“Did you make this yourself?” was the question that inspired Kelsey Carter to turn her small hustles into an actual entrepreneurial venture. In this inspiring conversation with Gary Schoeniger, she shares her journey from selling candy, comics, and jewelry to building her soul food venture, Karter’s Kitchen, in her college dorm room. She talks about her mission to teach her community to eat healthier and create deeper connections with their food. Kelsey also opens up about the role of curiosity, resilience, and reflection in shaping her entrepreneurial mindset, allowing her to navigate rejections and celebrate her self-worth.
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Listen to the podcast here
The Question That Changed Everything With Kelsey Carter
I’m joined by Kelsey Carter, a remarkable young entrepreneur whose journey began with small hustles, selling candy and comics as a kid, and later, jewelry in college. Everything changed when a customer asked her one simple question, “Did you make this yourself?” That moment lit a spark, pushing Kelsey to build something more authentic, something made with her own hands and her own heart.
That spark became Karter Kitchen, a soul food venture born in a dorm room and rooted in purpose. What started with $8 Sunday dinner plates has grown into a mission to bring healthier, culturally grounded food to her community, while also raising awareness about the deeper connection between food, health, and self-worth.
In this conversation, Kelsey shares how the entrepreneurial mindset, curiosity, resilience, and reflection shaped her journey and how she’s learning to navigate everything from rejection and reinvention to purpose-driven growth. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, educator, or someone working to spark change in your community, you will find Kelsey’s story both relatable and deeply motivating. Let’s get into it.
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Kelsey, welcome to the show.
How are you?
I’m doing great. I’m looking forward to this conversation. You and I met at the University of Western Georgia a couple of months ago.
It was a nice time and a great experience.
How A College Sophomore Started A Business
I had a chance to chat with you briefly there about your entrepreneurial journey. I thought you’d be a good fit for the show. I’m focused on everyday entrepreneurs. I’m not as much interested in the high-growth billionaire entrepreneurs. What I’m fascinated by is how ordinary people recognize opportunities and how they bring them to life. What is it in your mind that enables you to do that? Let me start with this. You are a freshman at the University of Western Georgia.
I graduated on May 16th, 2025, so when you met me, I was a senior.
I’m sorry. You were a senior. You started a business while you were in college. Is that right?
Yeah, my sophomore year.
I got it. Why did you do that? Was it that you were trying to pay for college? What put you on that path?
That summer before I went back to college for my sophomore year, which was the last time I went home for summer, I was in meditation. I do try to gather thoughts, settle myself in, and do something that’s meaningful. Sitting, I was like, “I’m going to start cooking for my family.” Both of my parents were working. I didn’t have a job over the summer, so I was like, “I’m going to cook for the days off.” I started cooking, and then from there, I started making transition videos of the cooking. I made banana bread. I remember I made white chicken spaghetti and that type of stuff.
This is not my first time selling something. I remember in elementary school, Call of Duty, the video game, was popular. I can remember that in fourth grade, I started drawing Call of Duty comics, and I was selling them to my classmates for $0.50. In sixth grade, I started selling candy at school, but I had to stop because the staff said I had to. In high school, I was selling scrunchies, the things you put your hair in a ponytail with. I also started making crafts from epoxy resin. Do you know what that is?
Yeah.
I was making rolling trays and ashtrays because everybody smokes. I was making a lot of money off of that. This wasn’t my first time thinking, “What could I do to make some money?”
I hear this a lot. People started selling candy in school or door-to-door. They had some little experience when they were younger that put them on this trajectory. There are a couple of things I want to double click on, but let me stay on this for a second. Where did that come from? You said in sixth grade or something that you were figuring out how to sell stuff to make money. Where did that come from? Did your parents like that?
Honestly, I won’t say it was my parents because I’ve never seen my dad selling anything that I can recall. I don’t remember him selling anything, or my mom. I’ve seen her do Mary Kay growing up. That type of little side hustle could have ignited a flaming me, for sure. I do remember that.
That was a side hustle for your mom, Mary Kay?
Yeah, for some time. Mary Kay and, I believe, Avon. I mentally remember that.
That makes sense because when I ask entrepreneurs that question, they saw something somewhere or somebody trying to make something happen. It lands in your brain. You might not even know it has landed in your brain.
I hadn’t thought about that, but I did see it growing up. She doesn’t do it anymore, but I can remember that, for sure. For my dad, we had nine dogs at one point, and he used to breed the dogs himself. I’ve always seen that.
Soul Food: A soul food plate does not cost that much to make.
Now, we’re getting there.
I never thought about that.
It’s around you. You see it in your periphery. That’s an important piece of the puzzle. I want to double-click on something you said a second ago that’s super interesting to me. When you’re taking a break from school, you’re consciously using the time to reflect. You might have used a slightly different language, but did I hear you properly?
Yeah.
Where did that come from? A lot of people don’t do that. They keep plowing through life. They don’t think they’re going and doing what they think they should be doing.
My dad, for sure. I’m a daddy’s girl. I can remember him always saying, “Why?” to the simple stuff. You could say, “I want to go watch a movie that just came out,” and my daddy would be like, “Why?” I have always questioned every single thing I’m doing, especially if it’s something that takes up a lot of my time, such as school. School takes up so much of your physical time that it also leaves an imprint on your mental space.
You could become a sheep and go with the flow and not get any real fulfillment or satisfaction out of it, other than a degree or some money. That’s not enough for me because I feel like there is more to life than just getting some money. I want some money, but I don’t believe that the only way to get some money is by saying, “I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do,” and not be able to enjoy the way you make money. I am sitting and creating a space where I can reflect on what I am doing, why I am doing it, and what it is doing for me and the people around me. I feel like that’s why I meditate or decompress from where I am mentally.
What your dad taught you, if I’m understanding you, is to think about your own thinking. That’s a superpower. In psychology, they call that metacognition. I’m a mindset guy. I say this all the time. The way our mindset works is we take credit when things go properly for us, but we tend to blame when they don’t. We tend to look outside of ourselves when things go wrong. It’s a superpower when you can learn not to do that. When things are going wrong, stop and reflect, “How did I contribute to this? How might I do it differently?”
