Ever found yourself in a tough situation with your kiddo and think…I wish I had a freaking manual! So much of our parenting leaves us either looking to how our parents would have done it (and let’s be honest, many of us wish to do things differently!) – or hitting up Google to find a quick answer to whatever difficulty we are facing with our kids that week … often leaving us to feel overwhelmed & unsure about actual steps to take (hello disempowerment).
What if there was actually a playbook for parents where we could find reliable, helpful guidance to get us through tough situations with our kids?
In this episode of The Fresh Start Family Show, Wendy and Terry are joined by Bruce Hymas and Philip Anderson, co-founders of the new app Parent Playbook, a company passionate about bringing parenting help to the next level. If it takes a village to raise a child, Parent Playbook aims to put that village in your pocket! They saw a need to give parents who are seeking access to parenting resources and support through a modern parenting empowerment platform and are now bringing that vision to life.
What does this mean for parents to be able to access connection and evidence-based learning materials so readily? It means that we can find our confidence and empowerment for this incredibly important role we have as the adults in our kids’ lives much more easily. Today we look at ways we can do that.
This episode covers 6 Ways to Become an Empowered Parent:
- Build up your toolkit so you have options
- Learn how to process emotions with confidence (instead of resist, react or avoid)
- Surround yourself with community who has similar goals, visions & dreams as you for their family
- Digest messages of hope, healing, compassion, connection, forgiveness & firm kindness often.
- Have trusted mentors / teachers on speed dial–so-to-speak–for when you need additional support
- Remove activities / input that drain you
Are you ready to create the life you want (filled with strong healthy relationships) + live with high self-esteem, confidence. peace & joy?
If yes, join us for The Fresh Start Family Freedom to Be – Course
An online – immersive learning experience to help you heal relationships, learn to love yourself more, forgive others easier, shed limiting belief cycles, end protection behaviors & stop blaming yourself & others!
We don’t have to parent stressed or isolated. There are so many resources available to us these days, and no matter what we’ve relied on in the past, we have options and help available to get supported in meeting our parenting challenges and needs.
Special thanks to Parent Playbook for their support of the Fresh Start Family Show! To learn more about this incredible parent empowerment platform, click here!
Episode Highlights:
- Knowing that we want to parent differently is the first step, seeking out quality resources is the next
- Educating ourselves is a powerful tool to become empowered as a parent
- We are at choice to use our time for intentional learning vs mindless social media scrolling
- We all crave connection, and quality community is so important for filling that need
- We can do 4 things with our emotions – resist, react, avoid, or allow/process
- Our thoughts cause our feelings, our feelings cause our actions and our actions cause our results
- Confidence is past-looking (things we already know how to do). Self-confidence is forward thinking. When related to feelings, it means our willingness to be brave and feel any emotion
Mentioned in this Episode:
How to Find Parent Playbook:
Join the Waitlist for the App!
Episode 123 Parenting without Punishment with Tanya Camps
Not able to listen or want to read along with us?
Here is the episode transcript!
This episode is brought to you by the Fresh Start Family Freedom to Be Personal Development Course, you can learn more over at freshstartfamilyonline.com/freedomcourse.
Hello listeners. And welcome back to a new episode. I’m your host, Wendy Snyder, positive parenting educator and family life coach. And I’m so happy that you are here. Terry and I had a really great conversation today with two gentlemen by the name of Phil Anderson and Bruce Hymas. They are the co-founders of a parent empowerment platform and app called Parent Playbook, but we had a really good talk about six ways we can become an empowered parent. And I loved getting to know these gentlemen and I loved getting to know their heart behind why they really created this, this beautiful parent empowerment platform.
But our conversation around becoming an empowered parent is a really important one. And here’s why, so raise your hand. If as you parent on a day to day basis, you love to be at choice. You love to feel like you have just the authority to make decisions that feel like they are in line with your moral compass and feel like yes, that they actually work right as parents. We all want, want kids that cooperate and listen well, and we all want to raise good kind, human beings that contribute in the world that really take responsibility for making a difference, and for just again, like adding goodness to humanity, right?
And we just like to be at choice. And I think empowerment is a word that I use often. I’ve actually been playing around with calling what I teach powerful parenting. There’s been such kind of an uprising in the world lately. I mean, I guess just at least in what I am seeing online, there’s been a lot of uprising around how gentle parenting or positive parenting, whatever you want to call it–connected, relationship-based from unkind parenting. I have a tendency just to umbrella it under positive parenting, but there’s been some like really just infuriating posts and information being shared that is completely not accurate at all, about how positive parenting is really permissive parenting or how gentle parenting is not Biblical.
And like I said, it’s really tough for those of us who have dedicated our lives to, you know, helping parents learn how this work can change their lives inside their home and also change their lives and their community and the world. We always say, if you want more peace in the world, it starts by bringing more peace into your home. So it’s been infuriating to watch, but my colleagues and I are here to just run the marathon, not the sprint, right? And this is nothing new people have been challenging. What we do here at Fresh Start Family, or in general, anybody that advocates for gentle connected firm and kind relationship based parenting. They’ve been opposing it for a long, long time. So it’s nothing new, but I’ve been playing around with starting to use the term powerful parenting more.
When people ask me what I teach or what I do, because what we, you know, when you embrace connected or relationship based parenting, you become truly empowered as a parent. You become someone who actually has true influence over your children because you learn how to not use fear force and external controls like bribery and rewards to make (air quotes,) make your kids cooperate and listen. And you end up raising children that are not scared of you. They actually do good in the world. They actually make smart decisions. They actually get good grades or do well in sports or eat nutritiously or whatever it may be because they truly look up to you and they truly respect you.
So I call that true power. And so in order to, you know, get into a daily rhythm where you feel like you are having true power with your children, you need to be in an empowered state as a parent. So that’s, you know, we’re gonna, we’re going to kind of talk about six ways you can do that today. And I just loved getting to know Phil and Bruce. I think they have some really cool ideas and I’m just really excited about this parent empowerment platform that they’ve co-founded and are bringing into the world right now. They’ve been working really hard over the last few years to develop it. But I just thought, as you know, as I’m entering this episode, I thought it’d be fun just to kind of, I looked up the definition of empowerment.
And so just to take a moment to like, get in touch with why this matters to us. So when you look up empowerment, the definition is the authority or power given to someone to do something. So individuals are given empowerment to create their own dwellings, the process of becoming stronger and more confident, and especially in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights, I think that’s from Miriam Webster dictionary or whatever. And I’m just, when I read that, I’m like, heck yes, that’s what we all want as parents. We want to become stronger. We want to become more confident and we want to control our own life.
And like, especially when it comes to claiming our own rights. Now here at Fresh Start Family, like, I truly believe that this is a co-creation with God, right? Like yes, on earth, we are given, you know, the authority to control our surroundings. We’re not given the authority to control human beings, but we are given the authority to control our environment and what we do on a daily basis, our actions, the way we treat people, the way we raise our children, that’s part of it. And so I want to live on a daily basis in a state of empowerment, and I know you guys do too. So I thought it’d be fun to look at the opposite of this also.
