IAM1262 – CEO Cultivates Creativity to every Child through Play Dough

As an early childhood educator and Founder and CEO of The Dough Project, Chelsea Milkman is on a mission to make playtime easy, enriching, and well, fun!

Inspired by the values held at the core of her preschool classroom for 10+ years, Chelsea built The Dough Project on the foundational belief that kid-powered playtime is essential for learning and cultivating creativity—both in the classroom and more importantly, at home.

Using all-natural and plant-based ingredients, The Dough Project encourages process-based play through jars of fresh playdough and DIY Kits complete with all the ingredients you need to bring that classroom magic to life at home.

• CEO Story: A long-time teacher of preschool, over the years she has observed and believed that a lot of development experience in every child while playing the playdough. She made it a mission to help.
• Business Service: Events, classes, birthday parties. They ship dough all over the country and in Canada.
• Secret Sauce: Teaching experience. Tapping and taking care of the emotional side of the child and doing what’s best for the greater good of the classroom.
• CEO Hack: Find time to play every single day (not a video game). It clears your head and makes you more creative. It’s a reset and a reboot for the next day.
• CEO Nugget: Trust yourself and trust the process.
• CEO Defined: Being a person who has a goal, and knows how to figure out how to accomplish the goal. Developing from nothing into something and figuring out how things are done in the most efficient, cost-effective, morale-building way possible.

Website: thedoughproject.com

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Transcription

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00:20 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:47 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Chelsea Milkman of the Dough project. Chelsea, it's great to have you on the show.

00:56 – Chelsea Milkman

Thanks so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.

00:59 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, super excited to have you on as well, too. Before we jump into the interview, I wanted to read a little bit more about Chelsea so you can hear about all the awesome things he's doing. As an early childhood educator and founder and CEO of the Dope Project, Chelsea is on a mission to make playtime easy, enriching, and, well, fun. Inspired by the values held at the core of her preschool classroom for ten-plus years, Chelsea built the DoE project on the foundation belief that kid power playtime is essential for learning and cultivating creativity, both in the classroom and more importantly, at home.

Using all-natural and plant-based ingredients, the dough project encourages process-based play through jars of fresh Play-Doh and DIY kits, complete with all the ingredients you need to bring that classroom magic to life at home. Chelsea, super excited to hear all the awesome things you're doing, all the fun you're having, and helping people to have. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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01:48 – Chelsea Milkman

We do. We have a lot of fun over here.

01:50 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. So let's jump in a little bit before we hear a little bit about all the fun and all the awesome things you're doing. I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO.

02:02 – Chelsea Milkman

Sure. So I was a preschool teacher, like you just said, for a long time. I played Doh probably every week of my ten years as a classroom teacher. I worked with kids who were 2345 years old as well. And we played Doh every single week without fail. And it was by far the most valuable experience, more language development, social skills, problem-solving, and creativity. Everything seemed to happen at my play Doh table, and I believed very strongly that a big part of that was because the kids made it themselves.

And it wasn't just material that I provided for them. It became a sort of ritual in our classroom where the kids would say, this week, we want to make yellow, and others would say, no, green, and we would vote, and we would all come together and find the ingredients. It was just such a special part of really, every classroom I had, regardless of age.

And so when I set out to build a product, the most important thing to me, aside from it being, you know, high-quality ingredients and all of that, was that we had this make-your-own dough, our DIY kit experience. Yes. Ready-made jars are important, and they're great. Play-Doh is an amazing tool, but it's, getting in there and having the kids make their materials for play that inspired the dough project.

03:32 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I love that. And the word that stuck out to me and the word I was thinking, you know, I think even before you said it was experience, because I think, you know, going back to, you know, being able to kind of create everything, just the imagination and all those things I imagine happening. Like, for those children, I think it's something that sometimes we forget about as we get older, but it's such a precious time, and it's something that we need to kind of have within our lives as well, too, in addition to the children that sometimes we're doing it with.

03:59 – Chelsea Milkman

Totally. It was like they were just so amazed. And we did it every week, and it never got old. Ever. Never, ever, ever. Did anyone say, oh, we made Play-Doh last week? They were equally excited to watch, to pour the water, to watch it cook over the stove. They took turns, they argued, and it was just such a beautiful experience every single time.

