Sparking Connection with Play-Doh with Theresa Bailey

Entrepreneurship takes resilience. For Theresa Bailey, it also took Play-Doh.

In this episode we sit down with Theresa, founder of Starfish Synergies Inc. and winner of this year’s Export Plan of the Year Award from the World Trade Centre Toronto. She shares how a cancelled contract during the pandemic sparked an unexpected pivot, from team-building workshops to a North American licensing deal with Hasbro.

Theresa talks with World Trade Centre Toronto’s VP Jon Worren about starting a business in a crisis, building emotional intelligence into corporate strategy, and scaling internationally with the help of our Trade Accelerator Program.

Transcript

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From the Toronto Region Board of Trade, this is Toronto Talks. Toronto, let's talk entrepreneurship. The greatest barrier to me moving forward is usually my own brain. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, I've heard other people say it, it's a battle with yourself. there are probably a lot of people intimidated to bring their ideas forward, and I wish that they weren't because they're probably very good ideas. This episode, we sit down with Teresa Bailey, founder of Starfish Synergies Incorporated. Teresa launched her business during the pandemic to help teams connect through hands-on visual learning. She used the help of an unexpected tool, Play-Doh. Since graduating from our Trade Accelerator program, Theresa has expanded her company internationally and recently she was honoured on our stage with the World Trade Centre Toronto's Export Plan of the Year Award. On the day she accepted the award, Theresa sat down with the Vice President of the World Trade Centre Toronto, John Warren, to talk about her company, her exporting journey and what she's learned along the way. Here's their conversation. Thank you very much for joining us, Teresa. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. I'm so interested and intrigued by your business. But before we get into talking about that, I'd love to just hear what inspired the creation of Starfish Synergies. Sure. And I'm going to go way back to the beginning of how I ended up sort of in this space. I initially wanted to be a sports psychologist. So when I left home at 18 to go to University of Ottawa, I was going to be a sports psychologist. And as I finished up my undergrad, I was encouraged by my then thesis advisor to go into do some volunteer work to get me into graduate school, basically. And I cared about the topic, but I ended up working with the Canadian Mental Health Association and going into shelters and talking to people about how they wanted to receive services. So there was a moment where I was 21, 22 years old and sitting across from a young man who had grown up exactly the same way I had. And he was on one side of the table in a shelter and I was on the other. And in that moment, my goal of being a sports psychologist went out the window and I decided to try to understand what helps people thrive. So I started studying resilience and that was my master's thesis in another shelter. So fast forward 15, 20 years later, as I'm now a consultant working in team building, leadership development, and working in this area of helping communities, helping teams, pandemic hits. Cancel, cancel, cancel. Lose all of your income over three days in March 2020. And I went back to my roots and put together a course called Tools for a Resilient Workforce. So I started delivering that. I got asked by Hasbro Canada to do a workshop with their team. Had to be online. Global HR and Global Brand were there. And they asked me to incorporate Play-Doh. So we did that. I had, I don't want to say I didn't know what I was doing. I sort of knew what I was doing, but I had to incorporate a new tool. And after that workshop, they offered me three weeks later an opportunity to develop courses and I negotiated the exclusive North American license and that's how it happened. Oh wow. Yeah. But Plato. Yeah. Like how did that happen? Yeah well it really I had been doing experiential work for a long time which is probably why I was asked to work with them. I've been using different types of tools for the last 15-20 years doing community development and team building. And when you introduce a different method into consultations or strategic planning or training, it gets people thinking differently. And I think, especially during that initial time in 2020, through the early days of COVID, people were really wanting to think differently. It was Hasbro's product. They said, let's go. And so we did. And What is Starfish Synergies and how do you use Playdo now? Well, Starfish Synergies is a training and consulting firm that I actually incorporated in the fall of 2020. So once we decided that this was the route that we were going down. And we offer all sorts of training that we've been testing over the last few years. Team building, adaptive teams, building adaptive teams, adaptive leadership, communication conflict resolution. And a lot of strategic planning. But we incorporate Play-Doh as a way to both deliver messages, but also foster engagement is really what we're doing. It has people connecting in completely different ways. I can imagine it leads to some fun and maybe embarrassing moments for people. I don't know. Well, I hope not too embarrassing. Probably sometimes, but not really. It ends up being a very safe place to have conversations because there's an immediate disarming that happens when you incorporate something that reminds people of childhood. Yeah. And that's really what happens. Yeah, I can see that for sure. Yeah. And that's important in those moments. Yeah. So if I was to hand you a can of Play-Doh, for example, and you were to pop the top off, what would your first reaction be? I mean, you just go to town. You want to try to do something with it. they are as like a dumb