Welcome to the Why Not Today podcast where we celebrate determination, courage, and the
power of saying why not today.
I am your host Lesley Cain and in each episode we dive into inspiring stories of individuals
who have taken bold steps, faced their fears, and embraced the possibility of today.
From entrepreneurs to artists, dreamers and doers, we explore the moments when they said
enough waiting and why not today.
Join me as we uncover the heartwarming, the audacious, the transformative, whether it's
pursuing a lifelong passion, overcoming obstacles, or simply choosing joy.
Our guests share their journey and inspire us all.
I started this podcast and honor my father, Patrick Cain, who often did say why not today.
And I always remember you're just one decision away from changing your life.
So I'm excited for my guest tonight today and it's funny, her name is Lesley Custer.
So when the person introduced us, she's like, I can't even say Lesley K because we're both
Lesley Ks.
So there's just like a few dishes, letters in our name that separate us.
So I always talk about where we connected and where we met.
So I had on the podcast Laura Carney who wrote a book and then she did something with Stacy
Lorne who will be on the podcast.
We haven't had her yet who has a Facebook group and it's called do the thing.
Which is very much an alignment of why not today.
So I talked to her one day and she's like, oh my gosh, I need to meet my friend and talk
to my friend Lesley Custer.
So Lesley had me on her podcast and now she's here and she's written a book and got all
kinds of courage stuff that we're going to talk about.
And so, and of course her name is Belle Deexxing.
The first name is Dexxing is mine.
So isn't that even double fun?
So Lesley, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit about seeing a fun fact and then
we'll get into the courage.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
I'm so happy to be here.
So my name is Lesley Custer.
I am the founder and CEO of a women's clothing line called Back from Bali and it's women's
like bohemian style clothing and you could find it on Amazon and on my website.
And because of the success of the business, which honestly took me a really long time
to be successful, but when I became successful, I decided to really focus in on how in the
world I did it.
And so I wrote a book called Seven Keys to Seven Figures, the Women Entrepreneurs Guide
to Money and Freedom.
Love it.
And I can't wait to hear all your stories.
And some people are listening and some people are watching because we do both.
Is that one of your shirts?
Yeah, matter of fact, it is.
There you go.
So you have a little bit of like, you know, this kind of looking here and you have a lot
of like hand-done embroidery.
I do a lot of like loose, comfortable, colorful, a lot of, you know, stuff for resort or going
traveling or that type of thing too.
So I need to, I know, although I started reading your book and know about it, I haven't
Google to look at or look at Amazon shopping.
Back from Bali on Amazon or my website or Instagram, you know, all those places.
All right.
So what's a fun fact about Lesley?
Oh, right.
Okay.
Fun fact is that in the last year, I have become a pickable addict.
I mean, literally an addict.
So my husband and I, we play definitely six days a week anywhere from, you know, an hour
and a half to two hours to sometimes three hours a day.
And it's just, I just have fallen in love with it.
So anyone who doesn't know pickable, go play it.
It's so much fun.
And that's funny that I know people, other people that have played it and pretty much
everybody that says they started finished just like you did that they're addicted.
Yeah.
It's so interesting.
This part of it.
Yeah.
I'm not tried.
Maybe one day I will.
I was going to want to finish grad school.
I was going to start tennis and somebody gave me a tennis racket and then I was traveling
all the time for work and got quote unquote tennis or tendonitis and I had to have surgery.
So that was the end of that career.
But that was the one time.
I hopefully have recovered.
So Leslie, what does courage mean to you?
You know, I love the topic of your show because this is the question that we all have to ask
ourselves like, are we going to make changes in our lives or are we not going to make changes
in our lives?
And so this is what I think courage means to me.
Courage means to me, you get in a place in your life where you feel disappointed in yourself
or you're unhappy with your life.
You're happy with your business, your money, your relationship where you live, how you
feel as a person, whatever it is.
And you have the courage to go and change it.
And that is what courage means to me too.
There's too many people sitting on the sidelines and just waiting for life to happen to them.
And my experience has been you have to make life happen to you.
