like okay I don’t, exactly like you said. I’m not sure. She doesn’t know my kids. She doesn’t know my struggles. Then you get there and, like you said, step by step, little by little these changes happen. Then when there is a setback, you and the community come and support each other and talk through it. 

It’s not just like oh, you’ll get there, keep trying. It’s like no, here are tools. Here’s a way to do it differently. I’m going to hold space for you while you do that. I’m going to believe in you that you will get there. So it’s all of that combined together. It’s not just like happy words, and rainbows and unicorns. It’s actual steps. It’s actual tools that work. Yeah, I mean, it’s even better than I could have imagined.

Lisa: I love that. I love that. The other magical thing I would like to say that happens in The Hive is two things. Number one, sometimes when you’re getting coached, you’re in the thick of it. So you’re hearing me, but it’s hard to sort of answer the questions and listen and take in everything I’m saying. So number one, there’s a recording. You can go back and listen to it, which sometimes I’ll say to a parent, I want to really encourage you to go back and listen to this. So that’s one thing that happens. 

But the other magic is sometimes you’re listening to someone else get coached about a similar topic. It really cements the lesson you’re meant to learn. There is really a lot of value in listening to other people get coached in a safe community. It deepens the learnings that you’re working on. It gives you a different perspective. You’re sort of the watcher of the person getting coached. You can see how that’s all going. 

Then the third thing that happens, which I know you’ve commented on before, is sometimes I coach someone on something, and The Hive members are listening to it. Afterwards, The Hive member will think I really needed to hear that, and I didn’t even know I needed to hear that. I didn’t even know that was going on in my home. Wow. I’ll give you an example that’s come up a lot lately. 

Ironically, I coached someone about a month ago, maybe it was two months ago. I think you’ll remember this. She was going on vacation with her two little kids, and she wanted to know how do I make this the best vacation possible? We went through all the steps. I gave her lots of coaching. She took great notes. Since then, four people have gone into the Facebook group and said I’m going on vacation. This mom has been able to say oh, go listen to this call. Lisa gave me great advice. Here’s the whole protocol on what to do on vacation.

Hannah: Yes, yes. That blends perfectly into my next question, which is what if someone can’t make the live coaching calls? Is there still a benefit for them to be in The Hive?

Lisa: That’s a great question. Well, I’ll give you the logistics answer. Then we’ll talk about what happens also. So the calls, we try to schedule them in all time zones. So no matter where you live in the world, there’s at least one call a week during your waking hours. As I mentioned earlier, each call is recorded and uploaded to a private password-only membership space where you can go and access all the content, all the calls, right? They’re recorded. 

We have someone in The Hive, shout out to Viv because she does it for us. She’s our air traffic controller, we call her. She takes amazing notes during the calls and timestamps them. So also after every call an email goes out to every Hive member not only with the recording, but the notes of the call. So if you are an incredibly busy as a bee parent, which I totally understand. Some people are.

You can actually look at the email, and I know lots of parents that do this. They’ll scroll through all the different topics we coached on and go oh, I need to hear that one. I need to hear that one. Okay, that’s it minute 27. Let me fast forward to minute 27 and listen to that. Then I need to hear that one. It’s at minute 45. Let me fast forward. 

So the idea here is you don’t need to come to the calls live. Because remember, I said there’s a lot of growth and opportunity in listening to other people get coached. We actually have one member of The Hive, we have quite a few members that don’t come to the live calls. But one person in particular, she’s been with The Hive since the very beginning, which is going on almost four years now. She has never come to a live call.

She reports having had massive transformations within her family. She’s the mother of a lot of little kids. Her husband’s in the military. They travel a lot. She works. She listens to the calls as a recording. She puts it in her calendar. She makes the time. She listens to at least one call a week. She has had a massive transformation in The Hive without ever coming to a live call.

Hannah: That’s incredible. 

Lisa: Yeah, it really is.

Hannah: Okay, Lisa? What if I get busy and I stopped needing help? How does that work?

Lisa: Well, well, Hannah and listener, that is why it is a month to month membership. It’s not a one-time thing because let’s be honest, transformation takes time. I don’t care what you’re transforming. Whether you’re remodeling a home, getting muscles on your body, training for a marathon, learning how to speak a foreign language, or getting on the path to peaceful parenting. Transformation takes time. 