piece of something that is malleable. Yeah. And so, but you can express yourself through it. Absolutely. And so it's just very inviting. To me, at least, I feel like, okay, this is an invitation to do something. Right. And try to create something. Yeah. And did you play with it when you were younger? Oh, yeah. Yeah. For sure. So a lot of people will say, they'll smell it. Yeah. And they'll say, this reminds me of childhood or this reminds me of Christmas. Well, I don't know if it's still the case, but it smelled like candy. Yeah. When I was a kid. It does? It still does. Yeah, you're welcome to. I brought it. So you're welcome to smell it. Let's try. You're not welcome to. I have to sometimes warn people not to eat it because they ask me. Oh, yeah, definitely. This is like chewing gum from way back. Right? Yeah. So that is how people feel right out of the bat. It adds an element that other places, when you walk into a boardroom with flip chart paper, maybe doesn't inspire you quite as much. So what is the response you're getting from your clients when you're putting Play-Doh in front of them? Well, it's twofold because sometimes the person who brings me in doesn't tell the room that that's what they're doing. So, and I expect that people walk in and go, Play-Doh? I haven't played with Play-Doh before. And they'll be very skeptical. And then other people will be right into it and can't wait to see what happens next. Usually after the first second activity, everybody's on board with very, very few exceptions. And a lot of companies have told us, you know, I have lots of people have said, you changed our company or you've changed the way we talk with each other. Or, you know, I had no idea that Plato could get us to this place and thinking differently. Amazing. Yeah. What have been some of the most surprising things that you've seen happen as a result of using this medium in your workshops? Well, some of the really interesting things are when people change their methods of operations based on conversations that come out. One of the values or beauty of using this type of method is that everyone has the same airtime. So people who often speak a lot in meetings don't have that opportunity. And some of the most brilliant ideas come from the people who don't speak very often. And sometimes they have really prolific insight on how to make things more efficient or a better culture. And those things are often immediately implemented. So a lot of my clients I work with more than once and I'll go back and see the benefits of what that looks like, whether it's in manufacturing. I work a lot in manufacturing or healthcare. So it's sort of fun to watch it play out. Yeah, amazing. And so when you think about the types of organizations you work with, teams or whole companies, who's the ideal participant in your training? Well, I think it really depends on who is willing to take the challenge or the risk to do something, to have conversations in a different way. So I've worked with C-suite levels of people. Often I will work with cross-sectional or cross-functional teams. I have worked with everyone from waste collectors, which is fascinating because you have no idea how complicated their job is and how much they need to work with teams, to the Department of National Defense communication team. So it really, there are nuances to the type of questions that you ask and the tasks and knowing what the outcome is supposed to be helps us design it. But really it's across. Usually it's the manager or supervisor that says, I've got something going on on my team, so let's bring it in. Yeah. And if you are a participant in this, like two or three takeaways or values that you're getting from having gone through training with Play-Doh, other than greater proficiency with Play-Doh? I think one of the beautiful things that it does is builds empathy among colleagues or people who work together. A lot of times people think that things are done at work a certain way just to irritate someone else or that they are consciously thinking of someone else, which often they aren't. But when you're allowed to have, I call it hitting hard conversations from the side. People don't know they're having them. So a lot of times people will be discussing things that have been underlying culture issues for a long time. But we address it in a way that's quite different. And people end up being a lot more connected and having a lot more empathy for each other. Yeah, it's so interesting that you take the medium like this and allows you to reframe conversations. It really does. Yeah. And so when you think about the situation of the participants, are they coming to you as part of like a broader change effort or a planning process or something like that? Or is it just, oh, we'd like to do some team building. Let's hire Teresa. A little bit of both. I find the most impactful sessions are when people really have an intention to do something that's a bit longer term. So often there will be, we want to have a team building day and we want to do something that's worthwhile. So even within that, we'll try to build something into that day that leaves an action plan for when we leave, which is important. It's a great way to gather information from people like some next steps. But the more impactful sessions are usually when we're back a couple of times. We can take some case studies or problems that are coming up and work through them through a few days. Or it's fantastic for strategic planning. I'm working with Canadian Mental Health Association, Ottawa, on their strategic plan right now. And if you recall, I told the story at the beginning of how that was where I was volunteering. So literally almost three years later, I'm back with their strategic plan using Play-Doh. So fun. Yeah. Engaging with clients, managers, their board of directors. We had a full day retreat. And I think that they've come out with, I think they're very happy with what