I mean, life happens and all kinds of challenges happen, but it's really our attitude towards
those challenges that really define our lives and make the beautiful life we have or don't
have.
Yeah, so true.
And I think, yes, your definition is so in alignment with what I'm doing with this podcast
and the courage coaching that I'm working on that so many people are just stuck.
I found a lot of unsettling in the world right now and people are like, what's next?
Or I'm not happy.
I was on a leadership call the other day and because I'm right outside of DC, there's
a lot of government employees.
And I've never heard this, but people literally have clocks on their death, their countdown
clocks waiting to retire.
Wow.
Like thinking work is a terrible thing.
And it's like, you know, I love what I do.
And I'm excited to work because I'm doing things I enjoy and living my life and so many
people are not, which is so sad.
Yeah, no, that's so sad to hear something like that.
But at the same time, I understand it.
And I also lived that kind of life at some point many years ago when I was working in
corporate, I was working in New York City in public relations and had all these corporate
clients.
And you know, Monday morning was the worst day, you know, sat Sunday night and Monday
mornings were my worst days.
And I live that for, you know, I don't know, maybe around about six years or seven years,
something like that.
And then in my early thirties, I went traveling because actually something happened in New
York City.
I got robbed and I also had money because of being robbed from the insurance.
And I said, you know what, I'm quitting and I'm going to go traveling.
And I traveled.
I knew you traveled.
I wasn't sure how you got.
That was when I started my business back from Bali was because of that.
Let's talk about that story.
And it's not probably that that pivotal moment happens that completely changes our life.
And like, that was a bad thing that happened that turned out to be an amazing thing.
So let's talk about, you know, you're working corporate America, working the rat race.
And then you got robbed and what happened.
And then I got robbed and I, you know, got a whole, a whole check here and I had always
wanted to go traveling.
I had just kind of separated from my first husband.
So I was sort of single at the time.
And I always wanted to travel to Indonesia.
I just, why I have no idea, Leslie.
I saw like this group of islands on the map and I was like, I want to go there.
But let me tell you, it took some courage to do that.
I was single, I was alone.
You went by yourself?
I went all by myself.
Wow, good for you.
Yeah.
And it was scary and it definitely took courage.
And I remember being on the airplane going over and I think all the fear just left me.
It was all the beginning before getting on the plane.
That was the scary part.
But once I was on the plane and once I landed and all of that, I was like, this is fun.
And that took courage to do that.
I could have just stayed in New York City and gotten another job or did something, I don't
know, waitressing to get out of the corporate world.
But I jumped on the airplane by myself.
So all of these courageous things that we're talking about, this is what leads you to the
next step.
And I had no idea that out of this trip that I took, that it would actually turn into my
career.
And that's what happened.
What a pivotal moment.
And the courage to travel and to get on that plane.
And it's like, once you do, you're okay.
I was with my nephew this weekend and when COVID happened, he worked virtually and asked
his boss if he could move to San Diego, which he did.
And actually, even before he did that, he traveled all by himself to Europe.
And he does that all the time.
He just like, where's Sam?
I don't know.
He jumped on a plane.
He's in South America.
He's a Y surfing.
He's been to Australia once to be.
And he's like, I traveled by myself and I go to a barn.
I meet a new friend and then hang out with them.
And there's a whole world, but we're all afraid.
We're all waiting for that person to go with us.
And if we keep waiting, you'll never do it.
You have to not wait.
I had an experience very early in life where my boyfriend died in a car accident.
And it was that experience of when I was 17, it really got drilled into me at that time
that you never know what's going to happen.
You really don't even know if you're going to have your life any longer.
And that experience has stayed with me my entire life.
And I always ask myself that question, like, what, you know, I want to do something.
And if I don't do this thing, and then who knows what's going to happen in life.
I may never even have this opportunity any longer.
So I always pushed myself to do courageous things.
And I've done many, many, many courageous things actually moving to another country,
you know, building a huge business takes a lot of courage.
Moving back back to America.
Recently, we just relocated back to the United States after 20 years living in Switzerland.
Oh, wow.