So words come up like this, when you look at the antonym of empowerment: oppressed, disenfranchised, suppressed, coerced, subjugated, denied, disapproved of, rejected, disallowed. And you guys, I get so many DMS from you guys or messages, or, you know, when you first find our many people, when they first find our podcasts and they reach out on Instagram or they shoot me an email and they, they share with me how they just have such a strong desire to do things. Oftentimes not always, but oftentimes they’ll say, I just really do not want to repeat what was done to me.
I do not want to just continue the painful generational cycles in the way I was raised. I was raised with a lot of yelling or I was raised with parents who spanked all the time or a disconnected home. And, you know, my parents led with fear all the time, or, you know, I became like a teenager who just went totally the opposite way because we had no relationship. I mean, I hear stories all day long and it is an honor, by the way, to hear your stories, thank you for just touching base and letting me know what lights your heart on fire when you hear about positive parenting, when you step into learning, when you start practicing this work in your home, it really means a lot to me.
But a lot of it is, you know, when parents are trying to get the confidence to do things differently, because remember it’s still factual information. Tanya Camps, and I talk about this in episode, I believe it’s 123– it’s episode 122 or 123, but I’m pretty sure her and I, we talk a lot about like some Biblical references to help people understand why positive, connected from a kind parenting is absolutely a hundred percent Biblical. But we, we talk about how statistics and research shows us or just factual information is that seven out of 10 homes are still using corporal punishment, still using fear and force still using spanking as the main driver in their homes to get their kids to listen and cooperate.
And we know long-term sustainability wise, this does not work. And so that’s why we’re such advocates about teaching a different way and empowering parents with how to have a full, compassionate discipline toolkit. But we know that this still is the norm like your neighbors and even your pastor, or, you know, your in-laws or your mom or your sister or your cousins, whatever it may be. A lot of them are still using the kind of hand-me-down parenting tactics that rely on the external control methods to get their kids to listen. And then many of them end up with teenagers that, whew, it’s a, it’s a tough, tough road once a lot of times, once these, these kids become teenagers, but I’m just saying that when you’re trying to do something different, when you’re trying to use dignity and grace and compassion and patience and gentleness and self-control and self-regulation and compassionate discipline of punishment and responsiveness, instead of reactivity and like true power instead of overpowering and controlling your kids, you’re going to have a lot of moments where you may feel disempowered if you don’t set yourself up for success, you may feel unconfident like you’re a black sheep if you are not fully rolling around with a full toolkit and as an empowered parent.
So with all that said, this is a really important episode. I want you all to be an empowered parent every single day. Okay. So I’ll take a moment just to tell you a little bit more about Bruce and Phil just you’ll get to know them in this episode, but I actually met Bruce and Phil and their team at Parent Playbook through two of my students who are part of my Become a Parenting Coach program. They’ve also one of them at one of these two girls has actually been in my Bonfire for a few years now and she’s just such an amazing mama. Both of these women that are in this program, I just adore so much, but the become a parenting coach program is for anybody who is interested in becoming a parenting coach certified in the Fresh Start Family approach.
And that’s a seven month intensive mentorship program with me and a cohort of other parents. And so these women will be graduating in October. We’ll have the next cohort start in the spring of 2023. If you’re interested, you can join the wait list, freshstartfamilyonline.com/becomeaparentingcoach. But they started working with become a parenting coach last year. And they just started speaking so highly of what Bruce and Phil had created and the team and the research that they were doing. And so it’s been a real honor to get to know them. And I just became really interested in what they’re doing because you guys, I love a good entrepreneurial story. I’ve been running my own businesses since I was 13 years old, obviously built Fresh Start Family from the ground up, and we’ve now helped thousands and thousands and thousands of families get to know positive parenting and implement it into the daily fabric of their lives.
So I built this, this organization from scratch and I just, I love entrepreneurs. I have a special, I have a special spot in my heart for strong-willed kids. And I also have a special spot in my heart for entrepreneurs. So especially those, I really respect entrepreneurs who pour their hearts into creating organizations that help others, especially families. So yeah, when I found out what they were doing, I just was really excited. So let me just take a moment to tell you a little bit about them before we get started on the episode. So Bruce Hyman is the father of four and me his amazing wife of 13 years by pursuing an entrepreneurship degree at Brigham Young University. Bruce is a certified life coach and especially loves helping young people discover how life really works through their thoughts, feelings, and actions.
He’s the co-founder and COO of Parent Playbook. And thinks whether people are laughing at him or him, he continues to tell dad jokes to his kids and on Parent Playbook team calls. And then Phil Anderson, who is the other co-founder of Parent Playbook has been married to his best friend, Lia for 30 years. He has two adult children and three incredible grandchildren. He co-founded Beacon Learning Group back in 2007, and has led several startups, but believes everything learned in his business career has been in preparation for leading Parent Playbook. He considers his greatest success to be his family and that his family still enjoys going on vacation with him. Seriously, I love that because we were just talking about one of my friends and colleagues, Tanya Camps, who I just mentioned, who’s an episode 123 or whatever that episode is with me.
She had just posted something last week that said like, “oh my gosh, we only have 18 years with our kids” to her husband, Mike. And he was like, “no, we want, but no, we won’t, babe. He’s like, because the way we’re raising our kids, they’re going to want to spend a lifetime with us. Like they’re going to want to be together with us every single summer. So we actually have like 60 more years with them or 70 or whatever he said, you know?” And that’s, I love that, that Phil mentioned that because that is a great success, right? If you can raise your children in a way that they want to still be with you, isn’t that just such a gift, right? So anyways, you guys, I’ve been enjoying being part of Parent Playbook panels and have even decided myself to invest in their Crowdfunding campaign, which they’ll tell you at the end, the end of this episode, all about to support the launch of their parent empowerment app called Parent Playbook.
So I know you’re going to love this conversation and really just ask yourself as you’re listening, parents are these things present in my life. Again, we’re going to talk about Six Ways to Become Empowered as a Parent, or ask yourself, am I operating daily with a lack of confidence, with confusion with overwhelm or from a disempowered place? If yes, don’t stay there. You don’t have to stay there. We have so many resources available here at Fresh Start Family from free learning guides, our free learning guide to raising strong-willed kids with integrity is a super easy download, freshstartfamilyonline.com/strongwilledkids, to free workshops.
One of my favorite workshops that I teach is about power struggles, how to really approach and dissolve power struggles with dignity and true power. That free one hour workshop is freshstartfamilyonline.com/powerstrugglesclass. And then of course we have full programs, full courses, the Foundations Course, the A to Z, a positive parenting. We have full support programs. The Bonfire support community and program is just life-changing with a Google doc of over 800 pages of success stories. Now you guys, and we just have life coaching weekend courses. When we have so many programs for you to look into and to use, to change your life and to become an empowered parent.
