Women in Business: Lyndsey Hall & Kristen Motte of The Bunny Hive
Teachers might alter their career paths, but they will always be teachers. That’s true of Lyndsey Hall and Kristen Motte, who have combined their experience as educators with their passion about motherhood to open The Bunny Hive in Greenville. The space is designed to give infants through preschool ages enrichment classes and activities, while their grownups build community.
The Bunny Hive is a franchise of kid social clubs where families can buy a membership, a class pack, or pay by class.
“Kristen and I go really far back,” Hall says. “We met freshman year of college, and we kind of carried each other as best friends through college at the University of South Carolina, did our student teaching together, supporting each other. I’m from Greenville, so I knew I was coming back up here, and I took Kristen with me.”
The pair taught together at Stone Academy before Hall’s first child was born and Motte left to be a hospital-based teacher. Once the pandemic hit, Hall became “an accidental prolonged stay-at-home mom” and Motte’s job was phased out.
“Since then, we’ve just been dreaming … about working together again, and looking for opportunities outside of going back into the classroom, but still true to our core values as people, which are supporting youth and investing our time in the future with our children and supporting parents who are going through the same things we’re going through,” Hall says. “We feel like The Bunny Hive does all of those things. It’s probably the most central to our core values that we’ve ever felt.”
Hall and her husband Ryan are now parents to Teddy, 5, and Tate, 3. Motte and her husband Jason are parents to their daughter, Sage. The women have navigated college, careers, new parenthood, and now business ownership – all with the rock-solid friendship of chosen family.
“I tell people now we just can’t quit each other,” Motte says.
Motte discovered The Bunny Hive through Instagram. “I reached out to Lyndsey and wouldn’t have wanted to do this with anybody else – and have since learned that I could not have done this with anybody else,” she says. “We are learning so much about small business ownership, while also wearing many different hats, like being a teacher and a social media manager, a marketing manager, an event coordinator.”
More than anything, the two women say their business is about community for a season when it is desperately needed. Motte’s daughter was born in 2021 and they stayed close to home in the wake of the pandemic.
Learn more at thebunnyhive.com/greenville.
