Welcome to the Radiant Soul Sisters Podcast!

Episode #1

Today my guest is Risa Kostis, Founder of Ristyle and CEO and Co-Founder of the Rescue Kit Company.

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If you want to read the transcript, check it out below:

Susan

Hello everyone. I am here with Risa Kostis, and I am so excited about sharing what she does with you and who she is. But I would really love for Risa to tell you what her golden nugget is for living a fulfilled life while creating work life harmony. 

Risa  

Hi, everyone. I’m so glad to be here. For me. It’s all about setting boundaries. If I learn what to say yes to and what to say no to, I start to realize that my calendar can be cleared, my mind can be cleared and I can really focus on the things that mean something to me and that will help me get the job done in order for me to live a fulfilled life. I can’t have things that are cluttering me. So for me it’s saying yes to the right things that are heck yes. And saying no to the things that are an absolute no way. And that way I can just create the space clear the path and live my most fulfilled life. 

Susan

Oh my goodness, Risa. That is an amazing tip. And saying no sometimes is easier than saying yes to the right things. I love that saying yes to the right things. Thank you for sharing that golden nugget with us today Risa and I hope you have a great day. Okay, so now we’re gonna go into the full podcast, so I’ll just go ahead and get started. Yeah, here we go. If you’re craving time, energy and capacity to put yourself first run your business and have a fulfilled life, you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to the radiant sisters soul pot. Shucks, I gotta start one more time. Sorry. That’s okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. Here we go. Like life is all about like second takes third take bloopers right yeah, bloopers are good. All right, here we go. If you’re craving the time, energy and capacity to put yourself first run your business and live a fulfilled life, you have come to the right place. Welcome to the radiant soul sisters podcast. I’m your host speaker supporter and fellow soul sister Susan crews, and this is your space to shine. If you want to hear from busy inspiring women who are already thriving in their life and constantly working to create harmony in their work life, space, we’re here for you. Today. I’m super excited because I have a guest who is already working to fulfill her potential while creating that work life harmony, and Risa. I am so glad you are here. Risa Why don’t you tell us a little bit about you? 

Risa  

Yeah, where do I start? Well, I’m currently working as a wardrobe stylist and personal shopper in my own business Restyle Consulting. I’ve been doing that for almost the last 10 years. I’m about to have my 10 year anniversary in January. So that’s crazy and wild and exciting. I also am a product developer so from my work in retail consulting, and my work with brides and styling them on their wedding days and just being on set for hundreds of photoshoots I would carry around this professional kit with me and ended up saving the day on more than one occasion and sewing people into their clothing or fixing broken straps or removing stains and I quickly realized after I had to sew bride in her dress on her wedding day right before her first look that I needed to take my professional kit and bring it to market for consumers. So I developed the Rescue Kit Company a few years ago, right before COVID hit of course, what lucky timing. And my sister is my business partner on that journey. So rescue kit is also my baby. And I do a little consulting on the side and I’m not sharing too much about some other projects right now. But you might start to see me in other capacities here in the near future.

Susan  

Oh, that sounds super exciting. You know, you know Risa when you talk about your kit, I chuckled to myself because oh my oldest daughter’s wedding day I had to be sewed into my mother the bride dress. Yes. As my mom was zipping my zipper she caught fabric in there and then it got caught and here we go. We had to cut it and thank goodness I did have what I needed to sew me in. However, if I only had a rescue kit, because I had had to go to like all these different places prior to the wedding to have a basket where we had needle and thread and we had band aids and we had all these things that I know are in this great kit that you’ve got, I could have had it in this cool little package that you have. So I’m super excited about that and I love that. That this is one of the great things that you are doing and you know I make up it’s not just for brides that yes, we need it for brides. But as I’m getting out and speaking in more places, and like when I was recording some television shows, I was like oh, if a zipper breaks or a button pops off, I had no way to fix it. 

Risa  

You’re 100% right. You’re sitting here like singing and singing to my soul right now because that’s exactly what it was is you know you can’t just like, first of all, nobody has time. Time is money. Time can you know, you can’t buy it back on the wedding day. And who wants to even leave the site first of all, especially if you’re on a destination wedding, or you’re on stage on a cruise ship, you can’t run to target. We wanted to think of everything that you would need on the wedding day and bring it to you all in one bag. Used to be a box now it’s a bag which is a lot more carry friendly, user friendly, travel friendly. You know you can’t find these things and some of them are professional tools or things that you wouldn’t even know that you needed and I really wanted to put my brain in a bag and just have it available to people and give them the tools and empower them to solve their own problems. Because we all want to be our own hero. We don’t want to have to look to somebody else. If you’re a control freak like me. You’re like oh, there’s a problem I must solve it. I don’t want like the wedding planner to solve it. I want to solve it right here right now. I don’t want to have to like Wonder where the wedding planner is right now or wondering if the photographer knows how to thread a needle, right? That’s inconvenient. That’s not efficient to me. So bringing everything from the Targets, the Amazons, like all the places where you would normally find things, bring it all into one product and give your consumer something that they didn’t even know they needed. 