You’re getting to deeper mindset stuff right from the rip. I’m blown away by the way you’re talking about thinking about what you want. You’re young. You just graduated from college. You’re thinking about the bigger picture and a vision for something beyond just getting a job and making money, so you can buy things. That’s an important mindset moment, so to speak.
The Origin Story Of Carter’s Kitchen
A lot of people don’t do that. That gives you an enormous advantage over people who might be smarter than you or more capable than you. It gives you a hidden advantage to think about your thinking. You’re like, “What do I want to do without just mindlessly following other people?” Let’s get to your entrepreneurial venture. You were messing around all through middle school, figuring out how to make yourself useful, using your own mind. This is what you were doing, whether you were selling candy or whatever you were doing. Tell us a little bit about what you’re doing now.
Karter Kitchen. In my sophomore year, I was like, “I know how to cook.” I know how much groceries cost, but I was going around like, “Do you know how much groceries are now?” I feel like if you weren’t in the grocery store every week, then you don’t know how much groceries cost. My first plate was $8. I wanted to see if people would buy the Sunday dinner plates. That was what I was calling them because I was cooking every Sunday. The first night I did it, I sold out. That was enough for me. I’m not going to lie. That was more than enough for me.
The following Sunday after that, I did it again, but I started for $20. It was already an advantage because the food at the cafeteria was nasty. That’s the truth. It didn’t have a real season. I was like, “I’m going to sell for $20,” and I was selling out. I had to start mixing it up a little bit, though, because it went into a slump. I started adding in this thing called Fried Oreo Fridays. I was making fried Oreos every Friday and selling two for $1. It was all this stuff.
I then got booked for a baby shower. I made it happen to the best of my ability. I sold myself to the lady. I thought that she was pregnant. I said, “Congratulations. Are you going to have a baby shower?” She was like, “Yeah.” I was like, “I’m a caterer.” She said, “We’re looking for one.” She said her price range was $500. I’m like, “I can do that.” I did it, and then it went from there.
Let me back you up a step. Before the catering thing happened, didn’t you say you were making cooking videos? I remember you told me about how your dad was a cook. Your dad liked to cook. He was not necessarily a professional cook, but he liked to cook. Your dad told you something like, “The best food is Karter Kitchen.” Is that what he said? You told me that.
Growing up, my dad did like to cook. My mama was more of a baker. It isn’t traditional. A man wouldn’t be in his kitchen, but my daddy enjoyed cooking. I feel like I was the only sibling who wanted to be in the kitchen with my dad. My brother didn’t care for that, nor did my sister. I liked cooking because I liked food as well. We would be like, “What are we eating tonight?” I was hoping that he would say some fast food like McDonald’s. First of all, why would we ever want McDonald’s over home-cooked food? That’s so kitty. He would be like, “We are eating at Karter Kitchen,” which meant we were eating at home.
That’s beautiful.
That is so funny. When I came up with the name Karter Kitchen, I wasn’t thinking about how my dad would say that. I wasn’t at all. It wasn’t until somebody questioned me, “Why is it Karter Kitchen?” With my entrepreneurial mindset, I was like, “It’s named that because of this. I’m not even lying. I’m telling the truth.” That’s an even greater reason why it’s named Karter Kitchen, even though that wasn’t my initial reason to name it that. That’s where the name came from. It is beautiful. It’s pretty cool. I like that.
It’s an homage to your father, too. It’s a cool generational thing. You were making cooking videos, which is typical of entrepreneur stories. You were tinkering and didn’t know what you were going to do. You were making videos about how you were cooking this and that. That evolved into, “The food at the cafeteria is no good. It’s nasty.” That was at college, right?
Let me backtrack. That summer, I started cooking for my family since they were working. I started making TikTok videos, and they were getting traction. I had 55 likes and stuff like that, just enough for me to be like, “I’m going to drop some more. I have nothing else to do.” My friend who lived across the street, and still is, thought I was cooking some catfish nuggets and fries. Her dad was like, “Are you selling those plates?” because he sells food. Immediately, I was like, “Yeah, I am,” even though I wasn’t. I sold that plate of catfish nuggets and fries, and I was like, “I’m going to start selling these plates when I get back to school.” I kept making videos throughout the summer.
You were doing that in your parents’ kitchen, right?
Yeah, in this kitchen I’m in.
That’s nice.
I did that. He was a neighbor, so it was easy. I was like, “I’m not going to start it up in La Grange,” which is where my parents stay, because I don’t know enough people here. It made more sense to do it on campus where a lot of people are. When I first got to campus, before I even did Sunday dinner plates, I was going to limit it to hot wings and fries, but the University of West Georgia opened up another dining place called West Wing. It killed whatever I had going immediately within a week of the school starting back for the semester. That’s what made me enter into Sunday dinner.
There is more to life than just getting some money. Share on XYou had to pivot. To use entrepreneurial language, you had to adapt. A competitor popped up. For the Sunday dinner, what you’re saying is that you don’t even understand the cost. You were just testing the idea. You weren’t worried about, “What does this cost?” You were trying to test an idea.
I know for a fact how much a Sunday dinner costs. A soul food plate doesn’t cost that much to make. That’s why it was, at one point, the main thing that people in the Black community ate because this stuff doesn’t cost a lot to make. Half of the food in the soul food plate is vegetables. It’s one meat, a bunch of starch, and vegetables. Candied yams, collard greens, cabbage, cornbread with some fried chicken, that stuff costs nothing to make. I already knew that. I would spend $40 at the Food Depot, which is five minutes away from the campus, and I’m selling the plate for $20. I don’t have to do too many calculations to know I’m going to make a huge profit.
You did it on one Sunday. Where did you cook this stuff? In your dorm?
The first Sunday that I did it, I did it in Bowden because their community kitchen is within the same building where people live. It’s right next to the community space where everybody would be. I know that they would smell the food. These college students would be like, “The food smells good.” Everybody on campus is always hungry because they either have a meal plan and they have to stay within the restrictions of the week to make sure they stretch it for the week, or they are tired of eating at the dining hall and they want something else.
