Episode 205: “No” Is Just Feedback | Mindy Scheier | Founder & CEO, Runway of Dreams + Gamut Management
What happens when you stop waiting for change and start leading it yourself? Fashion designer Mindy Scheier thought her path was in high fashion, until her son’s experience with Muscular Dystrophy pushed her to create clothing that works for every body. Now, she’s revolutionizing the fashion industry through two game-changing organizations: Runway of Dreams and Gamut Talent Management. In this episode, Mindy shares how she built a movement for disability inclusion from the ground up. We talk about adaptive fashion, representation in media, parenting, entrepreneurship, and why being underestimated can be your biggest superpower.
“I’m here to change the fashion industry to be inclusive of all people and abilities.”
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters
00:00 Why “no” is just feedback
01:22 Meet Mindy: fashion designer, founder, and mom
03:56 Dreams of becoming the next Betsey Johnson
05:00 How her son inspired a new mission
07:00 The real needs of the disability community
10:15 Rethinking design from the ground up
13:00 The impact of adaptive clothing in daily life
15:00 Breaking into fashion’s mainstream
18:45 The future of inclusion and innovation
20:00 What grit really looks like
23:00 The path to working with Tommy Hilfiger
25:12 13 brands down but we’re not done yet
26:40 “No” as a doorway to curiosity
29:00 New York Fashion Week, the Gamut Seal, and what’s next
34:00 Fashion as a site of empowerment
37:00 Why design + tech = true inclusion
39:00 Mindy’s rituals and boundaries as a founder
42:00 What she needs next and how you can help
44:30 The ramp story: designing for everyone
That no is just feedback. It is absolutely. Feedback on that path is not working and we need to circumvent that and go in a different direction. And when you think about it from that perspective, it absolutely helps on your journey. Yeah. That it's just feedback. It is not a no, it's, that's not the right
way.
That's Mindy Scheier. I'm Kara Duffy, and this is The Powerful Ladies podcast.
Welcome to The Powerful Ladies Podcast. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I am too. As I mentioned to you before we hit record, my team's very excited for some redhead team power today on this episode. But let's tell everyone right away your name, where you are in the world, and what you're up to.
My name is Mindy Scheier.
I am actually based outside of New York City in a place that I'm rebranding called New Vo Say.
Oh, love it.
Regular people called New Jersey, but I'm working on new vo se.
I like it. That's where I was born. I appreciate the the French spin. Thank you. And you have a lot of things on your plate, but let's tell everyone what they should maybe recognize you for and what you definitely want them to know you for.
So I am the founder and CEO of the Runway Dreams Foundation and Gamut Management. Both are solidly focused in the world of disability and helping the fashion entertainment industry understand that people with disabilities are people first.
Which is so incredibly important. I've had the pleasure of having some different models with disabilities on this PO podcast.
Also entrepreneurs and activists, and it is a demographic, a minority demographic that is skipped over so often in conversation. What catapulted you into focusing on disabilities with your businesses and career?
So I am a fashion designer by trade, but I'm also the mom of three children. My middle child, Oliver, was born with a rare form of muscular dystrophy.
So we learned early on that he was really going to struggle with everyday task. One of which is the very thing I love more than anything, and that's getting dressed every day for Oliver's, a daily reminder of what he cannot do, which are buttons and zippers and putting pants over his leg braces, tying his shoes, et cetera.
So it became very clear that. I wanted to take my background in the fashion industry and have a small goal, and I say that very sarcastically of changing the fashion industry to be inclusive of people with disabilities.
Before you pivoted into focusing in this way, what did you imagine your career would look like?
I love that question because I. Was always a very big thinker. And I really thought I was going to be the next Betsy Johnson. I thought I was going to be a global brand. I have the hair for it. I felt like I had the personality for it. But as I'm sure all of your previous guests have mentioned, life generally has its own plan and you just have to be open to receiving it.
You definitely, for everyone who's listening, not watching any of these clips, you definitely have the Betsy Johnson look like. There's no doubt in my mind that you are a creative, coming from the I have 20 years working in fashion and usually sport, fashion, and. It is a very competitive, hungry marketplace.
And even though there are a lot of terms about being environmentally friendly, being inclusive, it's often even if the people who are launching those programs are deeply committed to those issues, it is often not showing up in a big enough space, in my opinion. And I definitely know that this is a concern with people who do have disabilities because.