they've come out with as something very different than what they've had before. Nice. Yeah. That's great. Must be enormously satisfactory for you to see that as well. It's the best. It's like, how could I not enjoy this? I get every session that I do, I get goosebumps out of it. You know, like it's fantastic. There's some revelation. Nice. Yeah. How do you scale a business like this? Well, it is a fascinating journey because that's where a lot of the learning through the TAP program came in to help me with that, really. The goal has always been to take advantage of my license across North America. And really what we had planned on doing initially versus where we're at now is trying to establish ourselves and get some larger clients in the U.S., which we're starting to do. But now we're launching our accredited partner program, which will provide people opportunity to join into our license and deliver it to their clients. So that's really what we're actually soft launching this week and we'll be, you know, rolling out through the summer. So established consultants and trainers will be able to access our methods and our content and take it out to their people. That's exciting. Yeah. Big inflection point for your business. Yes, it is. Yeah. How are you feeling about it so far? Well, if you had asked me in January, January, February, when, you know, we had the chaos of the world upon us and elections provincially and federally, it's that was a time to really reflect on, OK, what happens next? But this became the obvious answer to really jump ahead to what was supposed to be our third phase has become sort of our 2.3 phase. And it's exciting because there's so much interest already. And it's big. It's a big jump. But also, I think we're ready. Our programs are really stellar programs. Nice. I'm excited for you. Thank you. I'm looking forward to following that development. Thank you. So you mentioned you made a reference to TAP and it's our trade accelerator program, which we're very excited about. We're celebrating our 10th anniversary as it happens. And we've trained thousands of businesses across Canada in some of the magic around how do you plan for and how do you execute to run export. So first of all, I'm very curious, like how did you find out about the TAP program? I ended up at the TAP program through PERO, Center for Women's Enterprise. I always mix those words up, but PERO really provided me the opportunity. And I feel like, honestly, I hit the jackpot because as a new, I've had a business for 15 years, but having a business and scaling a business across North America are clearly two very different things. And that's how I ended up there. So it was a group of women and through peril that I ended up at TAP. Nice. Nice. And you went through TAP in the spring of last year is my understanding. So what, 15, 18 months ago? Yes, I believe I submitted my plan around March 2024. Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So talk a little bit about the process of getting to the plan and then what happened after you had the plan. Sure. So I think that for people to understand the value of the Trade Accelerator Program, you have to understand where we're coming from. A lot of us are really looking to figure out how to move into where we know we need to go. And having worked with lots of organizations over the years, the first kind of time you go into them, I always leave thinking, I don't even know. I know I'll have more questions, but I don't even know the right questions to ask you. So when I entered into the TAP program, I thought, here are all the questions I need to be asking. And the very first day, Margaret is a fantastic facilitator. I was so happy to see her again this week. But she took us through that process. So each part of the program that we needed to be able to think about how to enter new markets, we got to walk through it with our colleagues and have people around us who had experience and could help us, whether it was, you know, what is our ideal market? What do we need to think about in terms of taxes or legal? All of those things, IP, risk, those were each components of the TAP program that I was given the right questions to ask and being able to work through that over a few sessions and then having a timeline to actually get the plan in was probably very important. Fair enough. I know as an entrepreneur and I'm a former serial entrepreneur myself, so the to-do list never ends and you tend to focus on the stuff that's right in front of you. So deadlines help maintain focus, I guess. Absolutely. And I think probably you would understand this too. Like I used to work in the corporate world and my PD was all paid for. I felt like this. And so one of the things I realized when I went out on my own is that, oh no, that's me. That's looking after all of those things and trying to IT and, you know, all the things that you take for granted a little bit when you aren't responsible for them yourself. And I've really found that this was a gift to have it laid in front of me and have such quality people supporting me through the process. That's great. How was it to be in a cohort with other female entrepreneurs like yourself? Initially, very intimidating because there were some really established women businesses, quite frankly. And, and I decided to look at it as an opportunity to learn. A lot of them have stayed my close friends that I go to when I have questions. Really valuable process and a great source of referrals to we we send each other information when we need it, we let each other know when things, you know, regular networking things that people do. But it didn't feel like that. It was really building relationships. So it was intimidating, but also fantastic. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. It's one of the things that we try to do in the Trade Accelerator program because it's one thing to give you some content. There's so many ways of getting content these days, including using artificial intelligence. But a network is something that you can have with you and can be part of the journey with you for as long as you really want and can maintain the network. So that's a big part of the value proposition of the TAP. We're finding that. Absolutely. And I have a whole, you know, a keynote and workshop on weak ties. It's not the people you know well, it's the people you barely know that actually offer a lot of the solutions because they have access to different networks than you. And I really have tried to take that perspective through all of these programs. Amazing. Yeah. And so export plan in hand, what happened? Well, I started to implement. I learned, I mean, it's almost ridiculous to admit that I wasn't connected to the Trade Commission service back then. So immediately that became a connection. I went to Denver on a trade mission. I began looking at really digging into the research and starting to move forward on what we wanted to do. I got can export funding that I was usually able to use the export plan as, you know, the foundation. It's basically cut and paste a lot of that stuff right into the application. I would not have known how to do that prior to TAP. And really started to roll to the point we had our best quarter ever coming out of 2024. until that record scratch beginning of January 2025. But we were really rolling. Yeah. Yeah. So just started to implement. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. And any sort of big surprises in your journey to growing or scaling your business, especially outside of the borders? I think it's been interesting to, for me in particular, trying to understand the best entry point. We are in a world where as a weebie, you know, a certified women's business enterprise, we have relied a lot on the supplier diversity opportunities to get access to places. And my primary areas in North America, of course, is Canada and the United States. But all of that has changed a lot. So a lot of the relationships that I was building, a lot of those people don't have jobs anymore. Right? Like, that's the reality of supplier diversity when you're dealing in North America. Or their job has shifted. Or I was asked if I do diversity training without saying the word diversity. You know, like those are sort of the strange things happening in the world. So it's the reality of being able to need to, I don't like the word pivot, but evolve quickly. And really zone in on who the best people and places are has been important really for me in the business. You shouldn't worry about pivoting. My understanding is from reading some research that came out a couple of years ago is that successful entrepreneurs pivot 2.3 times on average. Excellent. So where am I right now? 1.4 maybe? So, yeah. Yeah. So if you pivot too much, it means that you don't have the focus. Yeah. But if you don't pivot, it might mean that there are some trains that leave the station without you. Right. Well, and I think the major thing that happened between leaving and starting to implement our plan was that we just jumped ahead on the plan and decided to go right for the accredited partners, which was, you know, maybe it was the right move all along anyway. Probably it was. So it's good. Just fast forwarded us a little bit. All right. So feeling good about that partnership and that program now? Yeah. Yeah. I signed my second, I had a three-year deal with Hasbro. I've signed my second three-year deal and licensee deal. And so what would be the ideal profile of an accredited partner for you? We are looking for people. Thank you for asking that. We are looking for people who are established trainers and facilitators. So we really care about what this looks like when it's rolled out. and I've seen some programs where people are trying to figure it out and rolling it out and you know it doesn't necessarily go well we want people who have experience in those areas but then we have content that they can use and they can adapt it to their needs so that's what we're looking at and if someone has an area where they think this would work really well and I have an area of expertise we're open to co-developing courses too so experienced trainers and facilitators across North America. Okay. Yeah. All right. I guess, I mean, the success of this, it really needs a person to deliver this program. So finding the right fit is important for you, for the accredited partner program. I think that it's important. I think we're very grounded in our values of inclusion, resilience, adaptation, making people feel welcome. You know, connection and community and connectivity are all the foundations. My graduate degree is community psychology. Everything I do is founded in community. So we are looking for people who are like-minded, who want to join that community and build a community in the places where they're working. Nice. You have used the word resilience a couple of times in this conversation here. It was part of your master's degree, as far as I recall. When the world became a bit tumultuous earlier this year, how did you draw on your own resilience? What was that like for you? That's a good question too, because I think when things first hit, it's easy to panic. And for me, that looks like freezing a bit. And so I think I froze a bit. And resilience to me has two components. It's the ability to bounce back. But it's also the ability to learn from what you've been through before. And I realized I've been here before. I've, you know, things have gone sideways before in 2020, in other times in my life. So I had to think about, okay, what does that look like for me? And we do this resilience exercise where you think about, okay, who are the people you went to? What are the things you did to get your mind off it? What are the action things? What kind of inspiration do you need? And I literally walked through that process for myself and