And then you’re going to hear about how Parent Playbook is going to give you some incredible tools to become an apparent to empowered parent tale. That’s a mouthful, empowered parent. All right, you guys, I love talking. This intro is turned into really long, but anyways, thank you for listening. Thank you for caring so much about your family. Thank you so much for caring so much about your kids and for your support of the Fresh Start Family Show. Without further ado, help me welcome Phil and Bruce to the show.
Stella:
Well, Hey there, I’m Stella. Welcome to my mom and dad’s podcast, The Fresh Start Family Show. We’re so happy. You’re here. We’re inspired by the ocean, Jesus and rock and roll and believe deeply in the true power of loving kindness together. We hope to inspire you to expand your heart, learn new tools and strengthen your family. Enjoy the show.
Wendy:
Well, Hey there, families and welcome to a new episode of The Fresh Start Family Show. Terry and I are really excited to be here today with Phil Anderson and Bruce Hymas from that Parent Playbook. Welcome guys.
Terry:
Thank you. Thank you-good to be here.
Wendy:
Yes. We’ve got four guys here today. I feel like —
Terry:
Four guys? You have something to tell us Wendy?
Wendy:
I feel like I’m normally outnumbered, but normally there’s more women talk.
Terry:
Yeah. We’ve got more of us.
Wendy:
Oh my gosh. But you guys, you know here at Fresh Start Family, we love, love, love it when guys are in the mix, when we have rad dads that are part of helping and changing the narrative, when it comes to family and parenting and all that good stuff. So I’m extra excited to be here with all these wonderful men today. But today we’re going to be talking about six ways we can become empowered parents. And the reason why we were really excited to interview Phil and Bruce is because they are doing some phenomenal work in the world to create a parent empowerment platform and app called Parent Playbook. And we’re going to learn all about it today, but again, specifically how why and how we can use this app that’s coming out soon and also just why we want to be in an empowered state as a parent.
So, you know, here at Fresh Start Family, we talked so much about how we want to have choices, so we can do things and raise our little human souls in a way that feels in line with our moral compass, right. That isn’t necessarily just using hand-me-down parenting tactics, usually rooted in fear, force, bribery and rewards, like all the classic stuff. Right. But instead, how do we really get to a place where we are empowered to choose where we have plenty of resources? We have plenty of mentors. We have plenty of community. We have plenty of messages of hope. So all of those are going to be kind of things that we talk about today. And I know you’re just going to love this conversation, but before we get going, Bruce and Phil, would you guys kick us off with just telling us a little bit more about yourself?
I know you’re both fathers and we just want to hear a little bit more. I, I told the listeners a lot about your, your fancy dancy side of your bio. That is just incredible how much you have done in the world. But tell us a little bit more about your hearts and what drew you to dedicate so much time and resources to creating this for parents and serving families and this capacity. And then just tell us a little bit more about your family to please.
Bruce:
So I’ve got four kids and a beautiful wife, three girls and one boy. And so they keep us busy and there’s all sorts of the ups and downs. And, you know, we’re all over the place running everywhere and staying busy and, and we love it. We love it. We love our family and we love learning about new, new ways that we can make not only our lives better, but also our children’s lives better too. So, yeah, we’re just excited about Parent Playbook and, and excited to tell our story a little bit more. And speaking of that, let me tell you a little bit of the story of where Parent Playbook came from. So my wife was following, still follows a, an, an Instagram influencer, and this lady was going to come out from, from Utah to the Carolinas.
And she has this positive parenting weekend where it was just on Saturday, but we went to this seminar on Saturday and it was just a fabulous, fabulous parenting seminar, full of just great information. And, but one thing we did notice at lunch and even afterwards is this long line of people still wanting to get answers to their questions, to their specific children for their specific scenario. And we had question. At the time we had three girls and a boy on the way, and we were having issues with eating and sleeping through the night and you name it, you know, so we had additional questions. And so I just turned to my wife and I was like, Hey, there is something, something big that I think is missing here.
And we need to find it, find out what that is and figure it out and potentially we could solve it. So we started going out, I, we went and asked questions to the moms at the gymnastics gym and the neighbors, and, you know, people at church and everybody we’re just asking like, is this a thing? And we found out that the, the problem was bigger than what we thought. And so I reached out to my entrepreneur professor for my undergrad, put the idea out there. Hey, is there anybody else that’s interested in building this business? And that’s how I got connected with Phil. And so we just went from there and since then we’ve raised or not raised, but we’ve interviewed hundreds of moms, literally hundreds and hundreds of moms, dads, and professionals, to really discover what the issue is and what really needs to be solved in resolving it.
So we’re, we’re very excited about that.
Wendy:
Amazing. Amazing. I love it. Awesome. How about you and you told us, did you tell us the ages of your kids before we hear Phil’s story, Bruce? How old are your kids? Again?
Bruce:
12, 9, 6, and three.
Wendy:
Awesome, good spread there. That’s a good spread. We got almost 15 and almost 12, so nice. You got us doubled. Awesome. Okay. And Phil, how about you tell us a little bit more about you and your heart behind this work.
Phil:
Yeah. Thank you. It’s, it’s really a great question. And I consider myself really fortunate to have Bruce as a business partner because he’s a great dad. He’s a great husband. I see how he interacts with his family and they’re a priority for him. And he really understands the problem that we are trying to solve. When you have an idea that like Parent Playbook, you really want to ask the question, is there really something to be solved? Is it a, is it a, an itch that needs to be scratched or is it a really serious problem? And we learned it’s really an acute problem, but my background is I’m in my early fifties, been married for 30 years to my sweetheart. Her name is Lia. I have two adult children.
One’s 28, my son, and he has three beautiful children that are my first grandchildren. They are our world. And all the cliches you hear about being a grandparent I have learned for myself are while corny, they’re true. And we, we love the stage of life that we’re we’re in. For me, this project represents something unlike other things I’ve done in the past. I’ve built companies before and enjoyed that process, but I’m at a stage in my life where it’s clear to me that everything I’ve done before now, the highs and the lows of, of, of the building businesses has really been in preparation for this. This isn’t a stepping stone to the next thing for me, this is it.
And I wanted to do something at this stage in my life and my career that was going to be high impact from a societal perspective. What’s something where we can really make the world a better place? And it became very clear to me as we really immersed ourselves in the problem that the ability to impact one child by giving that child’s parent access to information to make simply better parenting decisions, even if just fractionally, we can impact the trajectory of that child’s life, because that parent has been a data to make better decisions. Now we’re changing the world for that child.
And for that family do that enough times, and we’re literally changing the world. And that’s really what drives us. I love our team because the whole team is, is, is bought into the fact that we can have that sort of level of impact. But it’s wonderful to be here with you both today.
Wendy:
Oh, so good. You do have a great team. You have two girls on your team that have been in my programs, the Bonfire and the Foundations Course for two or three years now, and are also in my, Become a Parenting Coach certification program now. And they are on fire. They are just on fire for this work. They are on fire about wanting to change the world. And I know that they love working with you guys and they are so passionate about what you’re doing too. And so I will vouch for that, that you guys have an incredible team. Yeah, of course. Gosh. I mean just how wonderful I am. Like yes, yes, yes, Phil, to everything you say. And of course we feel the same way here at Fresh Start Family, right?
