This week's Quest for New Inspiration is answered by Theresa Bailey of Starfish Synergies Inc. Theresa attributes her success in all areas to the belief that real change happens when you tap into your intuition and surround yourself with a trustworthy and talented team. Theresa is motivated when others grow as individuals, which is why sharing her experiential methods with teams around the world is the opportunity of a lifetime. Theresa is the exclusive provider of Play-Doh Power Solutions, corporate training, that focuses on building team cohesion, adaptability, and innovation.
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of the quest for new inspiration. My name is Katie Maschler.
For the final episode of season one, I got to sit down with Theresa Bailey. She is the executive provider of Plato power solutions in corporate training. That focuses on building team cohesion adaptability and innovation. I really loved our conversation because she gave an excellent explanation of collaborating inspiration and creativity into one activity that could really be of use to numerous different companies i hope she inspires you as much as she's inspired me
Theresa Bailey: My name's Theresa Bailey and I'm a lot of things, but right now I am the exclusive provider of Play-Doh power solutions workshops across north America. And it's [00:01:00] been quite a journey to get there. It's not where I started or where I thought I would end up. As a small town girl growing up in central Ontario, Canada, and I think that it's been an evolution and just being open to opportunities and following intuition that have led me to this great opportunity to providing corporate training using Plato compound and Play-Doh kids and being the only one who's able to do it at this point, um, has, has, it's what I'm doing now.
It's sort of evolved over time.
Kt Maschler: Do you want to explain a little bit more about what, um, Plato power solution is and how that kind of interacts
Theresa Bailey: with people? Sure. I think that it's important to explain a little bit about where it came from. So. I've been doing corporate training for years for my, the last 20 years, really.
And my whole goal has [00:02:00] been always to find people, find a way to help people in teams be the best version of themselves that they can be. So, 20 years ago, I started doing research in mental health and resilience back then we called it protective factors. And there was a moment when I was doing actually some volunteer.
When I was in my early twenties, I'm just trying to get some experience in doing my undergraduate degree and ended up working in a shelter, doing research with homeless people and trying to understand how they like to receive services. So sitting across the table from a young man who was only two weeks younger than I was, and he was sitting there and I had this realization that.
We had grown up in pretty similar circumstances. He was. Wholeness and I was not. So what is it that leads some people to do well versus not do well? What had led us down these different paths and I had wanted to be a sports [00:03:00] psychologist at that point. And it was that moment when I decided I, I couldn't do that.
I had to start taking this other path. And so I ended up doing a lot more research and a lot more work with people who were homeless. And when I, I went into community psychology, which is. Trying to understand how communities thrive and how people thrive within communities. And, uh, I ended up doing this thesis in a young women's emergency shelter to try to understand what helped people thrive coming out of the shelter versus not do well.
And back then we talked about risk and success factors. And now we, we talked about protective factors. Now we know it was resilience. So that's what I was looking at. So when the pandemic. And I was self-employed and doing corporate training, lost all my business because you're no longer doing anything in person.
I went back to how do people, what is it that people need to do well, versus not? [00:04:00] Well, and I thought I've been studying this for 20 years. Starting back when I was doing that research, this was sort of what I was made to do. And started developing these workshops called tools for resilient workforce, which is what I started selling in, allowed me to not lose my home during the pandemic.
And at the same time, I had someone reach out to me from 20 years ago, asking me to do a workshop with Hasbro marketing team and around resilience and risk team. And I put it together because we did it virtually instead of in person, because no one was doing in-person things back then there were people from all over north America attending and I showed up and I delivered it and it led a couple months later to this offer to develop Plato power solutions, which is very focused on resilience, on adaptability, on team cohesion.
So all of that happened over the pandemic from out of the.
Kt Maschler: Wow. That's so [00:05:00] much to impact. I did not know about your research with like the homeless as background. I loved, loved, loved my community psychology class. That was one of my definite favorite classes throughout college, and one of my passions to continue and support around the Kansas city community.
So I love that. Do you still do anything like actively in your community to help us like homelessness?
Theresa Bailey: Well, it's taken a bit of a, uh, it's a diff a bit of a different angle, but it's still all around those, those risk factors. And we've learned a lot over 20 years.
I love that you had a community psychology class because back then 20 years ago, People would still ask you what it was, what does community psychology? They didn't really know. And you probably know that it came out of the deinstitutionalization age when mental health facilities and psychiatric hospitals were being shut down and people were being released into the community [00:06:00] with serious, mental health issues.
And, and they really didn't have any supports to help them. So that's where it started. And I still do a lot of work in that area. Actually, one of my. So I do projects and I do corporate training. And one of my projects is with youth who have grown up in care. So in group care or in foster care, and we don't know a lot about a lot of us don't know.