Fashion and clothing is such a area of self-expression and fun and joy, let alone wanting to show up in a certain way. So people perceive you a certain way. Yes. And. There's so many roadblocks already in this world. If you have disabilities, why should a fashion be another? When you work with people one-on-one and you're hearing their stories, what are some, besides pants over braces and zippers, what else are people of this community telling you that they wish they had or need?
It's a challenging question to answer because they really need everything. It could range from sensory issues that even having exposed seams on the inside of clothing can lead to pretty significant sensory challenges. And even for wheelchair users, it could actually create sews from the rubbing, which can get very serious, very fast. And, it could be, again, everything from. The closures that are used, the ability to make the product adjustable for different limb lengths or missing limbs and really rethinking the way that clothing goes on the body. If you are being dressed.
So there's a big part of the population that's never going to be able to dress themselves and have to be dressed a hundred percent of the time. Time is the key word in that. And really rethinking. It, it's very difficult to dress another human who has no muscle tone. And you have to navigate putting a hole your head through an the neck hole or arms through arm holes.
If we really rethought that and you entered into the top from the back and arms went in first and it closed in the back, that is such an incredible time saver. And in, in the world as somebody that, that really requires assistance all the time. Having more time in their life to do things that they love to do rather than what they have to do is there, you can't put a price on that.
I work with a lot of creative entrepreneurs and so many of the challenges they face is having to do things that are outside of their zone of genius and really outside of what they enjoy doing. Taxes and like CFO things or creating structures for scalability. Where have you as a creative entrepreneur and trailblazer, like where have you decided I'm gonna stay in this lane.
I'm gonna delegate these things because these people need to meet and I have to focus over here.
I love that question because I think that capability came with age and experience, that by the time this beautiful journey came to a head of everything that I had done in my career, including, the path of my personal life, I am very clear of what I am not good at.
And being able to bring in people that. Are wonderful at the things that I am not, or experts in that space, letting that go and knowing that everybody just does a better job in what they're naturally good at or what they love to do, and CFO type of role and or being a, extremely detail oriented spreadsheets, et cetera, is not my strength.
So as soon as I could bring on a chief operating officer, it was the first role that I focused on because I knew that it was going to get us to the goal faster by being really clear on what I am not an expert in.
As you have expanded in this journey, and you've had a lot of great opportunities, including this past week to speak and be on panels.
How? How has your perception of yourself shifted as you've gone from maker to thought leader and face of this movement?
I. I truly wake up feeling lucky every day. Yeah. I love what I do so much and feel so blessed that I get to do the panel discussions that I did this weekend at the NRF, which is the National Retail Federation.
And speaking and. Front of an audience of a couple hundred people. If you asked me to talk about dentistry, I wouldn't have that level of passion experience. It's a very different process when it is your life, when it is everything that you've worked so hard for, and know that. Even if we make this much movement in a day, it's more than we did the day before and it's certainly more than was available 10 years ago.
So I think that my short answer to that is I, my gratitude grows every day. That I get to do this.
Yeah, I think there's so much power in people being in alignment with so many of what fills their soul showing up in their career. Yes. How fulfilling is this? Are these roles you've created for yourself versus what you were doing before?
And how has it surprised you in what it gives back to you?
I'm gonna go with the surprise part of the question first, because again, I really. Always envisioned this very splashy global brand, high level fashion designer for my future. And if you would've told me 10 years ago that this is what. I was going to be doing now, I would've said, I don't know. That doesn't sound quite as engaging or exciting or thought provoking as what I envisioned my role to be. And I love that. I could not have been more wrong. I feel like this. Path that I was put on is everything I could have ever dreamed of and more, and even better than what I dreamed of because we are changing people's lives while they live it.
And that is something that. I can't even put words to it. It's so extraordinary. To be able to confidently say that's what we're, what, that's really the end goal of what we are trying to do. Repeat please. The first part of the
question, just, how have, how is your soul being filled in this role different than you expected?
My soul is filled on a daily basis because it's so personal.
It's a, i it's a beautiful cross section of. My personal experience with disability as well as what the gifts that I am given every day by being a part of other people's disability journeys in this world. And so when you get to really ride the wave of both personal and professional it's a gift.
And for me, I also find it really emotional. Like I, I've, I'm not, I grew up being like, don't cry at work, don't be vulnerable. And now that I'm in this job that I love and I get to help people on a regular basis, I feel like there I am more emotional and I'm crying more than I ever thought I would. But it's not, it's like the good crying.