When you can affect families and parents and come into one home at a time and a one child’s life at a time when you are actively taking part in breaking painful generational cycles and giving parents the courage to do things differently. I mean, boom, right? Like peace in the world starts with peace in the home. And I know Terry and I, every time we see something on the news, that’s horrible or, you know, the world feels like it’s never been more divided. I know it has been in history, but it always feels like it’s never been more divided than it is right now when you’re in the thick of it. Right. But we always look to each other and there’s lots of solutions and people have lots of ideas and there’s lots of pointing fingers about what needs to be done, but at the basis of it, if you can help the parent and the child relationship and help people, parent in a way that’s empowered and respectful and kind, and connected and firm, and kind like you said, you will, you will be able to help change the world.
And so what an honor to be doing this work besides you guys, thank you. I know you have put blood, sweat and tears into building this parent empowerment platform. That’s why it’s just really fun to get to know you guys today and get to know more about what you’re doing. But yeah.
Terry:
Yeah. I definitely, I definitely relate to this a lot. And I think that, you know, the journey for a Fresh Start Family and what you said of everything prior, preparing you to this moment right here, you know, I think, especially with Wendy’s journey, when I think about, you know, her, you know, her time as a young person, being a sports coach and then, you know, being drawn to marketing and how that would, you know, serve her later on and even how I can contribute to the world beyond just making things pretty and shiny, I can do something for good here. And then of course, as parents that then say, gosh, isn’t there something more here and then coming alongside with using technology for good, you know, because like you said, it is that, that personal touch of effecting one parent, one child, one family at a time, but how can we do it and amplify it so that there is a really big impact and using, you know, this wonderful technology like we are today to, to get, get the word out to more people.
Wendy:
So good. Okay. Well, let’s get to it. We’re going to talk about Six Ways We Can Become an Empowered Parent. And along the way, I know we’re going to learn more about this wonderful platform and app that you guys are building. But before we do that, I want to kind of just define the problem. I know Bruce, you spoke to it, Phil, you spoke to it. Now you guys have done like thousands and thousands of interviews with families, but just from our perspective where the problem lies. And it sounds like this is what you’ve seen too, but there just feels like there is not enough support and resources available, like in parents’ faces, so to speak. And so in my world, a lot of parents come with the stress of parenting, knowing that misbehavior is happening.
Oftentimes they don’t have a full toolkit. So they’re relying on hand-me-down parenting tactics, like fear, force threats, intimidation, harsh punishments, and there’s so much disconnecting in the home. And they know when they hear something different or they maybe see a book or something that they want to do things differently, but they don’t really understand how, which then brings you to these questions of just feeling hopeless. Like it’s so overwhelming. Like where do you even start? Because society traditionally has not set us up for success. When, like in order, we just learned how to spear free dive and like spearfish here in Southern California, we had to go get a fishing license and we had to get an extra fishing license to be in saltwater before we were even allowed to step into the ocean with our spear gun.
Right. But for parenting, you don’t have to do that. Right. So a lot of people end up in this crisis mode where they’ve got strong-willed toddlers, or there’s just multiple kids and they’re overwhelmed and they’re stressed and they don’t know where to start. So they know they want to do it differently than maybe how they were raised. They want to have better relationships with their kids and learn how to influence with true power, but they don’t know how. So that to me feels like the big problem that so many of us are talking about. Would you guys agree that that’s kind of the basis of like, there just doesn’t seem to be resources easily at the fingertips of families worldwide.
Well, hey there families. I have a free online parenting workshop that I want to invite you to. It’s called “what to do when your kids say, no, I won’t and you can’t make me”. These classic power struggles situations can trigger us and cause us to dip down into reactive modes that cause us to be shameful and guilty at the end of the night when we lay our head on our pillow and none of us want that, but don’t fret. I’m here to help. I can teach you five positive parenting tips to help gain cooperation and dissolve power struggles with integrity, so you can take a break from relying on fear, force, bribery, and rewards to get your kids to comply.
You can save your seat now over at freshstartfamilyonline.com/powerstrugglesclass. Again, this workshop is completely free. I’m going to cover things like how to gently guide your kids towards action, even when they don’t want to move or do what’s asked of them, ways to see kids who pushed back a lot as incredible blessings and future leaders. I promise you they are blessings, not curses. Also, I’ll teach you about the importance of paradigm shifting with thoughts and beliefs about power seeking misbehavior, as well as how to implement a pause button to ignite creativity and model self-control in your parenting walk. I cannot wait to support you in this free class, head to freshstartfamilyonline.com/powerstrugglesclass to save your seat now, and I will see you at class.
Phil:
It’s interesting because we’re all creatures of habit and we’ve learned how to, to parent this most important tasks we believe that that you’ll ever have. And it’s the ability to impact the life of your, your children. And we tend to model as parents, how we were parented and credit to our parents. I think in most cases they did the best that they could, that the old adage no better do better, is absolutely true with parenting. The reality is that when there is a situation of more information and better information, you can make more informed decision. And you said it, you know, finding the right answers to parenting questions is really, really hard.
What we’ve learned after interviewing and spending hundreds and hundreds of hours interviewing and talking to parents as they face information overload. Now you referred to this and it’s accurate. If you take an example, you’re referred to a book, a parenting book and it’s 300 pages long. Well, the reality is the answer that you need to your specific problem right now might be buried in the third paragraph on page 255 type thing. Right? So how do you take the subject matter and get an answer that’s, that’s relatable to you now? The same is true. Parents use Google, they Google search, and it’s a great tool and there is some great information there.
But if you research total of tantrums, you type that into Google, you’re going to get 35 million, 800,000 search results. That’s what’s going to come back at you separately, right? So sometimes people say, well, you know, I belong to this group on social media. Maybe it’s a Facebook group on parenting or this subject or that well consistently in our interviewing parent, after parent reported the same thing, there’s almost no customization and those social media groups. And we consistently heard that there’s high levels of toxicity in far too many cases. It really ruined that social media group experience. One thing that was really interesting as we learned that a lot of people end up asking their family and friends.
This was actually what most people did as we researched this and said, what do you do? More people did this than anything else. They went to family and friends and asked for for information. And this often produced the best results for them, which is great. So our value proposition isn’t, Hey, let us replace asking family and friends. If that’s what’s working for you now. Our proposition of value as let us show you a way to make that even better with communication tools that are dedicated to making it easy to communicate with your circle of trust on parenting topics in side Parent Playbook and just kind of a footnote as well. I think it’s just to set the stage here for part of our vision and mission.
The app is free to download and free to use this isn’t a monthly subscription or anything like that. We wanted the technology to be free because we want every family in the world to have access to Parent Playbook.