04:24 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, as you kind of spoke to, the opportunity to get, to develop and make it your own, is one of those really beautiful things. And, you know, the people that are listening to this, the entrepreneurs, the CEO, and business owners, a lot of times you're creating your pathway, and it sounds like much of the same experience. And sometimes we're using different dough and different play Doh that we're using, but at the same time, it's creating and kind of, you know, seeing a vision for life and business and so many things in your way and get to reproduce it.

04:53 – Chelsea Milkman

Yeah, there's something pretty awesome about creating something from nothing. And I think that the kids appreciate that and get that. And as an entrepreneur, that has been, like, the coolest part for me is that this didn't exist and now it exists.

05:08 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear what does exist, what have you been able to create? How does it make an impact, and how do you serve the clients you work with?

05:17 – Chelsea Milkman

Sure. So we originally started doing events and classes and birthday parties. As a teacher, that was my comfort zone, was working with kids. We started making dough and party favors and all of these things out of my little tiny apartment in New York City. And we are now a full com brand. We are shipping dough all over the country, and we are now in also Nordstrom locations across the country as well. We have a team. We are making families happy and playing all over the place, and actually in Canada as well. So super proud of how far we've come in a short time.

06:02 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I imagine that the pandemic probably has something to do with that. Doing that conversion into that little pivot, we took just a little bit.

06:12 – Chelsea Milkman

It's funny because it was something that I had wanted to do beforehand. And I, you know, when you're starting as something you sort of, like, you follow wherever the customers are and wherever your comfort zone is. And again, as a teacher, that's where mine was, and also that's where families saw my strengths. So they wanted me to come to the parties, and they wanted us to teach the kids and do all of this stuff. And then I had no choice.

All of our events got canceled overnight, and we still needed to get our mission to as many families as we could and get our play out there. And it turned out to be a total blessing for us because we were able to reach way more families, and way more kids in way more places than we ever could by doing birthday parties in the city.

06:59 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I love everything that you've been able to build and create. And there's so many parallels to business, and when you think about, okay, well, maybe you don't have enough water for your dough, so you have to get creative about how you're going to create something. A lot of times during that pandemic period, which we're still kind of going through, you have to be creative and you have to look innovatively at different solutions to be able to still, at the end of the day, solve your mission.

07:26 – Chelsea Milkman

Totally. And that's been my, honestly, that's my favorite part of being a CEO and a leader is coming up with the hard problems, coming up to them, and figuring them out. Right. That's so much about being a teacher. There are so many parallels between leading a classroom and leading a company that for me, even though I had absolutely no business training at all whatsoever, it sort of comes very naturally to me because as a classroom teacher, you're just putting out fires and coming up with solutions and making plans to hit your goals for each kid in your class.

And that's what we do as leaders. Right. We're helping our team reach their potential to hit the goals that we set. And it's when the problems come. I don't know if you remember earlier in the pandemic, there was a huge flower shortage. You couldn't get flour, and we were like, well, we can't make dough without flour. So my husband's in the restaurant business.

We ended up going to the kitchens and finding flour from there schlepping it back to our factory and carrying 50-pound bags of flour to where we were going. And it was just like, this is what it's all about. The nitty gritty scrappiness of being in business.

08:34 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. You know, that figure-out ability, if that's even a word. I'm not just going to make it a word, but a lot of times, you can't teach that, even if you have all the business experience in the world. Like, there's going be, you know, pivots that you have to make. There's going to be things that you have to, like, find a new, innovative solution for. So to be able to do that like you do in the classroom is remarkable. So would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? And it could be for yourself personally, the business, or a combination of both. But is it that ability to sometimes find a way out of no way that you feel like sets you apart and make sure you do?

09:06 – Chelsea Milkman

Totally. I think that my teaching experience is my secret sauce. There's something pretty, pretty cool about leading a room of 15 to 22 and three-year-olds and having that go relatively smoothly. After you can do that and get 15 two-year-olds to take a nap at the same time or get all of their diapers changed in 20 minutes, you can pretty much figure out a way out of any problem.

And I think that that that ability to sort of. There's a really big emotional piece that comes with teaching, and you're dealing with two-year-olds are humans right, with big feelings and a lot of feelings and having all those different personalities and being able to tap into that person at the same time as doing what's best for the greater good of the classroom, I think directly correlates to running a business where we're tapping into the needs of our employees and our team.