I cooked in that community kitchen that’s right next to them because I know they would smell it. Sure enough, people came asking questions. I told them I was selling the plates, and I sold out. From there, I went and cooked in my community kitchen with my dorm, which was University Suites, but it wasn’t within the building. It was in a separate building. I started posting it.
I remembered something. Karter Kitchen, the Instagram page, had 87 followers before it was Karter Kitchen. When I got to campus, I started selling jewelry. I had it named Bodi.Bling. It had 87 followers. I got a little money off of that. This guy said, “Did you make this jewelry yourself?” I was like, “No.” He said, “If you did, I would have bought it from you.” When he said that, it stuck in my head. I was like, “That’s so real because I wouldn’t buy this from anybody either because I know I could get it somewhere else and wholesale for cheaper.”
He said that, and one of the books that I read said, “You shall eat the fruit of your labor with your hands, and you shall be blessed and it shall be well with you.” Honestly, when he said that to me, I was done with Bodi.Bling. I was like, “I need to create something with my own hands.” All the business ventures I had done from this point, except the crafts and stuff, were from my hands.
It wasn’t from your heart. You were reselling something. That wasn’t a reflection of you. That’s a beautiful insight. A lot of people need to hear that. The guy told you, “You don’t make this stuff. I’m not interested,” and you stopped.
I was like, “That’s real. That’s not it.”
Is that what happened right before you started Karter Kitchen?
Yeah, in that summer. He said that at the end of the semester, in May or April. That summer came, and that’s when I started meditating on, “First of all, why am I always looking to make some extra money?” If you are going to make some extra money, you need to make something with your own hands. You need to make something yourself so that it’s worth the value that you are putting on it. When you are reselling stuff, it’s always at a cheaper price because you are a middleman. You’re not doing anything.
When you make something with your own hands, it takes time and effort. You are willing to confidently set it at that value and keep it there no matter what. That even made me more confident in what I would price the plate at $20. It’s like, “I was in this kitchen for six hours. I went and bought these groceries. I planned this meal yesterday. This plate is $20.” I wasn’t budging on that, and that’s what was selling.
Entrepreneurship From The Heart And Soul
You said so much there. I want to tell you something. Karl Marx said this in the 1800s. The desire to fulfill human needs and manifest ourselves into a product or service that other people need is an essential part of what makes us human. That’s the awareness you had. What I’m interested in digging into a little bit is when you went from Bodi.Bling, which was reselling somebody else’s product, to creating something that you were actually creating that came from your heart, your head, and your soul, did you feel like you were more engaged? Were you more in it to win it at that point? Did that change at all?
Yeah, for sure. I can remember times with Bodi.Bling, where I would start dropping the prices of the jewelry to $1. I didn’t care about it. I still did the advertising tactics for it, but I wasn’t out there in the field like I was for Karter Kitchen. It’s not even close. I remember I made these strawberry cheesecake bite desserts. I was going around on campus and was like, “Do you want a free one of these? I sell plates on campus.”
I never did that for Bodi.Bling because whatever I had for Bodi.Bling, it had to be sold for me to make my money. That’s what I was thinking about. It was the money. When I was passing out free desserts for Karter Kitchen, I was doing that to be like, “This is something I do.” I can remember sitting on campus and passing out flyers. I can remember setting a goal for how many people I was going to tell. I didn’t do any of that for Bodi.Bling.
It was like night and day. The other point that I want to make sure we don’t miss here is that people who are outside of the entrepreneurial arena sometimes look at entrepreneurs and say, “They’re greedy. They’re motivated by money.” If you look up the definition of entrepreneur, it’s going to tell you somebody who takes a risk in exchange for a profit. I think that’s misguided.
First of all, it doesn’t sound to me like you’re taking big risks, number one. You’re not gambling big sums of money or jumping off a cliff. You beautifully articulated the human side of this. It was an expression of yourself. Money is something that helps you survive, but it doesn’t sound to me like it was your primary driver. Maybe you stumbled into that deeper level of motivation accidentally.
That comment of that guy saying, “You didn’t make this. I’m not interested,” somebody nudged you. Whether you know it or not, they nudged you into a domain where you stepped into the most potent form of human motivation known to man. It’s called intrinsic motivation, which means the task itself is the reward. What people don’t get is that the entrepreneur is unconsciously stumbling into that arena. You have a superpower. You have an enormous advantage over somebody who’s doing exactly what you’re doing, but they’re doing it for the money.
That’s not fun. It has never been for the money because there were nights when I was not making any money. I can remember I made Tuscan pasta with some meat, which I can’t remember. Nobody came and bought it. That’s one I vividly remember, but there were plenty of nights like that. I could have stopped, but it’s not that I didn’t sell out, where nobody came after cooking.
I could have stopped because it is disheartening when that happens. You feel like you wasted money, time, and energy. It mentally bothers you. I didn’t stop because I didn’t believe that meant this wasn’t going to work. Missing out on some money that night didn’t mean I wasn’t ever going to make any again. I don’t know what the internal drive was to keep going.
There are so many people I know around my age who may have started this business. The thing about it is they’ll start this business, and they’ll go ahead and do the big stuff, like get an LLC. They’d be like, “I got an LLC. I got a logo. Let me do a professional photo shoot and all of this.” They’ll do all the visuals of it, but they are not even committed to it.
There are two types of people out here that’s stepping into entrepreneurship. There are people who desire the real gratification of fulfilling a customer’s needs or doing something purposeful that makes them feel good, and then there are these people or these other “entrepreneurs” who are doing it for the look to say, “I did this.”
The posers.
When you make something from your own hands that takes time and effort, set it a certain value and keep it there no matter what. Share on XIt’s crazy. Time is going to set these people apart. There are so many people in college who would talk to me and be like, “We are doing this thing,” and I could already see, “You don’t even show up for your business. You don’t show up for your business when nobody else shows up.” When I say that, I mean, “Nobody is buying from you. Nobody is reposting your flyers. You stop showing up for it, so you don’t care about it.” I did. I’m not going to lie.