Wendy:
I love it. Okay. Well, well, let’s, let’s get kicked off with the very first thing, because I want to hear a little bit more about how this works with Parent Playbook and what’s your guys’ vision and dream for families in the world is so in order, the first way to, in order to become a, an empowered parent is to build up a toolkit. So you have options more than just the classic Camperdown parenting tactics that we mentioned before, which are usually what I call the classic for fear force, bribery and rewards. So this concept of education is key. So how does Parent Playbook set us up with success for, with learning as far as education goes? So maybe just like help listeners understand, like, what is actually happening here.
Like if we’re, if our goal is to expand our parenting toolkit and why that’s so important, like how does work with Parent Playbook and how does it set us up for success?
Bruce:
One of the big really cool things that people like about the app is you not only have a news feed for you, that’s curated for your interests for you personally, but you have a newsfeed for each child according to their age, gender, and special needs. So it gets a lot more curated as you use the app. And as you tell the app, Hey, I’m interested in this and that. And as you’re saving things, you just get more information. And so, as you’re looking through that newsfeed for that child, you can quickly find things that are relevant to you and other people have found useful. So not only when other people are saving stuff to the platform, they’re saving it.
And so just right there, it is important for them. And if it’s important for them and it works for them, then it might work for somebody else. And so then over time, it’s curated and crowdsourced information. And so the best of the best stuff will come to, to rise to the top for each of your child’s newsfeeds.
Wendy:
Oh, I love it. So a lot of families listening have strong-willed kids. I love one of my favorite things to teach on as a parenting educator and family life coach is how to work with strong-willed kids with integrity. So a lot, a lot, a lot of listeners have power. kids or cactus kids or strong-willed kids. So over time as they use this app to kind of meet new mentors or digest new informational kind of educational bits, it’s saving their preferences. So over time when they open up and they’re having a rough day with say their three-year-old strong-willed toddler, which is exactly when I found this work and I thought I was going to lose my mind, Terry, I really did almost lose my mind right?
Are you thankful I survived that season without–
Terry:
It was a beautiful kind of crazy, yeah.
Wendy:
But when, but the app curates all right, so over time it’s becoming easier and easier to get the information that you need to have a smoother day with each of your children, because it gets to know your kids. Is that like an accurate understanding of what, how the technology works?
Bruce:
Yeah. Not even add to that, that it not only helps you find information, but it helps you get on the same page as your spouse or anybody else that is helping you with your children, you know? So it allows you to highlight, even listen to articles and highlight things and send that specific highlight to your spouse or your partner, whoever else. So you can just be on the same page just as, as my wife and I have been using it. That’s one thing I’ve asked her. I was like, so how are you feeling these days just by using and starting it? She’s just one of the things that she said is I feel like I’m not alone and that’s pretty powerful.
Phil:
We had one of our key advisors. They said, you know, take all of the interviews that you’ve done. And I want you in one word to tell me what you’ve learned, but you’re limited to one word. And I thought it was a great exercise and it was super easy. And immediately I knew what the answer was for me to that question. I said, what we’ve learned from speaking to hundreds and hundreds of parents over the last 18 to 24 months, and we’ve been working on this project now for a total three years is people crave connection. And I know we’re going to talk more about this, but that’s it, it’s about connection.
Parenting is about connection. When a parent seeks an answer to a question or solution to a challenging scenario that they’re facing, they’re seeking an answer so that they in effect can have connection with their child or a parent talking to their partner, their spouse, it’s about connection with that spouse. And that became really an overriding data point for us, as we built the platform is this concept, this idea of connection and village, and whether that’s with the one, one person connecting with another, or a small group or a small circle of trust, that’s really at the heart of everything that we’re doing at Parent Playbook.
Wendy:
Oh, I love it. And so I’m going to skip, number two, since you just started, was on, on number three, we had surround yourself with community who has similar goals, visions dreams as you for your family. And so you just kind of spoke to that a little bit, Phil, and we’ll come back to the emotions piece in a minute here. But yeah, it’s, it is. So like when, when parents think of like the usual platforms that are available right now, let’s say Instagram, let’s say Facebook, you guys mentioned it before, but there’s a lot of toxicity that happens. Right? So like how, tell us a little bit about how Parent Playbook will be different as far as like, when you’re looking for that community and building the connections between whether it’s you and your spouse that are sharing, like the education that you’re learning or the tips or the mentors that you’re meeting, or really like, you’re, you’re meeting new mentors and you’re keying in like you’re diving into their communities, but how, how is it curated?
Like how are trusted mentors chosen to be in the platform? Like what, how to, if parents open up this app, how do they know? Like what kind of mentorship, education tips, inspirational content is going to be put in front of them. And then also like, how do people join? Like that type of thing? Like, how is community curated there?
Phil:
Yeah. One thing that COVID has facilitated in one of the main features of the platform is the ability to connect as an example with the professionals. Should someone want to do that? But I love what you said when you talked about community. There’s a statement that we use internally a lot and it’s this, I say, it takes a village to raise a child. We put that village in your pocket. And so this concept of community and, and connection is illustrated by the fact that there is this real sense of disconnect at a time when we’ve never been as connected as we have have been today, in terms of we’re more connected now.
The ability on our phones to connect instantly with people anywhere in the world for free, right. But yet why is there this overriding issue? And so one thing COVID has facilitated that we think is a positive from a trying time that COVID represents as the adoption and the acceptance of as an example, remote services, that in many cases, not all, or simply a better way to communicate and engage people using video for service delivery from professionals that have exploded the, the, the, the, the data says that the engagement with professionals through remote services now through things like tele-health have really just taken off.
And we don’t think that’s a temporary adjustment. We think that’s a shift that’s permanent. And the data seems to be bearing that out. And if anything, it’ll, again, it’ll increase. So this is a longterm shift. That’s just how things are done now and why? Because people prefer it. So another feature that is going to be coming in the platform in 2023 is the ability to access professionals through a tele-health type of engagement. Think a therapist think a family, counselor think a board-certified behavior analyst and even parent life coaches or parent life coaching will be available as well. Professionals are going to be able to create profiles inside the platform and the community and the community will rate their experience, working with them similar to the star rating system that Amazon uses four stars, five stars, et cetera.
So if you’ve got a parenting challenge that rises to that level, where you think talking to someone will be helpful, you’re going to be able to easily and easily and quickly access a professional inside the app via live video.
Wendy:
I like, I love it. Yeah. And so you guys are doing things on your end to kind of maybe, maybe it’s not on your end so much as you vet people to come in. Cause this is what’s on my mind. Like just the time we met each other, the first call we hopped on, I remember it was like during the week I was having a very respectful, but intense civil discourse with some people who had posted online that like gentle parenting isn’t Biblical. And it was an infuriating and also like just energy draining, but it was an important civil discourse for me to have as an educator and family life coach. Right. And all of my colleagues, I mean, we were really like just chiming in and to make sure we give these families to help these families remember that this is not actual factual information it’s being presented on the web, but it’s not actual factual information just because it gets put out there on Instagram.