Yes, absolutely. The good crying, the grateful crying, the, yeah. How lucky we are to you are the, in the same boat to be exposed to such extraordinary people. Yeah. Is so
amazing. I was just speaking to a previous guest about how it's so magical when you can give someone like a 10 moment on a scale of life experiences, and I imagine that there just must be such a.
Like to see the impact in the moment when someone has a piece of clothing that they not only can either put on someone they're taking care of or put on themselves and it works and they feel good and they look good. Explain that moment for people who haven't had the opportunity to be a part of it.
I just had a perfect example of that over the weekend.
So in the panel discussion that we did with leaders from Kohl's and Victoria's Secret Adidas and Billy Footwear, after that part was done, we then brought out models that were wearing the adaptive products. And one of our models has an upper limb difference, and she was wearing a zip up sweatshirt from one of Kohl's tech gear lines.
And when I first showed her the products she shared with me after Ugh, Mindy, how could you have put me in something that has a zipper in it? She should have known me better than that, but. What, when she put it on and realized that it was a magnetic zipper, so at the bottom, you, it basically connects on its own and is very easy for somebody that really only has capability of one arm.
She could not stop talking about it, like she just couldn't believe how fast she was able to put on that sweatshirt.
She
shared also with the audience that on a daily basis, she has to get up at around four o'clock every day because she's the mother of three, and it takes her over an hour to get herself dressed
To get
ready for the day. And then she has to go help get her kids dressed and ready, and that something like this would help on her daily life so much because maybe instead of an hour, it takes 20 minutes for her to get trust because the technology makes it so much easier for her to dress herself.
Have you run into the different vendors and manufacturers and all the people who make up the fashion space? Have you run into them being excited to partner with you on these types of things? Or have you experienced resistance in doing things different than they have been?
I would say it's a very different conversation now, 10 years in than it was when we, for example, first launched with Tommy Hilfiger in 2016.
It really, that was really a huge education curve that I first had to do with the brand to help them understand. That there's 1.8 billion people on our planet with a disability, that it's the largest minority in our world. That there's an estimated $8 trillion that's being left on the table every year by not developing products or services for people with disabilities.
Now that here we are 10 years later and we have Coles in Target and stride, right? Steve Madden, Zappos. Obviously tell me, Hilfiger JC Penney, all in this space. It is a much easier conversation to have and I do stress much easier because it's certainly not easy yet, but to be able to point to other brands and say there are already doing it.
You're a little behind. This is the, this is where fashion is going. This is where the DEI space is going. That it's, and ability is what is going to be the big tagline of years to come.
It makes me proud that Stride writes a part of it. It was one of my first jobs working with them.
Yeah.
Oh, I love that. And actually they were. Really one of the first shoe wear brands to get to hop on board.
Yeah. And I think when you're in a I, I worked in kids product quite a bit and I love it because they appreciate the details so much more than most adults do when you're making things for them.
But I also love that we were always thinking about the usability for parents, as you mentioned, like that caregiver space. If you have a Squiring kid and you gotta put shoes on, it's, I wish more people had to just do that experience once or like. How do you get a kid dressed or undressed in any sort of easy method?
I think that's an opening door for what the whole world that you're working with for manageability gives you access to, because I remember when we were there, it's when the outdoor slides started really kicking off for kids. Because they could just, no. Didn't have to touch him to take their shoes on and off Just going inside the house.
Yes. Let alone for any, ability needs as well. When you think about powerful and ladies, what do those words mean to you separately? And do they change when they're put next to each other? I love that question.
Powerful. And ladies, I have a hard time not making them one word, to be honest with you, because no matter if you are a working woman, not a working woman, a stay-at-home mom, et cetera.
I think in general, sorry, men, but women just by nature are extraordinarily powerful in what we can accomplish in a day. Is, it is just something that is, to me, the definition of powerful, of what we can handle, what we can juggle, what we can create. It's just I feel as though it's just part of our being and the core of who we are as humans.
When you look at your journey, who are some people that have allowed you to step into this new level of greatness that you're experiencing now?
I. I am going to be a little lofty in who I'm going to state that I, to put myself in the same realm as as they, but it's really women that have carved out a new space.