So The Hive is built as a month to month membership. It’s pay as you go. Right? You join and then every month your membership is charged. One of the reasons that I work so hard to keep the membership affordable. I really do feel like it’s incredibly affordable is because sometimes people get busy. They go away for a month. They have a baby. They have to step away because they have a sick parent. It’s back to school and things are really busy. They’re traveling for a little bit or they’ve got a project at work.

So I really made the decision to make this an affordable month to month membership so that if people have to take a little break for a week or two or a month, the membership sits there waiting for them so they’re ready to rejoin.

Hannah: Before we finish up, Lisa, I would be remiss if we didn’t talk about one of my favorite parts of The Hive. The Saturday workshops.

Lisa: Oh, yes, yes, I live for these. So once you’re a Hive member, roughly once a month, we do a special workshop on a Saturday for about 90 minutes where we jump on Zoom together as a community. Attendance is optional. But I take you deep into a topic. 

We do a deep dive into a special topic. It might be kids and technology. It might be how to overcome shame and guilt. It might be how to set limits. It might be how to think about coparenting in a peaceful way. We take a different topic. Sometimes the topics are about our kids, and sometimes they’re about us. We dive deep into it for about 90 minutes, almost as a specialty class. It gives people a chance to really learn about something. We often have a workbook. We do some work live together on this topic. 

Then of course just like anything else, if you can’t make it live, it’s not a problem. We send out the notes and the recording afterwards. Then we store it in a special bonus content section inside The Hive portal. So recently, we talked about sleep. We had an expert come in, and we talked all about sleep. So sometimes people will have a question about sleep that’s beyond just a simple coaching answer. Then we also have this resource where we can send them where they can dive into a specific topic.

Another example is sibling fighting, right? Occasionally, this will come up, I mean, because occasionally kids fight. Haha, kidding. I’m kidding. So I can coach someone on sibling fighting, but then I can also send them to deep dive down into this workshop where they can learn even more about sibling fighting. Then if they want to come back to the next call and ask more questions, they’re available to do that as well. 

So yeah, those Saturday workshops, I think those are pretty special. Quite a bonus that’s offered in The Hive, especially given the monthly rate. So you basically get three calls a week, which is 12 calls a month, and then you get a bonus workshop as well.

Hannah: You could come to every single one of them if you wanted to. 

Lisa: Yes, that’s right. Or none, or half of them, or a third of them, or come when you need some. I mean, I want to say this. We have literally had parents before that have gotten on The Hive call. When it was their turn to get coached, they’ve literally said I was driving home from school today. This happened. I looked at my calendar, and I realized there was a chance to get on the call and talk to you. So this just happened to half an hour ago. This is exactly what I need help with.

Right? Which is one of the reasons that I developed The Hive. The way I think about it is for a very affordable monthly fee, for a very affordable investment, you get to have a master certified parent coach and expert who’s been doing this for 16 years and worked with thousands of parents successfully around the world.

You get to have a master certified parent coach in your back pocket that you are never more than two or three days away from accessing and getting live real time coaching. In many instances, you can get coaching that day. Where else in your life does that happen?

Hannah: Right? Well, thank you so much, Lisa. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer these questions for all of us. What I’m getting from it is that there’s really no reason why you wouldn’t join and a whole world of opportunity is waiting in The Hive. 

Lisa: I couldn’t agree more. Thank you, Hannah. You asked great questions. Gave us a real chance to give people an insight into what’s happening inside The Hive. Listener, I know you want to join. So either click on the link in the show notes, or go to TheHiveCoaching.com where you can learn all about The Hive and get yourself signed up. I cannot wait to work with you. Until we meet again, I’m wishing you peaceful parenting.

Thank you so much for listening today. I want to personally invite you to head over to thepeacefulparent.com/welcome and sign up for my free peaceful parenting minicourse. You’ll find everything you need to get started on the path to peaceful parenting just waiting for you over there at www.thepeacefulparent.com/welcome. I can’t wait for you to get started. 

Thanks for listening to Real World Peaceful Parenting. If you want more info on how you can transform your parenting, visit thepeacefulparent.com. See you soon.