Susan

Absolutely, absolutely. So Risa, can you tell us what is one of the biggest lessons you have learned about yourself as an entrepreneur?

Risa

About myself? Well, I mean, I have learned that people pleasing and, keeping a bigger circle can be very detrimental to your life as just a person out there trying to make it in the world, but also as a business owner, and for so long. Most of my life was spent doing what I thought people wanted me to do, being who I thought people wanted me to be and it held me back from so much that I wanted to do in the professional world and in my personal life. So I’ve learned that keeping your circle small. Keeping your dreams tall. I always say. Keeping your dreams tall but like also keep them really close to the chest. So you know I think when you think about like wanting to be liked by people and accepted by people, we’re inundated with social media and all of these ways for people to accept us into their lives, right? Like, we search for that when we’re younger and we search for that in our young 20s 30s Even sometimes in your 40s I just turned 40 And I’m still doing the work on that. There’s all these ways to let people in. But now that I’ve been doing the work on myself, and I’ve started to realize that like my ideas are worthy of like keeping close to the chest. Yeah, I’ve realized that I don’t even want those outlets in my life. I don’t even want to be that present on social media. I have it as a business tool. I have Facebook as a business tool. I have Instagram so I can stay connected to my mentors and the people that I think are doing wonderful things that I want to cheer on. Right. But keeping my circle small is a huge lesson that I’ve learned in my life, especially as a business owner.

Susan

Exactly. You know, I think it’s so important when we surround ourselves by the right people, you know, and because they’re the ones that inspire us and motivate us and keep us going and help us to reach our goals I think you know, we met through build your life resume community and then we met socially and then we met live in person at at our driveway to hell could have been driven, but it dropped. I told somebody we didn’t do just 13.4 miles. We really did like 60 miles that day because we had to walk up to start the race right. And then we had walked back down after the race but anyway, you know, I think we have learned through that community, as well as other places in our life, that it’s just so important to have these positive people around you. 

Risa  

Another lesson, speaking of positive people is just to have a mentor and to have people that you look up to that live a life that you want to emulate, you know. I found Jessie or the way that I found Jesse was through Sarah stories. I was watching her stories because I want to emulate a career like hers, but I also want to emulate the way that she lives her life and gives back. I truly believe that when you are giving back you are the most successful in your life. But I found him through her I didn’t know who he was before. And I think a lot of people discovered him in that way or in their own way. Really realizing that his life choices and his life goals and his dreams and his passions for people and helping and speaking and engaging and cold calling for friends because I am known to do that as well. I wanted to live a life like that and I chose him specifically. I have my pick of the litter. I’m in a community full of mentors in Arizona, their everywhere. And I have great friends who are doing wonderful things. I think it’s really important to align yourself with the right people. And that doesn’t mean just your circle of immediate friends. It means that people that you look up to because if they’ve done it and they’ve done it well and they have a proven track record of living an amazing and rich fulfilled life and successful, meaning they give back. They do great things for the community. They mentor people because they have the experience and they want to and they care enough to not even worry about the money or anything else. They just really care about making the world a better place like you can pick those people out of a crowd. 

Susan  

So you know, I know you work hard. I know you play hard. I know you give hard if you want to say that. I know you do a lot of volunteer work. So what are the things that you do to live in work life harmony? 

Risa  

Um, well, I mean, one of the things we talked about setting boundaries, setting boundaries is something it goes beyond just saying yes or saying no. For me, it’s all areas of your life like really it comes down to how you’re spending your time who you’re choosing. It’s really the foundation for how I have any kind of harmony in my life, right? For me, harmony is hard. I’m a business owner times two, right? I’m a single woman with no, like internal support system. Nobody is in my home with me, right? Except my dog but He’s not taking out the trash. No, I’m solo so when I need something to get done, it’s on me. I have to schedule my day and I have to make lists and I have to set boundaries and tell people no all day every day and I’m have to make huge sacrifices in order for me to live an enriched fulfilled harmonious life. And I don’t think that that’s something that people really like train you on or tell you. You just have to discover that for yourself. Like, how am I going to live happily and harmoniously when there’s nobody here to like bounce things off of or ask questions of like, oh gosh, should I spend an hour on this or, you know, how you can just have those conversations with people who live in your space if you’re married or if you have a roommate or I don’t know if you just have somebody like in your vicinity all day everyday maybe a part time assistant that comes to work in your house.  

I don’t have that. So I really have to like Choose wisely and set boundaries. So that’s like the number one way that I live harmoniously, because work is my life. Right? A lot of solopreneurs probably feel me on that. If you’re by yourself and you built something entirely by yourself and you’re still doing it a decade in, like I see you. And people would say to me like you really need to go out and live your life or you really need to go date and you know, go to dinners and go to the bar somewhere and meet someone. To me that isn’t really what I’m looking for right now, I dated for years. I have done it al. But, you know, it’s important that wherever my time goes, that’s meaningful, and that it’s getting me to my next goal. It’s getting me to my end result its bringing me on the journey and it’s getting me to my destination. So putting things on the calendar, like build your life resume, is an important part of that right? Schedule for life and then scheduling your work around your life and I’m still almost, you know, a year and a half in with Jesse’s program. I’m still struggling with it, but I feel at least a 50 to 60% change in how I’m scheduling my life and making sure that I have things on the calendar that are not just work related. Finding a way to make my personal goals and personal outings, harmonious with my work. If I’m going to go to a happy hour I want it to be with people that are excelling, that are smarter than me that are business owners or CEOs or people that I feel are going to not only have great conversation with me, but maybe give me some business advice along the way. So, like being strategic about like if I do schedule something like that, I’m not just going to go to a bar by myself just to drink and twiddle my thumbs. I’m going to go somewhere and maybe just have a soda water with a lime be social and go talk to CEOs.