Such as Ellen, such as Oprah. They really focused on a part of our world that a, wasn't spoken about. B wasn't in our mainstream world that a, a gay woman would be, on mainstream television that a black woman would be get so far. In our world also in a mainstream way.
And I think that a trailblazer in a space that has. Not been created yet, which is really where I hope that I was 10 years ago. But it's really factual. And before we partnered with Tommy Hilfiger, there were zero
main
Street brands in the adapted. Space. None. The industry didn't even really know what adaptive meant or was.
There were certainly smaller startup companies that were thinking about that, or specifically for medically focused apparel. But there was nothing in our mainstream world. So I think, carving out a new space. I think those women, truly paved the way of what it's like to do something that's never been done before.
So often people get nervous about going and pitching. A company like Tommy Hilfiger, and we, when we talk about this story in hindsight, it's like, yep, we talked to 'em. They said, yes, go on. How long was that really, was that months of talking to them? Years? Were you trying to, did you already have a connection?
Were you working all your, six degrees to get there? What was that process like to finally get that partner to say yes?
I love that question because it is, I do like to, it certainly wasn't a, we woke up and duh. That process to get to that boardroom probably took a year of truly navigating the system.
We first went through their manufacturers actually and had to convince them that together with me and my team. That we would go to the Tommy team and say, the manufacturers have agreed we are going to show you how to do it. Let's do this together. And even on talking in the manufacturing stage, I think that was a solid five meetings.
Five. Separate meetings that, they kept saying come back when you have this data, come back when you can more clearly show how it's going to work, come back with prototypes. And that process alone took five meetings months apart. And then by the time we got to. Meeting with the Tommy team.
I'm excited to say that part went very fast. So we met with the Tommy team in May of 2015.
And it launched in February of 2016.
Very fast. So that
was really close.
What are you most proud of when you look at your journey, the journey through what you've created, what you've had to learn, overcome, there's so many.
I really see your story as continuing to scale mountains and mountains. Like I don't get the impression that you are. Ever thinking you're at the top of it yet or afraid to keep going. And I think sometimes there's so much grit is required to start organizations and keep expanding them because it's never done.
Like how, what are you proud of? How do you keep going forward and like what, how do you mentally prepare yourself for we're all in and we're gonna figure this out.
You said the magic word and that is grit. It is the most important part of the recipe that, that there is. Look, I'm gonna rephrase my statement because I was about to say there is no time where I'm like, oh, yay.
We did it relaxing. This is an evolution and I do really hope that someday. Maybe not in my lifetime, but we don't have to have these conversations anymore because it is just a part of our mainstream world and it we made it to that level.
Yeah.
Until we get there, it is an evolution. It is a constant climbing, like we have done an amazing job and I'm so proud of where we've come that we, that I can name 13 mainstream brands that are in the adaptive space in a relatively short amount of time.
But 13 brands in the world of fashion. We have a lot of work to do and really, definitely plowing forward on that. But again, even the notion of having product in store, not just online, is another mountain we have to climb. And really understanding what it takes for that to happen.
So the grid is required a. Thick skin is required that, I there and believe me, I am by far not a super human in that there are definitely days that I'm like. Why did I do this to myself? This is so difficult. I thankfully have never said I wanna throw in the towel, but, some days are easier than others and you get knocked down.
But you have got to have that ability to wake up the next day and put on your big girl pants and off we go. And be open to the fact that it, there may be some nos before we get to the yes. But that to me I love this phrase that somebody shared with me that is definitely plays through my head on a regular basis.
That no is just feedback. It is absolutely feedback on that path is not working or that's not the right partner and we need to circumvent that and go in a different. Direction. And when you think about it from that perspective, it absolutely helps on your journey. Yeah. That it's just feedback.
It is not a no, it's, that's not the right way. It's just not the right path.
And I love adding on whenever someone gets a no, I'm like, Ooh, that's time to get curious. Yeah. Why? Like 'cause on my side I'm like, this is an easy yes. What do you mean you're a no? Yeah. And then it's there's so many questions and that's such great feedback because I think we get so caught up in people saying no, as if they're saying no to us as a human.
And it's no, they're saying no to the idea. Like it doesn't make sense in their space yet. Or they don't have capacity for it, or they're overwhelmed or there's just not budget, but like talking, asking them why and being brave enough to. Ask the questions, you're afraid to get answers to shifts, all of it.