Let me know what you think about this. I’ve interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs all over the planet. There is a simple, subtle secret that’s hiding in plain sight, and it goes like this. The people who focus on themselves miss opportunities every day. The people who figure out how they can use their interests, strengths, or abilities to solve problems for other people become unstoppable. That’s what the Ice House book was about, my first book. It’s about Uncle Cleve understanding, “By solving problems for other people, I can empower myself.”
You wrote Who Owns the Ice House? I’ve seen that book before, too. That’s cool.
I wrote that with Clifton Taulbert.
That’s crazy. I did not know you wrote that book because I’ve seen that book and heard about it on TikTok or Instagram before I met you. I didn’t know you wrote it.
You can give me your address. After we’re all done, I’ll send you a signed copy from Clifton and me as a small token of gratitude for being on this show.
I appreciate it.
I want people to understand that you are trying to give of yourself in ways that are useful to other people. I like what you said because that can be helpful to a lot of people. Forget about the LLC. Forget about the logo. Forget about what the website looks like. This is entrepreneur lingo, but start with a minimally viable product. Start making Sunday dinners out of your dorm kitchen and see if people like it.
I said this in my new book. I started when I was in my twenties. I failed in one business and had to start over. I strapped a ladder on the roof of my car and went knocking on doors up in rich neighborhoods where I’m not from, offering to clean the leaves out of people’s gutters. Ten years later, I was doing $5 million in revenue, and it wasn’t cleaning gutters. It evolved from there. You start solving problems. You start interacting with people and focusing on what other people need and how you can solve for that. Nobody cares about what you like to do. That’s an important part of your story that is important about the entrepreneur journey.
When you say evolved, Karter Kitchen has evolved. I do more speaking engagements. Within the past few months, I’ve done more speaking engagements than I have hands-on cooking, which is crazy.
Are you charging for those?
I haven’t, but I was thinking about how I need to start up another completely different entity with me speaking because I have been speaking for free. A lot of people tell me, “Don’t do anything for free.” I know that I’m a great speaker. I know that’s an eternal gift, too, but that could have been cultivated through Karter Kitchen, marketing, all of this stuff, and putting myself out there.
I could see that evolving into something also. You can do both. You don’t have to pick one or the other. You should be charging for that. You have a lot to say. You’re onto something. Your voice and message can help a lot of people, which is why it was exciting to have you on the show in the first place.
Thank you. That’s kind of you to say. Encouraging, too. That is great advice to start charging because that’s real.
Kelsey’s Academic Experiences
I got a bunch more questions for you, but part of what I want to say is, have you ever read anything from Abraham Maslow while you were in college?
No, I’m not a good reader. I’m sorry.
It’s okay. He’s a psychologist. He died in the ‘60s. What he would say to his students is, “Unless you plan on being all that you can become, you should plan on being unhappy all the days of your life.” We’re only 45 minutes into this conversation. What I’m seeing before me is Kelsey Carter, but what I’m really seeing is a human being trying to become all that she can become.
The entrepreneurial mindset comes from being in the entrepreneurial arena. It’s not the driver of it. The cause of entrepreneurial behavior is this self-actualizing tendency. There’s something inside you that’s pushing you to do that in the same way that if you step outside, you see a little plant growing in the cracks in the asphalt. It’s the same thing. What did you go to college for? Tell me what. What did you study?
I went to college to get out of the house.
Were your parents college graduates?
No.
You’re the first?
Yeah.
Soul Food: If you cannot show up for your business, nobody else will.
Were you a good student in high school?
When you say good student, are you talking about academically or behavior-wise?
Either one. The way you asked that question, come on. Let’s start with the academic first, and then let’s get real.
Academically, I’ve always been smart. I’ve never made Cs or Fs or failed anything. That’s because, first of all, my parents didn’t play that. It was a standard. If they didn’t care about my grades, I probably would’ve been in that lower percentile, but I’ve always been an A or B student. Academically, I was a good student.
What about behaviorally?
Behaviorally, no.
Tell me more about that. I’m not judging you.
It’s okay. Growing up, I would always get the note saying, “She’s bossy.” There was always a little talk about that, and not sharing. These are things I dealt with in my younger years. I can remember getting in trouble for not wanting to share my Green Eggs and Ham book by Dr. Seuss. That was the same book I got every day during reading time. I can remember this girl grabbing me, and I was like, “Why would she do that?” I got in trouble for that. As I got older, I would wander around the hallways and never sit in my classroom.
You’re resisting conformity or the system. I hear that a lot from entrepreneurs. They got sent home with notes, like, “They talk too much. They’re too chatty. They’re not focused.” It’s not natural to sit still. It’s natural to have your mind wander. It’s natural to want to talk to the people around you.
That’s very natural.
I could go off on this, but attention deficit disorder, and then they medicate kids for that? It’s not a disorder. Little kids aren’t meant to sit in a school desk all day and stare at a teacher lecturing them. They’re supposed to be playing outside, thinking, talking, building things, and working stuff out.
I’ve looked at several documentaries about the school system and where it originated from. It’s never been there to help us.
It’s never been about flourishing. It’s about how to get a good job.
That’s horrible.
I think so. I was walking on a beach in LA a couple of months ago. These two kids, who are 14 years old, came walking right out of the ocean with flippers, a mask on, and a mesh bag full of lobsters. It isn’t surf pounding. These little kids came crawling right out of the ocean with a bag of lobsters, a mask, and fins, not scuba. I was like, “What are you guys doing?” I stopped them, and I started asking them. They were all excited. They were telling me that what they do every day after school is they come down here, they get 4 or 5 lobsters, and sell them for $100.
That’s lit. I can’t lie.
I asked them, “How did you guys learn how to do this?” One of them pointed to the other one and said, “He taught me.” That’s how humans learn. For hundreds of thousands of years, that’s how humans learn. I asked these kids, “Is there anything you’re learning in school that’s this exciting to you?” They looked at each other, looked back at me, and said, “No.” That’s the real crime. People don’t understand that learning is supposed to be fun.