So what I’m hearing is that there is a vetting at both like within Parent Playbook and then also within the community that if, if a mentor or a trusted professional or an educator is shared in this platform. And I remember you guys saying in the beginning that you were, I think you said this to me because it was before I decided to invest in and just become someone who wanted to partner with you guys, but that there would not be promotion of so-called air quotes, educators, teaching like disrespectful, hurtful methods in parenting. So is that accurate, still, like, as far as Parent Playbook goes, it’s not like a free-for-all, right.
Cause I think that’s part of the, the challenge of like say Instagram or like the web is you’re going to get a million different things. And so much of it is horrifying and heartbreaking. So is that accurate, Phil, my understanding? And Bruce?
Phil:
Yeah, it is. We, we have a line in the sand that for us as one, we won’t cross, we, we don’t endorse any sort of physical disciplining of a child. Right. That’s just, we, we, we, that’s not what we represent. That’s not a core value that we have. And so that’s an example of what we don’t want on the platform. We want it to be evidence-based as well, right. There’s there, there’s some, some interesting, and quite frankly, really different concepts out there that there’s no evidence to support. Those are things that we really want to have evidence-based information on the platform. So it’s a safe environment with relevant and usable information. I don’t know what you would add to that, Bruce,
Bruce:
Th that’s just as how it’s going to work, you know, and people there’s going to be all sorts of different vettings ways to vet people. But I think it’s also going to be invite only so exclusive invite to even get onto the app at least to begin with. So there’s, there’s all sorts of different levels that we are taking to mitigate that. And then as we grow bigger and bigger, we’ll put even more, you know, restrictions in place, but we definitely want to have this as a positive parenting platform. You know, there’s lots of things that have happened in the past and, you know, the, our parents did and there’s just, it just doesn’t work.
Right. So we want to bring this stuff up that works and, and make it available for everybody.
Phil:
If I could also just, just touch on one other thing, Wendy, what we learned is, is in talking to parents, we really front-loaded our learning in this, right? We didn’t want to build something that we thought was the solution we’ve built, what the market told us it wants it. And one thing we learned is, is how people feel when they touch existing–because there is a social component, there’s a communication component to parents labor. It’s not just a place where you come and get tele-health services from professionals, for families. It’s really at its core, the ability to connect and communicate on all things, parenting based, whether that’s with your circle of trust. So the entire community, how people feel is critical. Meaning if people interact with our platform and know they’re accepted for who they are, and they’re recognized for being a parent, that’s just doing the best they can.
And they’re open to learning ways that maybe can just do it a little bit better and make incremental changes that again, have a huge impact on their child. We’re the place for that. And so we want someone that comes in when they leave, when they close the app to feel a certain way, like it was uplifting, it wasn’t judgmental, it was positive and where their voice mattered, where they can have a voice and that voice is respected in the community. And I realize it’s easier to talk about this than it is in reality to create it. But we believe with technology, we can absolutely create and foster that type of culture in that type of environment where the way you feel, you know, sometimes I’m guilty of it.
I’ll spend 30 minutes in a shot on reels and it’s entertaining and I’ll have a good laugh. But when I leave, I often think, man, that really wasn’t the best use of my time from a productivity standpoint. And sometimes you do have to disconnect and unplug and just, you know, be silly and watch something, dancing cat videos. But more often than not, I often, you know, if I, if I spend too much time on something where there’s not really any value, it’s not helping me be a better person, I kind of feel shallow. And so Parent Playbook is designed to be the antithesis of that, where you touch the technology, you interact with it and you go about your day and you just feel better about who you are.
Terry:
Oh, that’s beautiful. And I think that that takes us beautiful. It’s point number two, that we jumped over, but parenting is emotional. It’s it’s full of, you know, emotions and, you know, point 2 we had here was, you know, learning how to process emotions with confidence. I think, you know, that’s what, you know, Fresh Start Family–we really, you know, found that, you know, whether it’s children processing emotions, whether it’s parents processing, processing emotions and coming together, there was this lack of confidence of, of not having the toolkit to do that. So Bruce, maybe you could layer on to that topic of how this platform would help processing emotions with confidence.
Bruce:
Yeah. This is one of my favorite topics you can ask Phil. We often talk about processing emotions on our team and just, you know, feelings and emotions and you know what a lot of people just, we, well, let me start with this. I was a certified as a life coach through The life Coach School. And this is one of the main things that I really wish I would’ve known when I was younger is just processed like how do you emotions fit into everything? Cause we’re always, we can do four things with our emotions. We can resist, react, avoid, or we can allow it and process those feelings. Right. And because they feel so bad sometimes we’re, we’re kind of stuck in the resist, react and avoid.
And it’s, it’s really interesting. The model that I learned as a life coach is your thoughts. Cause your feelings and your feelings cause your actions and your accidents cause your results. So if you think back to wow, if my thoughts are causing my feelings, but feelings are very, very important part of that, sometimes feelings just come up and you know, we’re just not very used to it. So if you think about relating that to your confidence in parenting, well, let’s just take a step back and look at what, what is confidence like maybe what is the difference between confidence and self-confidence in confidence really is kind of past-looking.
You know, that you can just do something and lots of times you don’t even think about it. You know, confidence, you, you are confident that you know how to brush your teeth and you’re confident that you know how to get dressed. There’s so many things that you’re so confident in. You don’t even think about doing it. But if you look at self-confidence and how it’s related to feelings, if you have self-confidence, it’s more kind of, forward-looking sometimes we’re shy or not wanting to do something because we don’t know how to do it yet. We’ve never done it before. And then we can relate that to parenting because maybe there’s a way of parenting or reacting to our parenting that we just haven’t done before. And it’s new to us because we didn’t learn it from our parents.
But if you look at self-confidence, what self-confidence really is, and lots of times, as I’m coaching people, I would ask them questions to help them discover this. So I’m just kind of saying this to everybody, but if you look at self confidence, it really is our willingness to feel any emotion.
Wendy:
Yup.
Bruce:
You know, you think about that is whoa. If I have self-confidence that I’m, I’m willing to just do anything because I’m willing to feel any emotion and it’s okay to feel any emotion. It’s okay to feel that the negative and the positive emotion life is kind of 50 50 there. So it’s, it’s all really good stuff. But I really liked that distinguish between confidence. Like you’re just, know, you can do it because you’ve done it before. But looking forward to self-confidence is really that it really is. You’re just confident in, Hey, I can feel any emotion. I can feel any feeling. And what is a feeling it’s a vibration in our body. I am willing to feel a vibration in my body so that I can create a better future for myself and in the next generation relating to parenting.
Wendy:
It’s so true because most of us were never taught as young kids, how to process emotions with confidence. Right? And so it’s, it’s a total game changer, right? Like anybody who’s been in this work or studying this work, whether it’s positive parenting or life coaching, it is a total game changer. And so I know I can imagine all of these trusted mentors that come on this platform and the community that shares in this, the same vision of wanting to have this confidence on a daily basis. And then to think that that’s going to be transferred to the next generation, right? Like as it’s like, there’s always these different levels, right? So you got these parents who are learning how to this, and then it’s only then that they can teach their kids how to do that.