Susan

You know, in that it oftentimes it’s like that, people try to make it harder but that is how you bring that harmony in. You know I believe as entrepreneurs and business women and mothers or wives or daughters or sisters or aunts or whatever our other roles are right, that balance isn’t always achievable. But harmony is always achievable because you can blend it and it can make a beautiful sound right and really fill our soul and I love that I’ll add that when you do go out you know have purpose in it right and the purpose may be just maybe have fun right then the purpose may be connection so really cool. Let me ask you this question, what is the one thing you do every day to make your radiant soul shine. And I love love, love your answer. 

Risa

Oh gosh, what did I say? 

Susan  

What did you say? What is the one thing you try to do every single day when you are talking with someone because it helps when you have…..go ahead, take it away.

Risa

I know what I said. I tried really hard. I think this is what I sent out. You’re quizzing me! I compliment one person every single day. I love people and I love boosting people. It’s a large part of why I started my business as a stylist because I want people to know that they’re supported. I want people to know that they’re not alone. I want people to know that they’re beautiful inside and out. And I think what I do in the fashion industry. It gets a glamorous title. Yeah, people think that I’m living like incredibly glamours and I’m wearing head to toe Prada. And you know that’s not the case at all. I mean, I was a cheerleader in college. I’m just like pep rallying for life. 

Susan

Yeah, you know, it gives me goosebumps to talk about just giving a compliment or saying something to make them to feel better or feel good. I can only imagine what the effect on these people is because you can tell but sometimes from your heart and with love. So, what a great way to make your radiant soul shine at the same time you’re making someone else shine. Right? I love that. I love that. So is there anything else that you would share with us about Rescue Kit do you want to tell us how to get it or how to connect with you. 

Risa

Yeah, I mean everyone can head to our Instagram using @therescuekit and www.therescuekitco.com. I would love for you to come talk with us there. We are small but we’re mighty. And now that weddings are back and like you said it’s not just for brides, but that’s our main customer. Now that weddings are back. I do think that it’s such a feel good product. You’re always the hero and I think it’s really having somebody like me in the back pocket and I really, I can’t be there for everyone. But I think that when you open that bag you know it was curated with love. You know that there was purpose behind it. We’re sisters are female and family alone for a small business. So supporting us means that you’re supporting all women out there that have huge dreams. And rescue kit for me is my is my dream. Back in 2007 I wrote down that I wanted a one stop shop bridal company and I didn’t know what that meant. But I see now that I was manifesting what I’ve created and that’s the feel good product that I hope will be in the homes and hearts out everybody in the world. And then you can find me on my personal Instagram which is kind of a mix of personal and styling but it’s really evolving as we evolve @risakostis That’s what I’m most active on. 

Susan

Okay and no worries, they will be in the show notes, people will be able to find you that way and connect with you that way as well. So I am so grateful that you chose to be here and you know if you you’re listening to this episode today and you’re hearing about this podcast or curious about how to live your life with purpose while living with work life harmony, make sure to connect with me on socials at SusanCrewsCo and reach out if you would like to chat. I’ll say we’d like to bring fun energy to any of your events. You can always reach out to me for coaching or for speaking engagements at SusanCrewsCo.com So I’ve gotten lots of golden nuggets today Risa, I love that keep your circle small, your dream tall. I love that. Also, I love the fact that you give back a lot and I just know that’s how we make the world a better place it’s one step at a time one person at a time and we can help everybody feel better. So thank you so much for being here today and I’ll just ask you know as we look back at our conversation and we think back what is one tip or one piece of advice that somebody might need to hear today. 

Risa

Yeah, I mean, I think there’s entrepreneurs out there and I think a lot of female entrepreneurs maybe being able to take the leap, It’s a scary world out there. So if it’s on your heart and you feel like it’s something that you’re wanting to do because life is just all about dreaming big. I’m saying you know it’s better to have love and lost then never to have loved at all. I mean, just say take the leap. And launch and create and don’t let any outside noise stop you from that. There’s a lot of distraction right now in the world. And there’s a lot of doubters. Just lunch and you’ll be surprised how happy you will find yourself if you do. 

Susan

Love that. I love that. Thank you so much and if you enjoyed this episode of the radiant sisters like I have, I want to give many thanks to our guest, Risa Kostis today. Join us next time when we shine the light on another beautiful radiant soul sister who lives her life full and exciting and has work life harmony. Till then I’m your host Susan Crews and don’t forget you can find all the episodes resources and community at SusanCrewsCo.com