'cause I'm sure you've had experiences where somebody said no, and you ask why, and it turns out it was something relatively simple to overcome, like a calendar issue or we don't really know what the next step is. You're like, oh, I know how to do that. So I just, I want more people to know that there's, getting to know is like not a big deal.
Like we, we have to minimize the significance of it.
I couldn't agree more. And I love that you just said that because my daughter is 20 and is in the process of looking for internships this summer. And she has gotten a couple of no's and I absolutely always give her that feedback that you need to email them back and say, thank you, so much for letting me know.
But for my own growth. Can you please let me know why I didn't get the job? Why I didn't get the internship. Because you can build and learn from that. Yes. And as you said, it could be something that she was a little too late to the party or she didn't have enough experience, or she should be doing more of this.
It only helps you grow and learn. Yeah.
Yeah. And then I also think from a leadership side that we need more people to step into knowing that it's coaching that people need. There's, I just did a communication workshop for leaders and everyone gets so stuck on I don't wanna hurt someone's feelings.
And I'm like, yeah, but when you like communicating a critique or a criticism, it's all based on love. If you want someone to get better and improve and you care about them and their path, you have to tell them those things. It's like not telling someone where there's food in their teeth. It's yes. If you don't tell me you don't care.
Exactly. Exactly. And we
say that all the time at Gavin. Please let me know if I have lipstick on my teeth or spinach in my teeth. And that's not fi that's not figuratively. That's in general. Yeah. Did I, did we have a little whoopsie there?
Yeah. And you especially I think as you, we are in roles where we don't have people giving us 360 reviews and we don't have someone checking on us.
It's the leaders who are like, we have to get, encourage people to tell us if I am doing something stupid on this podcast guys, email me. Tell me like, I, I don't want, I want everything that we're doing to be great. And I love that you're in a space of we're going for greatness. We're going for big, we're going for as much as we can do in this lifetime.
So tell me so we can move through these things faster and Oh, question with more grace. There's enough. Nonsense out there. Couldn't
agree more.
When you look at 2023 and what we've got going on this year, what are you excited about and looking forward to?
I'm excited about so many things on both sides.
So from the runway of Dreams perspective, our nonprofit arm, I am so excited that we will be, actually extending our New York Fashion Week event this year in September to make it two days. And we're creating the first of its kind adaptive showcase where all the brands that are on our runway will be able to showcase to the general public the next day.
And that really is something that it's has been very important to me that I feel that the population doesn't. Know the extent of the product that's out there that was made for them. And this will give an opportunity for a kind of true understanding of the brands that are in the space. The product that's in the space.
So I can't wait for that. That's in September 13th and 14th in, in New York City. More to come on that on the gamut side are, consulting and talent management company exclusively for helping brands navigate the adaptive space and for the entertainment industry to have people with disabilities in, in all mediums.
We actually just launched the first of its kind seal of approval. In the adaptive space, it's called the Gamut seal of approval. And it is really the mechanism that the population has been asking for. And it's taken us a couple years, but we did it. And we have found a verification process that product will need to go through in order to be deemed adaptive by people with disability experts in the space.
PTs O. OTs being occupational therapists and physical therapists that, really check all the boxes to say, yes, we approve that this product will work for people with disabilities, and Adidas will be the backpack that we developed with them and gamut, the first adaptive backpack will be the first product that will be launched with the seal of approval on it.
And we have a couple other major brands going through the process right now. And I'm just. So excited that there will be this mechanism that will hopefully allow for so many more products to enter the market.
Yeah, I love that. Do you guys have a color coding or sorting process for that?
Because there's so many different type of adaptive needs? Is there like, okay, yellow is someone who has an arm adaptation. Blue is for this because it's so varied, so I feel like there needs to be some sort of filtering system so I can find what I need.
That probably is one of the reasons why it took so long.
For brands, excuse me, to get into the adaptive space, rather than focusing on the disability, we focus high level on the needs. So something that a person with a limb difference a wheelchair user, somebody with down syndrome based on the ma, massive amounts of research, et cetera that we've done.
There's an overlap. Of what could be done to make it easier for all of them. So it's really a focus on ease of dressing versus. Something that would help somebody with a limb difference. And therefore also the consumer can, based on the piece or the modification that is utilized in the product.
The consumer can make the choice of whether it's this product or that product that would work better for them. So that's really what we focus on. The modification for ease of dressing or utilizing or putting shoes on, et cetera.