That took a lot of courage actually because we lived a really comfortable life.
Heinz, he was working full time.
So I had a husband with a full time job.
We had a boarder's apartment.
We had lots of friends.
You know, we lived in Switzerland, which is a very comfortable lifestyle.
Right.
Nothing was wrong with our lives.
And we, I just, it mostly came from me.
I wanted to change and I wanted to like come back to the United States.
And it wasn't easy at all to do this.
It was really, really hard to tell you the truth.
But we did it and now we're here and I'm so glad I did.
And I can see the smile on your face.
You light up being glad to be back.
Yeah.
So yeah, let's talk about, so you went to Indonesia and then I know from reading your
book, you came back and decided this is not the world you wanted.
So you started business.
So let's talk about that.
And how long ago was that?
It was like a really long time ago.
It was about like in the early 90s.
So, you know, what is it?
It's like 30 years ago, something like that.
And yeah, I came back to New York.
I had traveled for seven months and I needed just to go to job again.
And so I was looking through the New York Times, which is the way you looked for jobs
back then on a physical newspaper.
And I was like, I just don't want to do this.
And I had this light bulb moment that went, hmm, I wonder if I could bring back clothing
from Indonesia that I saw when I was traveling, and particularly in Bali, I saw like really
cute kids clothes.
That was that teak with like moons and stars and all kinds of oranges and colors and things.
And I just thought, why don't I give it a try?
Like, why not?
Why not today?
Exactly.
I think it was either this or it was getting a job.
And getting a job again was just, I so much didn't want to because I had just experienced
freedom, you know, seven months of traveling and freedom and all of this.
And I wanted that experience to be my life.
So I literally jumped back on an airplane with an empty duffel bag.
And I went back to Bali.
I hit the streets.
I went store to store and just started buying and stuffing it into a duffel bag and bringing
it back to the US.
Back then, you didn't have 50 pounds, you know.
Right.
You can have 200 pounds.
And I signed up for street fairs in New York City because I was still living.
They had all these fairs every Saturday, every Sunday.
They had Christmas markets, whatever.
And I just started doing a street fair.
And I'd never done sales before, never sold a thing in my life.
I don't know anything really about clothing in particular, except I like wearing clothing.
And my booth was stormed by mothers buying the clothes like crazy.
It was almost like a frenzy of purchasing and buying.
And at the end of the day, I had, I remember $800 in cash in my hand.
And I was like, wow, this is really fun.
And I realized I better get back on another airplane because I'm going to be sold out
soon.
And that's how I started my business.
Wow.
Well, all the courage and all those decisions to try all these new things, but just taking,
and I think what I hear is you just took one step at a time.
And I think that's the thing people, like you didn't probably have a big business plan.
You probably didn't even have a business, an LLC or anything at that point.
You didn't have a business account.
You just did.
And that's kind of how I started the podcast.
I just started.
And I think we have to have courage just to start.
And when you started to where you are now, you could never probably in a million years
imagine.
Oh, not in a million years.
Where you've come.
Not in a million years.
Like your wildest, craziest dreams couldn't have got there.
I don't even think I had the capacity at that time to dream this big.
I don't think it was even in my possibility.
You know, all I wanted was to not get a job in New York City in a big corporate high rise
and to have like enough money that, you know, I could pay my rent, which was really cheap
at the time and, you know, go to spiritual retreats, which is what I like to do in the
summer time.
And that was really my goals was just to like pay those expenses.
I even remember like saying to my dad, by the way, you and I also have a share our dad's
story too.
And my dad passed like four and a half years ago and he would always say, just do it.
So it was really what, you know, what your podcast and what your whole work is about
of just, you know, just do the thing and, you know, get things done, right?
Did your dad work for himself or did he have a, have his own business?
He worked for himself.
So I come from a family of entrepreneurs, which makes it really much easier for me to
be an entrepreneur.
But I remember like early on in the business saying, or not early on, I think it was about
a, it actually was not early on.
It was when I started to starting to do well in the business.
In fact, it was about 20 years later, matter of fact.
This is my story.