They didn't end up there because they did anything wrong. They ended up there because their parents were unable to look after them. So we have this idea of bad kids in group homes or bad kids in foster homes, but actually they have just, um, sort of had a rough goal and. A lot of the work I do now was with community agencies trying to support these youth.
Who've had this rough goal and who have all the stigma around them. They end up with more criminal records. They end up with lower high school graduation rates and working with community agencies to try to support them from a trauma informed [00:07:00] perspective, rather than seeing those bad kids, seeing them as incredibly resilient.
Youth who have felt been able to get through a lot of things that a lot of us wouldn't have been able to get through himself. That's some of the work I'm still doing now. I
love
Kt Maschler: that. That's awesome. .
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Kt Maschler: So where do you kind of go when you're kind of lacking inspiration to be resilient all the time? As you've mentioned a couple of times?
Theresa Bailey: Well, I think that it goes [00:09:00] back to a lot of the things. That we know are good for us. I'm a big believer in meditation. I meditate every morning and exercise helps me to stay resilient, making sure that I have time to reflect and prepare for each day. If I'm delivering a workshop, I wouldn't do it without first mentally preparing by meditating in the morning.
And I have pretty strict routine that I stick to to sort of keep me on track. And I think that, um, as you get older, you start losing a lot of the things that you knew as a child or as a youth, even the made you feel good. And, and it's trying to get back to some of those things, because even when you're older, you're going to need the same things to help you get through some of those tough.
Kt Maschler: Is there, so you've mentioned partnering with Hasbro's. How do you exactly combine inspiration and resiliency with Play-Doh? Can you tell me about.
Theresa Bailey: Yeah, [00:10:00] I'm a researcher. Uh, I can tell you a little bit about the it's. It's hard to explain experience and experience when you haven't experienced it.
Right? So that's the challenge of talking about Plato power solutions, but I can tell you that everything we do is research-based and it's very built on being able to access those feelings that you had in childhood that allowed people to be really. And I'm sure that you have seen or felt in yourself that as you go into school, you have rules around how you're supposed to talk and behave.
And when you can speak and how you can speak in and rules around how you're supposed to write your essay and whatever that is. And as you get into the workforce and you get older, those constraints become more and more. So using Play-Doh kits that we mail out to people or that if we're in personally.
Allows people to. Use both sides of the brains by using both of their hands because the [00:11:00] left brain operates rates here and demand, right. Brain operates left-hand we use all of the sentence. It's multi-sensory so Plato compound has it unique smell where we use sound. We use music, we use our hands, we use touch.
We use all of the different senses to talk about important concepts sex. So in the team cohesion. Workshop, for example, we're talking about how we're working together as a team, but we're using all of our senses to do that by going through a series of activities, or if we're using, um, if we're talking about adaptability and improve your adaptability quotient and being resilient, then we talked about some of the content.
And, and discuss some of the concepts that are really important, to resilient people. And we do that using all of the senses so that you actually remember it, and you actually express your thoughts in a very different way than you would if you were just talking about it.
Kt Maschler: That's so cool. That would be right up my alley.
Oh my gosh.
Theresa Bailey: That's amazing. Yeah. It's super fun. People love it. And, [00:12:00] um, a lot of people who. You know, senior corporate people at first. So thinking this seems a little strange, but. We're at a hundred percent of people would recommend the course to a friend. That's we're still at a hundred percent. So everyone who takes our course things that was worthwhile and would recommend it to someone else.
Wow. That's
Kt Maschler: incredible. Well, I don't want to take up too much of your time. So, any last piece of advice that you kind of have for any young entrepreneurs or Anybody in the age of like 25, just 13, that kind of range.
Theresa Bailey: I think that you have to stay open to the possibilities. I think it's very difficult right now for younger people to know what they want to do because the world is changing so quickly. How do you even know that it's going to be there? And my advice would be. To always stay open and [00:13:00] keep your opportunities open and stay open to experiences and really build relationships.
When, when we talk about networking, networking is so important, but it's not superficial networking. That's important. It's being a good person and having meaningful conversations. That's important. My connection with Hasbro was because I was a good person and made a friendship 20 years ago. And he remembered me and knew that I was quality, you know?
And though you never know when something's going to pay off, you have to be patient and go for it and stay open to possibilities. That's my, that's my advice.
Kt Maschler: Yeah. Perfect. Well, if anybody wanted to bring in the Plato power solution to their office or learn more about you, where could
Theresa Bailey: they find. They could find me on LinkedIn, Teresa Bailey.
They could find our [00:14:00] website@starfishsynergies.com. They could email me as well@teresadotbaileyatstarfishsynergies.com. Happy to talk to anyone.
Kt Maschler: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for your time today.
Theresa Bailey: Thank you very much for having
and that is it for this week's episode. Thank you guys so much for tuning in it truly does mean the world to me. If you guys want to show your support, please rate, subscribe and review. It really does help small podcasts like me.
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