Yeah. I was in the airport the other day 'cause I was actually just in New York.
I'm sorry we missed each other. I'll be back. Okay, good. There is a guy who had one limb disability and he was wearing, he looked great, but I noticed, I'm like, what? That's something unique. And he had his pants and this very cool fold and tucked into the pocket with a clip on it. I went so bad.
If I wasn't in line, I would've gone and stalked him because I was like, what did you just do there? I've never seen someone make it look so cool. And it became this thing where I couldn't stop looking at what was he doing? Like how did he make that happen? Because he didn't modify his pants in any way.
He just adapted them to what? Worked for him and it just looked so easy but fun at the same time. Whoever the guy is, please call us 'cause I have questions. There you
go. And next time you Absolutely. I would encourage you if you have time Yeah. To go ask him to be curious about it because.
That is something that the population has said over and over again that they really wish people would just ask. Yeah what is that you're utilizing? Or, how does that work? Or, what is your disability? Or maybe you could explain to me why this blah, blah, blah, blah. But I do wanna focus on that example because people with disabilities are natural.
Innovators. It is really what they have to do to navigate a world that was not made for them, which is exactly why our process it through gamut. The consulting arm is, we really don't work with brands at any step of the value chain without including people with disabilities at every step.
As it, it has to be the end users that are involved in everything from product development, to marketing, to advertising and beyond.
And we, I just had a conversation recently about how it's not just representation, it is letting those people tell their own stories to give their own direct feedback.
Yes. I'm glad, I feel really proud to be part of a generation where everyone is getting space to be represented, even though it'd be great to be faster and more inclusive, but it's there, like it's changing to your point of what models are being used? What actors or actors are being used? Yes.
Who's showing up in campaigns and who's getting different privileges to share. Finally, that not only do they exist, but here's what I care about. Here's how we're the same, we're different. So I feel good about that, and we still have this carryover habit of. You tell me what we need and we'll figure it out.
And it's like, why? Yeah. Can you just create the space? Hold the space for what we don't know. We don't know, but it, there's so much more empowerment, I think, left on the table that I wish more people were approaching in the way that you were.
I do, I agree with you and I do hope that this translates, it just makes the most sense, right?
Let's get the end users involved in how products are developed, and certainly in the world of disability, there is no other way to do it.
No, 'cause we can't even get our head space there if it's not our life.
I'm learning on a daily basis. And it is a constant evolution of really working with the population to.
Make it better, make it even better than it is
now.
Let's make it even more innovative. What's the next iteration of a magnet that's used in the product? What's the next iteration of Velcro? Let's do this.
And it's so fun. Are you guys working with NASA at all for any of the technologies?
Have you? Not yet. Okay. But
we are hoping that, that's on our agenda for 2023.
I love that. So I, what I thought was so cool was when nasa, the team from nasa, they make so many products all day long that the US government and all of US taxpayers are paying for. And they have a team that will go and reach out to private and public brands to say, how can you use this technology?
We've made it like, we should probably recoup it. Yes. What can we do with it? And they have such interesting materials and fasteners and all of these things because being in space is a new adaptive environment. Yeah. And they're doing these things you would never think they're doing. And it's just fascinating.
And most people don't know that whole arm of product development and creation exists there. Yes. And that they are working with others. So I'm excited for when that happens. 'cause it also just adds a level of, the science and tech behind fashion that we also don't talk enough about. Yes.
Which by the way, I am so excited to say we did talk a lot over the weekend at the NRF because technology plus design equals adaptive. That's just like an easy metric right there.
Yeah. You are working in spaces that require a lot of you, you're a mother of three, right? You have all the same things everyone else has.
You've got to figure out your day, your friends, your work. What are you doing for yourself and what are some rituals that you have to keep yourself as best as possible in your most sane, happy place?
A ritual that I forced upon myself is to let go of things that. Really, if it didn't hurt anybody and it didn't affect our life financially anything, then it fell on the back burner.
So now I have released the angst of having dishes in my dish, in my sink overnight. I've released that my beds are not made on a regular basis. The laundry might be a little behind. And that has definitely given me the and I say it jokingly, but it really has helped me so much that who cares is am I doing a tour of my house?
It's okay if it takes me a minute to do all of that. And this. Second thing that I'm, I do try on a regular basis is to carve out, even if it's 10 minutes in the morning before I wake my kids up to meditate, to just have quiet time, to just have that time for me because I, I think it's really important for the.