My story is that I had a bit, I had a business for 20 years.
This clothing business going to Bali, importing it in, selling it at markets, at holiday markets.
But I never ever did more than $60,000, $70,000 a year in revenue.
I'm not talking about in my pocket, just writing.
And after about 20 years or so of that, I made a very conscious decision that I wanted
more money and I wanted to be more successful.
And so this started to happen.
And I remember saying to my dad, maybe when I hit over a hundred thousand, I remember
saying, you know, 250,000, it would be my absolute top.
You know, if I ever could reach doing 250,000 in sales, that would be amazing.
And you know, now I'm in multiple seven figures.
So you know, it has just grown my capacity to believe what is possible is what has completely
changed.
Yeah, I love that.
And yeah, we have to, we start here and we grow and I was listening to something yesterday
and he talked about vision boards and in a vision board, you should leave space.
Don't fill it up because you never know because you don't have enough capacity is basically
what they said to be the biggest picture.
And leaving space in there for other things to happen.
You just don't know.
So what happened at the 20 years that you're like, all right, I want to make more money.
Was there a pivotal moment?
Was there something you read, heard somebody?
What was that moment that you're like, okay, enough is enough.
Why not that?
I was in my early fifties business.
I actually had two businesses at the time and yeah, they both did.
They both did under a hundred thousand a year.
I did okay.
You know, I paid for some great vacations, you know, bought some clothes contributed
to my, you know, my husband and my living expenses.
But I had for the last few years in my early fifties starting to this building up inside
of me that I could be doing so much more and also frankly envious of other people who had
more money than I had.
And we're able to do other things that we were not able to do like buy our dream home
or you know, different things like that.
And it really didn't come from the outside like it like an event happening in my life.
It really came deep inside myself where I felt that I could be doing so much better than
I had been doing.
I could be pushing me myself more.
I could be learning more.
I knew I was smart and I knew I could be successful, but I didn't really allow myself wanted all
these things until that moment.
And I was sitting in our apartment in a little village in Switzerland, which is where we
were living at the time.
And I said to myself, there is no way I am not waking up on my next birthday, not doing
over a hundred thousand a year in sales.
No way.
It was over for me.
And I committed to that.
And I then had the honesty inside of me to say to myself, I want money.
I want wealth.
I want more money.
Where before that I was embarrassed to say anything like that on the outside or on the
inside.
You know, that's why we were raised and you didn't talk about money.
You didn't talk about how much you made and you didn't ask for more and you know, not
to throw us in the world of women, but women don't ask for it as much as men do.
I hate to say it.
That's right.
That's true.
Exactly.
And you know, I had all these money stories as we all have and my money story basically
went a value of a woman is to marry a man with money.
All right.
And this is really how I was raised.
So I never thought it was actually my responsibility to do this.
It wasn't my job to make the money.
It wasn't my job to do all this.
This is not what I'm supposed to do.
I started Leslie really questioning these beliefs that I had.
That was my first step.
I started to go, why do you think that if you had more money, you would lose your freedom?
Because this is the stuff I was thinking.
Right.
Why do you think if you, you know, became really successful, you would no longer be
a spiritual person?
I started to go, wow, maybe these things actually aren't true.
And I literally got out my computer or I think at the time I was writing in my journal and
I would write these statements down.
Like, you know, if I'm successful, I won't be a nice spiritual person anymore.
And I changed that to end.
I am very successful and I'm very spiritual.
Right.
I make a lot of money and I have tons of freedom.
And I started to just change the ideas inside my head that these things could be possible
and they don't work against each other.
And that was one of the first absolute steps, which is why mindset, what we say to ourselves,
the stories we repeat over and over is one of the most critical things that we need to
learn how to manage and control.
So, so true.
And as I asked you, was there a pivotal moment in you as absolutely you're sitting in your
living room in your apartment and you just had that like a new thought you'd never thought
before?
Yep.
That's right.
Oh, this can be different.
And look what you were able to do.
So last, so fast forward, you hit your goal.
Did you make it by your birthday?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I made it by my birthday.