It should be fun.
How Failures Can Lead To The Right Answers
I want to come back to something here that you said a few minutes ago. A lot of your experiments didn’t work. In my new book, I call this micro-experimenting. That’s what you were doing. You weren’t taking big risks. You were using your spare time to try things. A lot of the things you tried didn’t work. Whether you know it or not, the micro failures led you closer to the right answers.
I think that all of those little micro experiments led up to something bigger, and it’s going to continue to evolve. I brought up the speaking thing with Karter Kitchen. One of the main desserts I made for Karter Kitchen was banana pudding. That has turned into its own thing, which is Nana Pudding Co. Nana Pudding Co. is taking baby steps compared to Karter Kitchen, which are giant steps.
Profit-wise and exposure-wise, it’s completely different. With Karter Kitchen, I’m doing it myself with Instagram, walking around, foot traction, and word of mouth on campus. With Nana Pudding Co., my first exposure was being invited to Coffee and Conversation, which is a monthly event that the Carroll County Chambers of Commerce has. They invited me to come and speak about my latest business venture, which they don’t know is my latest one. They’re not aware of Karter Kitchen and all these other things. They know me as Nana Pudding. Co.
Since I had an LLC with Karter Kitchen, I was like, “I’m going to open up a virtual storefront on DoorDash.” I make one thing, which is banana pudding, at my apartment. People place orders through DoorDash, and I hand the order off to a Dasher. They give it to the customer. That is growing pretty fast and is going to continue to grow. I’m ready to see what that evolves to.
You triggered another thought here. What I’m trying to say to people is that if you go to a job where somebody else is telling you what to do and they’re paying you to do it, your brain evolves differently. I am not saying good or bad. Let’s keep it neutral. Maybe I am saying a little bit. What I’m hearing in your story that I want to point out to our readers is that your brain is always thinking about, “What’s next? How could we find more people? How could we improve this? How could we grow it?” It’s like the DoorDash thing, the ghost kitchen thing, a pop-up, or however you described it.
Soul Food: Entrepreneurs must be able to overcome embarrassment, failure, and fear.
In psychology, they call that the default mode. Even when you’re sleeping or you think your brain is at rest, it’s not. Your subconscious brain is solving it. That’s why when you’re doing laundry, washing dishes, or taking a shower, all of a sudden, an idea pops out. It’s because the default brain’s been trying to solve for it. Do you see what I’m saying?
That makes sense.
It’s even deeper than that. When you’re engaged in this self-directed behavior and you’re orienting yourself towards a future that’s better than the present, that unconscious process allows you to access problem-solving abilities that you otherwise do not have access to. In my theory, what’s happened is you stumbled into a circumstance that’s turning on your superpowers without you even knowing about it. It’s activating cognitive abilities you might not otherwise have access to. It’s tapping into a most potent form of motivation, so you keep going even when it’s not working. I have a question. Did you take any entrepreneur courses at any point in your journey?
No. I don’t even know where that fits. I didn’t. I did do the entrepreneurial bootcamp as part of West Georgia. That was not long ago. I did that.
You were already going when you did that, like you were already in motion?
Yeah. By the time I did that, I had already catered a handful of stuff. I already catered for a baby shower, sorority, birthday parties, and all of this stuff.
Was any of that helpful to you, or do you feel like it was like you were beyond it?
Honestly, it’s so crazy because it was a competition. I was not thinking I was going to win at all. No place, especially not winning first place. I didn’t think that. I could see when I entered the room, other people who were on campus and running a small business had this look of not fear, as if I’m going to beat them up, but a sense of competition or intimidation, almost.
Did people know you had a reputation for getting stuff done?
Yeah, most definitely. I’m not even going to lie. West Georgia is a small campus. If somebody is doing anything different, everybody is talking about it.
You had a reputation for standing out already.
Yeah.
What were you studying?
When I came to college, the first thing I took up was psychology. In my head, I was going to get a psychology degree and open up a retreat. From there, I switched to early childhood education. In my head, I said, “I’m going to open up a daycare.” From there, I went into business. They were talking about some capitalists, and I was like, “I don’t have time for that.” I switched to communication and marketing. That’s what I ended with. When I think about everything I did, I think about how I could open it up into a business.
That’s an interesting way to go to college, instead of thinking about, “What can I learn that can help me be more useful in my own business?” versus, “What job can I get?” That underlying assumption is powerful. There’s a big difference. Do you feel like you got your money’s worth out of school? Do you feel like you got the most out of the experience?
Yeah. I loved it. It grew me in every way. I feel like being in college has grown my social skills, confidence, boldness, entrepreneurship skills, advertising skills, and thinking capacity. A lot of my peers were like, “I’ve got to get an internship.” I wasn’t thinking about that. I was like, “Why would I get an internship?”
Guiding People How To Eat Right
You created your own internship. Did you just graduate?
Yeah, I graduated not long ago.
What are you doing now?
I’m running Nana Pudding Co., growing that, and scaling that as hard as possible. From the competition, the person who was the director of that became my business mentor. He’s guiding me because it’s stuff that I’m not aware of. He’s teaching me about what’s beneficial and the financial side. Once you’re trying to scale to a larger capacity, you do need to know about finances. Don’t get me wrong. It’s still about the passion you have and how you want to help others, but if you’re running a business, at the end of the day, you have to be aware of the numbers and make sure that you have a business, not a side hobby. He’s helping me with that side.
Is that Raja?
Yeah, Raja.
I’ve known him for ten years.
Once you are trying to scale your business to a larger capacity, stick to your passion and mission without neglecting your numbers. Make sure you are not losing your business in the process. Share on XRaja is awesome. When I first started the bootcamp, I didn’t like Raja at all, and I feel like he didn’t like me. I told him. As time went on, people fell off. It started with twenty-something people, and then it went down to eight. On the day of the competition, only six people performed. By that time, though, Raja and I had grown this connection because he saw my devotion and my entrepreneurship beyond what you’re telling me to do.