Right. So every time you’re triggered 10 times a day, 20, if you have four kids. Right. But you’re going to know that it’s not, you don’t need to panic. It’s not like, you know, you’re not disempowered, your back’s not against the wall. You have choices. You can choose A, B, C, or D different ways to process the emotion and to handle the misbehavior with grace and integrity.
Bruce:
Yeah. The one thing that I did, I really have been doing a lot lately is talking about that with my kids, you know, and sharing with them. It’s okay. It’s okay to have negative emotions. It’s okay to have whatever emotions you’re experiencing. We’re human and it’s okay. Lots of times we just think that it’s not okay. And we try to get our kids to stop crying or stop feeling an emotion because we are feeling that emotion too. And so we also need to just know that it’s okay for us to feel whatever emotion it’s going to pass. We’ve if we allow it into our lives, then it’s going to have less power over us.
Wendy:
It’s so true. And like, let’s take a moment to talk a little bit about the direct messages that we allow into our lives every day. Cause that was part of what we wanted to cover today on, on Six Ways to Become an Empowered Parent is looking at the direct messages that are being let into your mind, body and heart every single day. And I know I, and would you guys agree that when you have a flood of messages of hope and healing and healthy emotion processing and compassion and connection and forgiveness and from kindness often, which every positive parenting educator on the planet or helper of the world, or mom or dad, that’s dedicated to implementing healthy, positive parenting into their family legacy.
But when you have direct all of those messages of hope and all that good stuff on a consistent basis and you take away, which was another one of our points was how important it is to remove activities or input that drain you. But when you just have a constant flow of these healthy messages, how that affects you, right? Like it’s, it’s we, I think we look at like information overload, but it’s because there’s like all different. There’s like the toxic messages that come through through most of the social channels. And yes, there’s a lot of the good healthy messages, a healthy emotion processing, all the things, but it just is very, it’s just a lot. Right. So to think that you’re taking a platform and just having it only bring in the healthy, fulfilling messages that, that lights me up.
And I feel like that’s, that’s got to affect a parent’s ability to stay in an empowered state on a consistent basis. Would you agree?
Bruce:
Yeah, definitely. I’ve experienced this just over the past couple of years, you know, just being more mindful of what is happening and what apps I’m using. And as I’m taking things in, you know, if you think about it, some of the, some of the other apps that we often use, it actually causes disconnection because we don’t have that positive aspect in our lives. You know, it’s not whatever we put in to our minds, right? Like I talked about earlier, whatever thoughts we have, whatever we absorb from whether social media or TV or whatever it’s going to impact, the way that we think about the world, it’s going to impact how we feel about things.
And it will continue to impact our actions and our results. So absolutely if we have more positive information flowing into our lives, that will affect the way that we think feel and act for sure.
Phil:
There was an article on the, on the platform that I had read inside Parent Playbook, Harvard-‘reviewed piece that talked about this explosion of connectivity, leading to personal disconnectedness in families. And we were sitting as a, as a family after a Sunday dinner in the last month. And I was guilty of this. I was one of the participants, but they were four of us as adults sitting on the couch, a foot away from each other, with our phone buried in social media apps, mindlessly scrolling. And yet we were missing the opportunity to be together. And so I was able to take information that I had learned through an article and actually listened to because we have that option to read content or listen to content inside the platform.
And I was able, yeah, people, people love that. So you can listen when you’re on the go, et cetera. But I was able to share what I’ve learned with my family. And we were able to make a connection and it was really meaningful and spend, I think it was a short period of time. It was like 10, 15 minutes, but we started dessert, but we’re able to put our phones down and just connect and be present with each other. And it was something where I thought, wow, this is something that’s gotta become, not the exception, but the rule is this ability to, to come together. And so Parent Playbook’s about giving information to families again. So in the moment as these moments present themselves, you can simply make better decisions.
So you’re able to have connection. It’s all about increasing connection.
Wendy:
Oh, I love this because this is a great example of, I think there’s no denying that these days it’s like something is happening to our brain. I don’t know. What’s I don’t even know what the is going to happen in 50 years, but we are getting less and less. Like we have less and less of an ability to like, just be bored, right? Like if you’re standing in line for a bathroom or like, you’re, you know, I dunno waiting for something like it is becoming constant that we are entertaining ourselves. And it’s just a fact, I don’t care who you are. It is happening. And so when I think about here, you’ve got these smartphones, like they are here to stay. We all are, I think, try to figure out ways to like create boundaries as adults now and teach our children the same.
But when you look at that phone and you have an option to either open Parent Playbook or open Instagram or open Facebook, whatever it is like, just knowing that by spending like five or 10 minutes, while you’re waiting for your lunch to get ready, like you chose to listen to an article or read through a Harvard evidence-based study about how to whatever it was about. And then that night had direct results of how your life was strengthened and improved and, and became richer that evening. It’s just a great example of it would, it would been very easy that day to consume 10 minutes of let’s say Instagram scrolling because it’s easy. And like, for me, just the other day, as I was preparing for this interview, I thought of you guys.
Cause I was like, man, I love to be entertained. And I’m guilt. I’m just as guilty as anyone else. I opened it up and I started looking and sometimes I’m like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. This like, I have my favorite colleagues and mentors on the space that just make me so happy and inspire me. And then I stumble upon some random, like, even if it’s like a really cool reporter, who’s reporting on horrible things that are happening in the world. And I get sucked down a rabbit hole of like, oh my gosh, this is awful. I can’t believe this is happening. Like, ew, oh my gosh, this is crazy. Like, and then your mind starts going to like, well, what could I do to help in this? Because this can’t go on in the world.
And then all of a sudden 10 minutes goes by and you haven’t enriched your life. You haven’t learned anything. You’ve just been so to speak entertained. So I just think like for us to have these options of like, most of us are definitely everyone listening to this show. They like to be educated. They want to be entertained. They want to, they really care about their family legacy and their parenting and being a good kind of human being in this world. And I just love that story Phil. It’s a great example of how, when you have consistent messages of education and inspiration and motivation in your life, I’m telling you, it directly affects you.
Like even me as a teacher in my private membership program, when I teach something every month, we have a different focus. Every month when I teach it, I, I apply it into my life that night. Like, it’s just whatever, whatever you surround yourself with, it, it either, you know, strengthens and improves your life or it just adds chaos and overwhelm. So anyways, that’s all I had to say about that.
Phil:
I, I love, I love that Wendy. I love that you, you realize right? That, that when you share your life experience with others, which is really one of the purposes of Parent Playbook is for people to share their own parenting experiences. It’s not about telling someone what to do, because when you tell someone what to do, whether that’s in person or digitally, you now remove that person’s ability to think for themselves and to have that growth experience. So we really want to foster a community where someone can come in and ask a question of their circle of trust or all the entire community. If they choose to, they get to ask that question and there’s this experience share type of connection that’s taking place.