And then it, you know, thinks once you'd make this decision, you know, once you've
had the guts and to say what you want.
And this is what I have found is that women don't say what they really, really, really
want.
They, they keep it to themselves.
They, or they don't even hear it within themselves because they're not connected to what they
really, really want.
Once I began to be super clear about what I really wanted, then it was almost like the
universe.
I know it sounds cliche, but the universe started rolling out certain opportunities such as
all of a sudden I heard about, and I get, I just got chills down my back, meaning that
there's this connection to the universe, right?
That when we start to move ourselves from these things, but so for example, I all of
a sudden heard about this conference in Seattle, Washington that Amazon was putting on.
And I was in New York City at the time.
So you know, it was a big flight to go over there, but I jumped on a plane and I booked
that conference.
So things just started to unroll for me.
And at that conference, there was a wonderful speaker and her name was Lisa Satorra.
And as it turned out, she was a consultant for people who are building businesses online.
And I got her card.
And these are the things that started to unfold for me and over the course of, you know, this
is now, we're talking about maybe 13 years ago, this is how I began to really build the
kind of business, big business that I now manage.
Yeah, that's awesome.
And I was in freedom.
Exactly.
And I love, you know, the coincidences, Godwink, somebody told me, I know what it was, I interviewed
somebody that I don't even know how I found her, but it was one of those, not even near
me in Texas.
And it's like crazy coincidence, like her sister in law lives in the same time I do.
And when we were talking, she told me the name and I'm like, she's like, yeah, I'm like,
you know, that was my dad and my mom, my sister's dad.
And so my dad, the day he passed away, which is crazy.
And when I told her that, I'm like, just, that's just crazy, the coincidences of Godwink.
And she's like, when you're doing what you love, she said, and your alignment with your
values and those things start happening.
Yeah, I agree.
And I had another mentor say one time, something happened to me and there were like, people
were like, oh, that just fell in your lap.
And she's like, no, things don't fall in your lap unless your lap is out there.
I love that.
You know, it's just worrying what you want.
Yeah, I heard a quote from Oprah who could she said, there's no such thing as luck that
luck is when opportunity and action come together.
Yeah, so true.
Well, I loved your book and so many tidbits and information and I want to go back and
read it again and take some notes and so much encouragement and hope and I love that you
took what you learned and passing it on.
That's really with the hope of this podcast is that we're taking people's current stories
and passing it on and giving people hope that like, if Leslie and Leslie can do it, a podcast,
a book company, seven figures, travel, all the things that somebody else can and giving
people permission to say me to and give people the hope that life isn't as bad as it seems.
And you know, you just got to take that first step and say why not today and then take the
next step.
And as we talked about, you never know ever where that could take you.
And we're not capable of knowing how big and how expansive somebody else can do it.
We can do it.
And if nobody's done it before, we can be the first to do it.
Yeah, and I think it's important for anybody listening to notice whenever you start going,
I wonder if because this is really the key to life.
It's kind of like the seed.
I wonder if I wonder if I started that business.
I wonder if I quit the job.
I wonder if I moved.
I wonder if I left this relationship.
When you start asking yourself, I wonder if that is how you start this process of taking
the courage and changing things.
And not everybody has the same.
I wonder.
And this is what's important.
Right?
So when you have an I wonder if this is for you, this is a universe, this is your feminine
power, this is your spirit talking to you about what your next steps may be and should
be.
Yeah.
And I think that's what I'm seeing a lot of that people are unsettled and like wondering
like what's next.
But then there's other people that doesn't even cross their mind to do anything other
than go to a job, hate their job.
They call it the Sunday scaries and Monday they said, most people have heart attacks
on Monday morning.
I don't know anything different.
And I'm grateful that my father was an entrepreneur and your father and we watched that and we
were witness to it and we could then emulate it and create our own life similar.
It is.
You know, we are 100% responsible for our lives, whether our life is good where we have
something to do with it.
If our lives are not good, well, guess what?
You got something to do with it and we have to take responsibility and make the changes
that we need to make that are scary, that go outside our comfort zones because this
is our, as they say, our one precious life.