Once we got close, I was like, “Raja, I didn’t like you.” He was like, “I’m not in the business of people liking me.” I liked that response. He has been cool ever since. He pushes me beyond, “This is what I’m here to do. This is what I got to do.” He’s passionate about my business and me scaling it because he sees not only my mindset about it, but also the actual growth or potential growth of my business. We’re focusing on Nana Pudding Co.
I got a server job at a restaurant in Buckhead because it doesn’t require a lot of mental capacity. I don’t have any energy or space to waste any of my mental time on a job. In a server position, I’m naturally cool. I’m naturally not scared of people. I naturally know how to socialize with people, so it’s easy for me. It’s a little wear and tear on the body.
Are you still building Karter Kitchen? Are you still growing that?
Yeah, I am. As you know from the luncheon, Karter Kitchen’s whole purpose is serving healthy soul food. It takes time because it takes real research and real trial and error. I’m still growing it. I realize I have to go into a deeper level of simple research concerning ingredients and all of this stuff, and still ensure that the flavor is there, which is hard.
I’ll think, “I’m using this seasoning. This seasoning said it doesn’t have any of this,” but it’ll still have it. That’s not the point of Karter Kitchen. I want Karter Kitchen to be healthy food that doesn’t diminish soul food, and is still good for your body. I feel like Karter Kitchen is one of those mustard seed types of growth. Mustard seeds are small, but they grow into one of the largest trees ever. That’s a forever-growing thing. I’m not giving up on it, though, because I have such a strong dedication to Karter Kitchen. That’s never going anywhere.
My wife and I were in La Jolla, California, a couple of months ago. I met a family. These people were very wealthy. They were looking at buying a $7,000 dining room table. They had a catering business. That’s what people don’t understand. You can make yourself a millionaire with a catering business. It’s not some little side hustle thing. That can become something significant.
I interviewed people who are multimillionaires who started a cleaning business with a couple of hundred dollars. People tend to overemphasize the high-tech startup, venture-backed entrepreneur invents something, but they don’t realize that’s a tiny fraction of entrepreneurship. Most entrepreneurs are not inventing anything new, per se. They’re doing something that’s already being done in a creative, inventive way. That sounds like exactly what you’re doing.
There is nothing new about soul food, but that approach is not only necessary, but it’s creative. Soul food is healing people.
I could see it.
I was even listening to a man. He was saying that growing up, everybody’s mama was fat. He was like, “If your mama wasn’t fat, I didn’t think your mama was real, or I didn’t think that was your mama.” Growing up in the south, everybody’s mama is fat. Everybody’s mama is fat because of the food that’s normalized that we eat. It’s a huge, necessary cause and endeavor that Karter Kitchen is taking on at the right time because people are waking up to the horrible impact of eating unhealthy and wanting to pivot towards eating healthy. It makes all the difference. It makes a difference in your physical appearance. It makes a difference in your mental health, even your emotions. There have been studies of how eating junk food and all this stuff has an impact on you if you’re dealing with depression, suicide, and laziness.
We did a training in Arkansas. I forgot what city. It doesn’t matter. We were doing a training for a nonprofit. I saw these ladies showing up in the morning, and they were serving donuts for breakfast. I watched them. An hour later, they were like nodding off. We were in a room with 10 to 12 people. It’s not a big auditorium. These people who were eating the donuts are morbidly obese. I’m wondering, “Do you even realize the correlation between that donut you ate 45 minutes ago and why you can’t keep your eyes open right now?”
I don’t know if they even do, or it could be that they do realize it. Processed food has chemicals in it to make you addicted to it. This is why it’s so crucial because it has chemicals in it to make you addicted to it. As you try to attempt to pull away from processed food or eating unhealthy, you have to also battle addiction. Most people are not even aware of that. It’s making it ten times harder. People are dying because of addiction.
Here’s how I make it 100 times harder. Not only are you battling addiction, but you’re pushing against cultural dynamics because everybody around you is doing the same thing.
If you try to say something like, “I’m not going to eat that,” they’d be like, “We’ve been eating this. We eat like this.” Growing up, I heard stuff like, “She’s big-boned.” She’s obese because she grew up eating this. I’m not going to lie. I’m going to say Black people because I don’t even know the word. I might use the wrong word. Black people put cornbread inside the baby’s milk. Why are we doing that? It’s extremely crazy. If you try to speak against that, the person will become offended.
You’ve got to fight against the cultural norm. You’re lowkey battling addiction. You’ve got to reconstruct your taste buds. You’ve got to reconstruct your mind, because when you get a lot of processed food that tastes so good, it’ll shoot off like dopamine levels in your mind. We’ve made this a normal thing, too, not just in the Black community. We’re like, “I’m sad or I’m heartbroken, so I’m going to eat cream and stuff,” because food can make you feel good. It’s not even necessary for social. It’s necessary for people to be educated about food in itself, the real impact it has on people, why you are eating that much, or why you are eating that.
Surrounding Yourself With The Right People
I gave up drugs and alcohol many years ago. In September 2025, it will be 40 years. I experienced exactly that. My friends are ridiculing me. They’re like, “What do you mean you’re not drinking?” I was not only combating the addictive nature of it. Being drunk or being high feels good at the moment. Everybody around me is doing it. They’re telling me something is wrong with me if I’m not doing it. I had to find different friends.
That’s a part of entrepreneurship, too. Entrepreneurship has to do with every part of you. You have to go against the grain mentally and socially. Your friend circle will change. I don’t have any of the same friends I had since I started my business. There are all these factors. Not only will they get offended that you’re doing something different, but they will be embarrassed by you.
First of all, if you start a small business, it almost looks like you are dying for an extra dollar. If your own close family and friends won’t repost your stuff, that has an impact on your emotions. Once you start to get some traction, they’ll have to deal with jealousy. You can feel that. Entrepreneurship or wanting to change anyways.
I’m going to pivot. In one of my speaking engagements, they wanted me to teach a class on entrepreneurship for the UWG Honors College. I had called my dad. One thing my dad did that was pretty lame growing up was that he was always pushing me to be in the honor classes and stuff. I was like, “None of that stuff matters.” I called him and was like, “I’m teaching a class as the teacher to the Honors College, and I’m not even an honors student. Finally, this stuff matters.” It was a flex moment. I love my dad. He’s playful.