ended up where it was like, all we really need to do is move ahead with our program just a little bit faster in a different way than we thought. Yeah, that's great. I mean, as you said, you froze a bit. And we actually did a survey just a week or two after that because we wanted to try to understand how did all this change and disruption in the trade world, how did it impact our tap graduates? So we rolled out the survey and we could see that people were freezing. Like the survey results showed that. So I'm very interested in this sort of how do you then, because to me, like that could be the beginning of a death spiral. It's really, really dangerous. Most small companies depend on having momentum. And so if you stop and you stop in your tracks and you don't know how to move forward. So what are some of the things that you think that, like if you were giving advice to a fellow entrepreneur on how to sort of get over that freezing, that sort of paralyzed state almost when the world is very chaotic around you and what are some steps that they can take? Well, I think for me, it was starting to ask questions. So once I sort of got over myself and realized that everyone was sort of doing that. So the manufacturers I was working with were freezing because they were waiting. The not for profits that I was working with, everyone was in a freeze hole. Like it was literally there, you know, the two elections put a freeze on things. So it was starting to ask questions again around what do people need? What is it that I need to sort of survive this sort of little bit of a blip that we're in? That's what I told myself it was at the time. And it was. And what do my clients need? What kind of training do you need? What kind of opportunities are there? What training can I take to give me the skills to be able to deliver that? And so for me, it's really asking questions and then finding one small way to move forward, because that provides the momentum you need sometimes for me. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Finding those steps that you can take that it just sort of can give you a little bit of control back, a sense of control, because that's, I think, what a lot of people are looking for. And most entrepreneurs are generally quite action-oriented, but it's debilitating when the world that they used to know doesn't exist anymore. So that's sort of the scary thing. Yeah. But could be an opportunity as well, I suppose. Yeah. And I think I'm sure that you see this on a grander scale than me. I'm sure that you see people looking for the gaps and the solutions. And that's probably when a lot of great new businesses or ideas are launched. I'm sure you've seen that a thousand times. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So we're here today to celebrate you, among other things, as the winner of the export plan of the year. Congratulations. Thank you. It's a great honor. What does that mean to you? That's a tricky one a little bit because for me, personally, the greatest barrier to me moving forward is usually my own brain. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, I've heard other people say it, it's a battle with yourself and trying to constantly reinvent yourself. I have personally, even though I have written a published book and I have been writing for years, I was terrified to hand that plan in because I thought that it wasn't good enough, honestly. And I remember running in the day I handed it in, I was just sort of like, oh, my gosh, I hope it I hope it was okay. And I didn't embarrass myself. And then Margaret was like, no, no, it was it was a good plan. I was like, okay, okay, because I've been given this opportunity. And I really wanted to show up. And I maybe that's a message for people. Every time I've had an opportunity, I've really tried to show up. So it showed me that for me personally that, okay, I showed up in that time. That's great. Fantastic. I'm so happy for you. Thank you. And I really appreciate you joining us here tonight for the celebration and also for the podcast. Before we wrap up, you've had such an interesting journey from your early days wanting to be a sports psychologist to where you are now. What's a piece of advice you can give to other people that go through the TAP program and are thinking about the variety of opportunities and the markets that they could enter? What is one piece of advice that you maybe wish you knew before you started everything? I think that I wish I knew that there's no wrong entry point, first of all. There are probably a lot of people intimidated to bring their ideas forward, and I wish that they weren't because they're probably very good ideas. I am glad that I took it very seriously. And I think there were maybe probably, I'm not going to say in my program, but probably there are people who don't understand what they've been given. But the quality of program and the people around you take advantage of the expertise and take advantage of their very real suggestions and sometimes critical feedback, which can be used as a benefit. And take all of it and just it's a great program. And please use it and they'll help you find the markets you need. They'll give you all the right questions to ask. All right. Yeah. Teresa, thank you very much. My pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us. And congratulations again. I'm now very keen to get on with this Play-Doh here. Excellent. So we're going to wrap up the podcast. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's all for this episode of Toronto Talks. If you'd like to learn more about how the Trade Accelerator Program can support your business, visit our website, bot.com. Oh, and don't forget to get involved with our new campaign. Visit StrongerStartsHere.ca to complete our three-minute business survey. Your voice is critical in helping us advocate for the policies and solutions we need to build a stronger, more prosperous future.