And I had someone ask, well, what does circle of trust mean? Well, coming back to what I’d said earlier, it’s, it’s going to be someone’s parenting partner. It’s going to be typically siblings we’ve learned and parents of that person or close friends. Think of, if you have a parenting challenge right now, where are you going to turn? Who are the people that you’re going to turn to? Who are the first five people you’re going to turn to? That’s your circle of trust. So it’s very important for us that if we bring you Wendy onto the platform as a parent, that we also make it really easy for you to bring along that circle of trust as well. Because who are you going to want to connect to first? It’s a circle of trust. And so we have to, we, we, we actually, it has a name it’s called atomic networks.
So it’s giving you the ability to create a small micro network of the people that you want to connect with. If they need to be on this journey with you and coming to the platform, parents, we learned want a space. Also that’s dedicated to parenting subjects, and this was an eye-opener for me because I thought to myself, well, why Facebook groups is pretty cool. I belong to some groups, you know, and you’ve got these other tools. You’ve got Pinterest, you’ve got Instagram, you’ve got all these different communication platforms. Why would someone want something else? Parent, after parent answered that question, I didn’t have to. What they said was we want a place again, that’s dedicated, and if I can compartmentalize this part of my life, that’s so important, which is parenting and have one place, one location where I can save content into a playbook for my child, where I can engage in communication with my circle of trust, where when needed, I can engage a professional, the problems that are pressing.
And I can do that in one place. If you’ll give me that, that’s what I want. And we’ve simply listen to what the market has said they want. And, and we have built that. One of the things I’ll just say in conclusion on this point, that I think is important. We, it, didn’t one thing we observed that doesn’t exist. There’s no collective mind, if you will, online on parenting. We’re building, Parent Playbook is becoming, we are building the world’s collective mind on parenting. No one’s ever done this before. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. A place where you can come get evidence-based, the best information that’s customized to you as a parent, we’re not going to give you advice for a 14 year old if you’ve got a problem with an eight year old, right?
We can, we can target the information based on your values, based on your faith traditions, cultural traditions, even socioeconomic considerations, we can target the information. So it becomes relevant. So we’ve had this already where users have come back to us and beta testing and said, and we’ve heard this exact phrase expressed in different ways. Wow. It’s like, you know, my family, wow. It’s like, you know, my child because that’s relevancy. If someone finds information relevant, then guess what it now becomes valuable. And if something becomes valuable, it’s something that you become habituated and you build trust with that brand. And that’s how we help families is really giving information that’s relevant, relatable, and customized to their unique situation.
No one is doing this in the market and it’s technically, it’s a heavy lift. This isn’t easy to build. We just have a team of developers that we consider to be amongst the best in their world, in the world, in their fields, including in artificial intelligence to make all of this work.
Wendy:
Oh, amazing. Well, thank you guys. Seriously. Thank you. You know, thank you for making a stand too with how you’re building this, because this could have very easily been a free for all of like, Hey, any parenting advice like everyone– you know, I hear a lot, like every child is different and no there’s no right or wrong and parenting. And again, I’m just like really inspired and thankful that you’ve taken a stance to, to have evidence based, you know, positive, gentle, connected from a kind parenting strategies be what you are bringing to the world. So thank you so much. You guys, I know that you are working so hard. Your team is incredible. I am so excited to personally be investing in this company.
I believe really deeply in it. And tell listeners just a little bit more as we end this episode about where, where they can find out more information is the app downloadable yet. Like, and I know that there is an opportunity right now to get in and become part of a building of this, this amazing parent empowerment app. So will you just tell us a little bit more about that all as we wrap,
Phil:
You can join the wait list by downloading the app in the app stores today, by the time this podcast goes live, you’ll be able to go to the apple store and the Google store and actually download the app. And what that looks like is you’ll go onto a waiting list and you’re able to reserve your username. Now, as Bruce mentioned, initially, eventually we’ll open it up, but initially it is invite only. So we allow someone who comes onto the platform to invite their circle of trust. And we want to do that just to be able to control our growth and to make sure that the user experience and any tweaks or adjustments that we need to make, we can do it in an environment that isn’t necessarily, you know, measured by hundreds of thousands of users, but by a smaller group.
And then eventually we’ll open it up to everyone. And yes, we are doing a equity backed crowdfunding campaign. We have already have a group of phenomenal investors that have backed us, and I’m talking several dozen that have supported what we’re building. And we had a desire to say, you know, most times when you’re building a tech company, the only participants are people that tend to have, you know, a lot of financial resources to the investors. And they are the ones that win when a company is able to grow over time into something significant. And we wanted a way where we could invite the average mom and pop, if you will, investor that may not have those types of resources to come in and be a part owner in what we’re building.
And that is happening through an equity based crowdfunding campaign that we, by the time this is live, this podcast will be, will be available. And that’s exciting to us. And you can go to parentplaybook.com, our website, and there will be a link to the offering page and all of the details are there, but we wanted to make this opportunity to be a part owner in Parent Playbook. As we build out our brand on a global scale to any level of investor that wants to back us, if our, why resonates with someone, if they say, you know, that’s something I can get behind and just want to support. And I also would love to, to have an opportunity to also be a part owner in it, this is the opportunity to do that.
And this will be limited in terms of the time we can only raise a certain amount and the, the, the offering can only go for a certain period of time, but go to parentplaybook.com and you’ll see a link there to learn more information that details of the offering.
Wendy:
So. Cool. Awesome guys. Yeah. Well, how fun you guys get to know you guys to get to know your hearts, to get to know your why. I mean, I am deeply inspired and grateful again for the work that you’re doing, the hard work that you’re putting into this. And I just think a year, two, three years down the road, how this app is going to be in every parent’s pocket and how every single parent across the planet is going to feel empowered and confident and how the tools that they need to parent with connection and dignity and grace and integrity, and firm kindness and with evidence-based strategies. So thank you guys so much for being here. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to chat with Terry and I, we’re just really grateful for all that you guys are doing, and it’s been really fun.
Phil:
We’ve, we’ve loved it. And thank you for your believing enough in us as well to actually be a backer and an investor in what we’re building. That means a lot to us, your faith in us. So thank you.
Bruce:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having us really appreciate it.
Wendy:
All right, family is about the wrap. I hope you loved today’s episode as much as I loved recording it for you. And if you want to learn more about the Fresh Start Family, Freedom to Be life coaching weekend course, then head on over to freshstartfamilyonline.com/freedomcourse to learn more. We have all the information about pricing, location dates, and you’ll see that we even have a payment plan to make this affordable for everyone who wants to join us. So head on over there and check it out and you can always email me if you have questions, [email protected]. Just remember seats are very, very limited. We only have 20 seats available and we already have a five tickets sold.
So that means we have 15 tickets left, and I want you to be able to join us. So go ahead, go check it out now. freshstartfamilyonline.com/freedomcourse. And I can’t wait to see you there.
For links and more information about everything we talked about in today’s episode head to freshstartfamilyonline.com/136.
Stella:
For more information, go to freshstartfamilyonline.com. Thanks for listening. Families have a great day.