I taught them about entrepreneurship, but I did not focus on numbers, coming up with a deal, or anything. I said entrepreneurship skills are mandatory. I focused on the mindset if you’re an entrepreneur and the emotions that you have to be able to overcome. You have to be able to overcome embarrassment, failure, and fear. There is no way you can be an entrepreneur and be bound by those things.
If you get embarrassed and that causes you to stop, you’re not going to be able to do entrepreneurship. If you fail and that causes you to stop, you are not going to be able to do it. If you battle with rejection and somebody tells you no, and that shuts you down, you’re not going to be able to be an entrepreneur. I focused on those things.
Mentally, I focused on being confident. You have to be confident unless you’re going to have somebody else on your team who has the confidence that you lack, but you have the knowledge and the skill. We can be in a partnership like that out here as well, but it’s best to have both if you don’t have anybody else rocking with you.
Food is the fuel of the body, not just pleasure. Share on XI also spoke on friendships. The other one was the social part of entrepreneurship. If you don’t have friends who are going to motivate you, encourage you, or even support you, they have to go. It depends on how much you care about them because a real friend wouldn’t do that anyway. Most people are afraid of change.
Most people who are out here, entrepreneurs, if their best friend from college, their best friend from childhood, or even their cousin who they’re super close to don’t support them, they don’t do it because they’re not willing to sacrifice that comfort or that safety for the greater advantage of whatever the gift inside of them is.
We’re social creatures. That’s a human thing that we want to go along. Thousands of years ago, if you deviated from the group, they would kick you out of the group. You’re going to die.
That’s true.
I so appreciate what you’re saying. It’s like biology. If you are not behaving like everybody else in a social group, they’re either going to try to get you to conform to their way of doing things, or they’re going to reject you from the group. That’s what you’re saying. It’s not that you’re out there all by yourself, but what you said is that you have to find a new group. Maybe you’ve got to walk in the desert for a few days by yourself.
I’ve always noticed this. Going into social events, I’ll walk up to a crowd of 2 or 3 people talking, and I’ll listen for a minute. I have a filter. I’d be like, “Are they talking about news, weather, and sports? Are they talking about events?” Even if they are, sometimes, I’ll stand there for a moment, try to drop an idea, which is a deeper level of thinking, and see if they pick it up, or if they go, “Huh?” and keep going back to the news, weather, and sports, and I’ll mosey on.
That’s so crazy.
What it comes down to, though, is if you’re working in a job where someone else is telling you what to do, you’re going to use all your discretionary time to talk about news, weather, and sports. If you’re an entrepreneur and you believe you’re in charge of your own destiny, you want to find other people and ask them, “What can I learn from you? What ideas are you working on? How can we help each other? How can we grow?” It’s all mindset stuff. It’s deep.
That’s crazy. To have more money to invest in my company, I have to work these jobs that don’t require me to build any type of connection with my coworkers. When I’m at work, the amount of malarkey talk that I hear is crazy. I was at work, and I heard them talking about some rapper. They knew so much about him. I was going to make a post. I’ve been wanting to post my thoughts sometimes, but I’m like, “Nah.” I never do it. I’m like, “That’s too much.”
I was thinking about how people will know more about what a celebrity likes and dislikes, how they got to where they are, their family members, and deep trauma stuff. They don’t know all of this about a celebrity, but don’t even know it about themselves. They don’t even know what they are truly like. They don’t know what their true skill is, what their gift is, what their advantage is, what they don’t like, or what their trauma is. They don’t even know this stuff about themselves, but know it about a celebrity. That is so mind-blowing to me.
You get a new circle. You have to, because that type of stuff will make you feel like you’re crazy when you want to think about yourself, how you’re going to do this, or how you’re going to build this, expound on this, grow in this area, or even change your way of thinking. If nobody around you is thinking like that, you’ll start to feel like you’re crazy.
I was willing to take the risk. All my friends are entrepreneurs. My closest friend, Miracle, is a doula. She is going to open up her own midwifery center. My other friend, who is a fitness coach, has her own fitness clothing line. My other friend sells desserts strictly. You’ll find your people because you’re not the only one out there like that. You’ve got to be willing to accept those changes.
I wrote about that in Ice House. That’s another thing entrepreneurs do that they don’t realize they’re doing. The people around you have an enormous effect on your behavior. What research shows is that it’s not just your immediate friends. The friends of your friends have an impact on you. If your friends’ friends’ friends smoke cigarettes or are obese, you are way more likely to smoke cigarettes or be obese. It’s freakish. By contrast, if you’re surrounded by people who are forward-oriented, who are trying to grow something, and who are trying to be self-aware, that has a super positive effect on you. The rising tide lifts all boats. Clifton and I wrote about that in Ice House. It’s powerful.
I don’t know what’s going on. I’m still having a problem following along with the gym, but hopefully, it’ll fall into me soon. If I didn’t have those friends, I probably would be fatter than I am because my old friends didn’t care about their physical well-being or appearance. They always taught, “Love how you look,” and stuff like that. It’s deeper than that.
Eating Food Not Just For Pleasure
It’s got to be deeper than that. It can’t be superficial. I feel like you’re hitting all the wickets here without any prompting from me. It’s blowing me away. What’s interesting to me, and we tripped into it but didn’t get into it deep enough, is that the purpose of what you’re doing is deeper than just Karter Kitchen. It’s about you trying to impact change on a broader level, like health, and helping people be more aware of the food they put in their bodies and how it’s affecting them. Do I have that right?
Yeah.
You say, “Yeah,” but I took an hour to get there. You’re taking your gift, your love of food, the influence of your father, and your ability to cook, and using them for something more than making money. There is a social component.