The sanity and if you have a partner. I am also really trying to carve out time for that too because at least in my world, it, my husband, bless his heart, has, falls a little down the scale. A bit, and I think, having a healthy partnership, marriage, whatever the case may be as well as a, a healthy, happy home is very important.
So I'm trying to carve out space for, things outside of work as well.
We ask everyone on the podcast where you put yourself on the Powerful Lady Scale. If zero is your average everyday human, and 10 is the most powerful person you can imagine, where would you put yourself in that scale today and on average?
That's a good one. That's a good one. I am gonna say answer like this. I think I definitely strive for a 10 every day and I think I'm like that, that, goes up and down and up and down throughout the day. I would say maybe on my best day, maybe I get to an eight. I'd be really happy with that.
And there are days, maybe I fall down to a four. But there, every day I wake up striving to be a 10.
I've been talking to someone recently about being an entrepreneur of any kind and how, what we don't say also is that you commit to the rollercoaster. The difference in doing it yourself versus working for somebody else is that you're in charge of the speed and the course.
It's still gonna go up and down like crazy, but at least you're not being pushed into it like That's right. You're like,
you can
do it.
Yes. I love that and it's a very good analogy.
We have also been asking everyone, because Powerful Ladies is a big connected and heart led community. What do you need for yourself, for your companies, for the community?
What is on your wishlist or to manifest list that we can help trying to figure out a person, a contact a solution for.
Thank you for that. I would say really relationships and building relationships and introductions to brands in the space. On the gamut side, we are really about to go into some investor work.
So if there's anybody that's listening that is interested in a powerful company that is. Solely focused on social good, and also what is a true business opportunity for your company. And on the runway of dream side, certainly for, sponsoring our shows changing people's lives by putting them on the largest runway in the world, which is New York Fashion Week.
So the really, the bottom line is talk about it. I would love to hear from you and understand how we can develop a relationship both on the nonprofit side and the for-profit side.
Amazing. For everyone who now wants to hang out with you, work with you, support you, where can they find you to do any of those things?
They can find me. Both on Runway of Dreams, mindy@runwayofdreams.org and Gamut Management is Mindy, and that's M-I-N-D-Y. At G-A-M-U-T-M-A-N-A-G-E-M-E-N t.com or on the social platforms also.
And we'll have all of that in the show notes for everyone to find all the spellings as well. Perfect. I just want to acknowledge you for the work that you're doing.
It is a brave choice, even if it felt like you had no other choice. 'cause you were like, I just, sometimes we know we just have to go in a direction. And it's a big shift to choose what you're called to do when you feel like you sometimes are leaving what you thought your path would be. Yes, I love the quote.
We must be willing to let go of the life we had planned to have the life that is waiting for us. And I just wanna acknowledge you for choosing what your heart was telling you versus the vision that you had in your head. And, being brave enough to say, I dunno what that looks like, and do it anyway.
And to, on top of that, be giving a voice. And access to so many people who didn't have anyone thinking about them in this capacity before. So thank you for what you're doing. I'm glad you're out there holding up that corner of all the things that we have to, fix and implement in this world. And I look forward to being able to involve you and include you and participate in what you're up to and what powerful it is up to as well.
So grateful. Thank you so much for having me on the show. May I share one last story because I think that this really hits at home for everybody. It's a, it's about a teacher that was in a wheelchair and he went to school and it was snowing a lot that day and he arrived at the front. Of school and the custodian was there shoveling the stairs, and the teacher said to the custodian, could you do me a favor and shovel the ramp so that I can get into school?
And the custodian said, absolutely no problem. Just let me finish the steps and then I'll get right to the ramp. And the teacher said, but if you do the ramp first. Everybody can go into school and that's really exactly what we are saying is that if it works for di people with disabilities, it works for everyone.
That just gave me chills, so thank you for sharing that story. But really thank you for your time today and I can't wait to get everyone's feedback for this amazing episode. Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
All the links to connect with Mindy Runway of Dreams and the Gamut Talent Agency are in our show notes@thepowerfulladies.com. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening. And if you could leave us a rating and review, it so helps for visibility. Come join us on Instagram at Powerful Ladies, and if you're looking to connect directly with me, please visit kara duffy.com or Kara Duffy on Instagram.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, I hope you're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
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Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