And I digging into the emotional component of having a job and, you know, a company and then at the same time meeting the goals of the bigger picture.

10:21 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate your sharing. And of course, being able to kind of do that as well, too. I used to go to preschools, and I would run sports camps at preschools. So I always said, you know, I always had much respect for all the teachers that were there because I used to rotate to different ones. But I said it was always awesome to have a classroom of kids. And if you had two kids go opposite ways, then that just could throw off the entire class.

10:43 – Chelsea Milkman

You could throw off everything.

10:45 – Gresham Harkless

So I appreciate you for doing that and reminding us of how important that is in the work that we do.

10:50 – Chelsea Milkman

Yeah, teachers are pretty special.

10:53 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app or book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:06 – Chelsea Milkman

So very on brand for me, I would say I find time to play every single day, whether or not that's playing with the jar of dough that is on my desk at all times or throwing the ball for my dog every day in the park. I think that playing is something that gets eliminated from adults' day. And it's such a pity and such a shame because when you take a break from your screen you're.

And not playing a video game, like playing, using my hands, clears my head, it centers me. After a tough call or a tough anything, I'll just walk away and I'll get my dough and I'll try to be creative for a few minutes. And that, by far, is the only thing that can sort of reset me and reboot for the next part of my day.

11:57 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I love that. And, you know, there's so much, I guess, you know, data and information that's coming out about the benefits of taking time out to rest, to play, to do all of those things that we kind of got away from, you know, as we started to go throughout our lives. And you even see it in kind of schools as well, too, where a lot of times the play is taken away so that you can just focus on the academic rigors.

But a lot of the creativity that we need to create those solutions to be able to make sure that we're in peace as well, too, comes from stepping away. So I love that hack because it's something that we can sometimes forget in the hustle and bustle of the day to day life.

12:32 – Chelsea Milkman

Totally. And it's so important and meditating and all of the apps and all of the amazing things out there are also incredible tools to practice mindfulness in your day. But good old-fashioned play goes a long way.

12:46 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. Something we definitely can't forget. So I love that you obviously create something and of course, practice what you preach as well, too. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell you.

13:04 – Chelsea Milkman

Younger business self, well, I was, like I said, not in business as my younger self. And I would just say, trust yourself and trust the process, because you know a lot more than you think you know. And if someone told me I would be running a business, an EcoM company with a huge team and, you know, shipping product and negotiating shipping rates and all of these things that I'm doing that I never in a million years thought I would be doing, a. I would have said, no way. I don't know how to do that.

And to just value the skills and the experience that you develop along the way and realize that with a little finessing, you can apply them to anything you set your mind to and what you want to do, no, experience is not valuable to that. And you can, if you have a goal and you have a dream, trust that you can figure out how to accomplish it.

13:56 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEO's on this show. So, Chelsea, what does being a CEO mean to you? Hmm.

14:06 – Chelsea Milkman

I love that question. For me, being a CEO is very tied into being a founder at this point, and being a. Being a person who has a goal and as we said, a figure outer, being able to figure out how to accomplish that goal, whether it's rallying the team, rallying the troops, building morale, all the nitty-gritty of the actual business and all the different departments and all of the different things that go on in your day is critical to being a CEO.

But the crux of it for me is, like we said, developing something from nothing and figuring out how to get things done in the most efficient, cost-effective, morale-building way possible. So for me, that's what it's all about, ultimately being a figure outer.

14:57 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Chelsea, truly appreciate that definition. And I course I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do now is pat the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

15:13 – Chelsea Milkman

Absolutely. Well, you can find us at the project.com. We are shipping as quickly as we possibly can to meet all of the holiday demand right now. But doproject.com, reach out to us on the Instagram hero project. You can find us in Nordstrom stores. Check us out. And I hope everybody is just finding lots of ways to bring play into their homes.

15:37 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I truly appreciate that, Chelsea. We will have the links and information in the show notes too, so that everybody can get a hold of you and get in contact. But I love everything that you've been able to build and that you're helping people to do. I think one of the things that I truly believe about leadership and people that are making our impact just doing it for themselves, but they're also teaching people how to fish, so to speak, teaching them how to do it themselves.

And I love everything you created because I think it kind of recalls those things and that creativity that we need now in the present, but also in the future. So thank you so much for building everything and hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:09 – Chelsea Milkman

Thank you so much. Fresh. Same to you.

16:12 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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