That’s going to come with it, but that’s not the whole point. I’m firsthand aware of the impact of eating unhealthily. I even saw a change within myself. I can vividly remember one week I decided to eat only fresh foods. It’s hard to do that when you’re in college. You’re super busy, and you’ve got college student money. I could see the difference in my energy levels. It was completely different. I had energy. Every time you are done eating, in the Black community, there is a term called the itis. You get the itis. You get sleepy after you eat. When I was eating fresh food, I was not sleepy after I ate.
Referring back to the book that I always read, which is the Holy Bible, it talks about how food is for fuel and not for pleasure. That changed my mind, too. I’m like, “When you eat food, it’s supposed to give you energy.” That makes sense because if you don’t eat, you’ll die. Especially in America, the concept of food is for celebration, to make you feel good, and for pleasure, but food isn’t supposed to be for pleasure. Food is supposed to be fuel for your body. Your body takes this stuff in and gives you the ability to think well and have a great physical performance.
It is about maximizing your potential.
Food has to do with a lot of it.
My wife would love what you’re saying. She works in functional medicine. Functional medicine is root cause medicine. They don’t give you a prescription. They look at your stress, your diet, your sleep, and so forth. They recommend a lifestyle change. Part of the recommendation is what they call an elimination diet. You take the dairy, red meat, sugar, gluten, and pasta out of your life for 60 or 90 days, see how you feel, and then start adding them back in one at a time. People notice, like, “Whoa.”
That’s not even for question. It’s the way that we’ve been prone to think about food. We don’t question it. When we think about celebrating, it is immediately like, “Let’s go to dinner.” It’s always around food. That’s not what food is. If we ate the right food that was for our bodies, most people, first of all, wouldn’t be obese. It’s not just because they’re not eating unhealthy food. They wouldn’t be obese because food wouldn’t be in their head as a pleasurable or comforting thing.
Soul Food: Be willing to do something even if it requires you to break the rules and go out of societal norms.
Food is almost supposed to be like water or air. It’s essential for you to live, but it’s not something that you are supposed to be overindulging in or find some type of pleasure from. If you do, that’s when we have increased heart disease, stroke, diabetes, high cholesterol, cancer, and even obesity. You have the wrong definition of what food is in your mind, and it’s not supposed to be that. Food is supposed to be air or water.
I love that. To be fair, it’s not clear. It’s not easy to put the cause-and-effect correlation together for people. That’s why the elimination diet is so important. You take the stuff out and start feeling better. You put it back in, and then you start to see, “The lady can’t understand why I had three donuts. Now, I can’t keep my eyes open at 10:30 in the morning.” It’s not obvious.
I appreciate that perspective. In my head, that’s overly obvious, but it’s not if you don’t think about it.
That’s what I’m saying. Part of what you’re trying to do is increase awareness.
That’s what I was saying earlier. It’s important for Karter Kitchen to have the physical alternative, like, “This is unhealthy. Here’s an alternative,” but it’s even more important that people become educated on what food is and the impact of eating unhealthy food. A lot of people don’t know the impact of it because it’s a slow killer.
That’s right. It’s not like you eat the wrong thing and you crash your car and wind up in the ER. It’s like smoking cigarettes. You don’t know which cigarette caused cancer.
Which shot of alcohol caused you to become a hack.
Which piece of cheesecake pushed you over the top.
I’m sorry. My store opened at 6:00.
You got to go?
Not at this moment, but probably about 4:00 or 5:00.
Taking Action No Matter What
Let’s wrap it up. I so appreciate your time. I love this story. I can’t wait to share it with the world. What have you learned about yourself with your entrepreneurial venture?
I learned about myself that I’m not willing to conform even if I’m afraid to do what anybody else isn’t doing or even what’s being promoted not to do. I know that if it’s going to have a better profit, and by profit, I don’t mean financially, but I’m talking about mentally within me, and it makes me feel more joyful, I’m willing to do it even if that requires breaking rules or going out of societal norms. One thing I’ve learned about myself is that even when I’m afraid, I’ll still do it.
I’ve also learned that being the odd one out or not having a reputation for showing up and doing the best or standing out is who I am. It’s not something that I had to fight for. It’s not something that I had to train myself on, like how I had to train myself on overcoming embarrassment or rejection. That stuff, I had to train myself on. Standing out, being that person in the room who automatically questions, “Why are we doing this?” or getting it right, and being the one who wins, that’s who I am.
I don’t take a lot of losses. That’s why when I did take losses, I had to train myself, like, “You lost, but it doesn’t mean you stop or give up.” I hope that makes sense. I don’t know if I’m using the right word, but it’s in me to start the new wave of thinking or ask the question. If it’s like, “Class, I want you to do this,” or, “You are going to do this,” I’m asking why. My asking why helps the other people ask why, those who wanted to, or even weren’t aware that they wanted to.
I would call it being the odd one out. I remember growing up, a lot of people would call me weird, and it started bothering me. I remember I told my dad, and he was like, “Do you know what weird means?” I was like, “No.” He was like, “It is not being able to fit into a specific or a certain category.” I was like, “I’m glad I’m weird.” Being weird is who I am. It has been my advantage. That’s what I learned about myself on some stuff. Some things I would have to think deeper about.
That’s a great answer. Keep being weird. I love your story. You have so much to offer. I’ve interviewed so many entrepreneurs. I can see over the arc. You’re going to be successful. It doesn’t matter what you do. What you reminded me of in this conversation is all mindset. It doesn’t matter where you start. It’s the mindset.
I love that. Everybody has a mind, and they can set it.
Get In Touch With Kelsey
When you were talking a minute ago, I was thinking about what you were saying. I thought you were imitating something Plato said. The unexamined life is not worth living. Thanks so much for doing this. If people want to reach out to you, learn more about Karter Kitchen, or if they want to hire you to speak at an event, how can people get ahold of you?
If you want to get ahold of me concerning any food endeavors, my email is KarterKitchen001@gmail.com. My Instagram is @Karter_KitchenLLC. If you want to contact me for speaking engagements, it is Kelsey6228@gmail.com. Either one of those emails will be beneficial for you.
Thanks so much for being on the show.
Thank you. Anytime I’m able to talk about entrepreneurship, it opens my mind in that arena, and I dig in because it lights the fire in me.