Right?
And if not now, when are you going to do it?
And that was, you know, back to when we left Switzerland.
That was the question I asked myself, do I want to die in Switzerland?
It was, that was it.
So I'm in my sixties now.
I'm like, all right, is that what I want?
And the answer was clearly no.
And so the next question was, well, then when are you leaving?
You know, why not now?
Why not today?
And that's how change happens.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I think we could talk forever and ever.
We're going to have more conversations, stay connected.
But how would you encourage somebody else?
I know we've kind of talked around it a lot, but how would you encourage somebody else
that sucks or like, what's next?
Yeah.
Why not?
Yeah, take time to get empty inside yourself for in any way that you know how to do that
meditation, going for walks in nature, journaling, writing, writing things down in journals,
you know, going, hugging a tree, whatever it is, you need to be alone and do this on
a regular basis and start to feel inside yourself what you wonder about.
What is it that you're wondering about?
What is it that you're dissatisfied about?
What are those things?
So you start to get clear about what it is that you want and what are these things are
that you want to change.
And then based on that, take some kind of action.
So Marri, we need to do what I like to call interaction and outer action.
The interaction starts with being quiet and getting clear about what we want.
But unless we actually do something about it, okay, I mean, all the vision boards in
the world is actually not going to do anything unless you actually make the phone call or
send the email or join the mastermind or hire the coach or whatever it is.
So it's finding out what you want, having the quiet space to do it and then making sure
you take some action towards it.
So true and completely agree with that.
So I always try to track back when I do things to connect to my dad.
And most people are like, well, I never met your dad.
How can I we track back?
So I always threw our conversation, try to connect back.
So one, when you mentioned you love pickleball, my dad never played pickleball.
And when he passed away, I actually the first thought I had is I wanted to do a nonprofit
to honor him.
And we looked into, and this was 11 years ago, looked into doing pickleball tournament
and actually talked to a lawyer about an LLC instead of like a 5K, we're going to do pickleball.
But that was a lot of work to do the LLC, not the LLC, the 501-3C.
And so fast forward, if I'd done that, I might not have done the past, the podcast.
So talking about being an entrepreneur, both of our dads were having that freedom to create
the life you want.
And that's the life I grew up in with my dad.
And he owned his own business.
There were six of us kids.
And it wasn't always perfect.
And it wasn't always amazing, but he always made it work.
And I think I hear a lot of that in your story.
You know, he didn't, it wasn't always perfect at the beginning.
Well, and by the way, it's still not perfect.
Business is tough.
And I still have tons of challenges because like I like to say being an entrepreneur is
like getting a PhD in self development.
Oh my goodness.
So true.
You're just, you're in a constant state of learning.
And if you want your business to survive, and there's a lot of reasons that it won't,
okay, but if you want your business to survive, you need to do the work and change and, you
know, bring in pivot and all those things that you hear people talk about.
Because it never gets to a point where it's just, I mean, it actually does get to different
times of points where it's easy, but then it changes again.
And then it gets hard and then it goes easy and then it gets hard.
That's just how it is.
And I know when I've had a bad day, and my dad did have a part of his life that business
wasn't great and he did get a job and he hated every second of it.
And being told what to do and in that box and every, every once in a while, if I have
a bad day, I'm like, you know what, it's, I do not want to go work for somebody else.
I'm gonna figure it out or I'm gonna work a little harder or I'm gonna get a little
more creative and, you know, figure it out because I do not want to go work for somebody
else and have that lack of freedom.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Well, thank you.
Lots of insight, lots of information.
I was taking notes as I was listening and I'm gonna probably have to go back and listen
to it again.
So thanks for joining us on this inspiring journey.
Remember every day is an opportunity to take action, chase your dreams and make a difference.
So why not today?
So make sure you subscribe, share, tip the podcast, keep pushing forward and until next
time stay motivated and keep making things happen.
So Leslie, thanks for being our guest and you can find the podcast at whynottodaypodcast.com
and I will share all Leslie's contact information in the show notes.
So thank you Leslie and remember say why not today and just do it.