The Builder: Entrepreneurship, Layered Love Gourmet, and What It Actually Takes.

 Building something from nothing costs more than money. It costs certainty. In this episode, Kendra Tamika talks about the real story behind Layered Love Gourmet, what she learned from losing her first food business during COVID, and why the rebuild is better than anything she made before. She also breaks down The 100 Method, the framework she created for anyone who wants to build something real without waiting for perfect conditions. 

Layered Love Gourmet


Remember Her Publishing


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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, hello, it's Kendra Tamika again with Layered Love Universe. Welcome to episode four. But before we get into it, let's talk about the technical difficulties I have been facing. And just a little bit of self-doubt. This journey, you have to check in with yourself several times to make sure that you're not allowing that to overtake you on your journey. So I listened to my last three episodes, and I need to work on my editing. But while I'm in the process of perfecting that, we're going to continue on. We're going to record our episodes, we're going to upload them, and you'll see the journey as my editing gets better and better. But until then, let's get into episode four. So today we're talking about the builder. And I really have been looking forward to this one because the builder is the part of me that I cannot see a blank space without immediately thinking about what could go there. It is a blessing and occasionally a logical challenge. My family would describe it differently, probably, but this is my podcast, so we're going to go with it's a blessing. The builder is the entrepreneur, the systems thinker, the person who wakes up with ideas and cannot rest until there is at least a rough plan for half of them. The person who looks at a setback and after a reasonable amount of frustration and possibly some dramatic sighing, starts asking, what can be built from this? That has always been me. And today I want to take you into what that actually looks like from the inside. Not the version where it all worked out, the full version, including the parts where it absolutely did not. Here's what no one tells you about building something from nothing. Nobody tells you this because people who know it are too busy building at the time to sit down and explain it to the people who have not done it yet and those that can't imagine it. But building from nothing costs more than just money. It costs your certainty. It costs the comfortable feeling of knowing what is coming next. It costs the ability to make a five-year plan and actually believe what you created. It costs the version of yourself that needs external validation before she feels confident moving forward. Because when you are building something that does not exist yet, there is no roadmap. You are on who you can call and ask about what comes next, especially if you didn't grow up in that environment and you don't have people in your circle to talk to. There is just you, your vision, and the gap between where you are and where you want to go. So that gap is where most people give up. And trust me, I understand completely why I talk to myself in the mirror about should I keep going sometimes? It's up to you to overcome that. It is an uncomfortable place to live. It is full of uncertainty and doubt, and the very specific kind of exhaustion that comes from not being able to see clearly how far you have left to go. But here's what I know about the gap. There are things happening inside even when you cannot see them. Skills are developing, relationships are forming, your instincts are getting sharper, your tolerance for uncertainty is growing. You're becoming the person who will be able to run the thing that you are trying to build. And that becoming cannot happen anywhere except in that gap. You have to live in that discomfort long enough for it to become your operating environment. And then one day you look up and realize that insert that uncertainty that used to paralyze you is just the normal texture of the work now. You did not eliminate the uncertainty, you just grew around it. That is the most honest thing I can tell you about what it takes to build something from nothing. You do not wait until the uncertainty is gone, you build in spite of. Building becomes the thing that makes you feel certain. You start to gain that trust in yourself and in what you're building. So let's talk about the full story of how layered love gourmet came about. I told you in episode one about my food business. Let's go deeper on that today because the full story matters for what I'm building now. So my food business grew from my home kitchen into specialty retail. That trajectory, home kitchen to central market shelves, and then to closing the business and then rebranding and building something new. It happened because of consistency and an undeniable product and a buyer, of course, with excellent taste. It did not happen because I had a sophisticated business strategy. It happened because I showed up every single week with something real and people kept responding to it. And of course, then COVID happened. And here's what I want to tell you about that loss that I did not have the perspective to say when I was inside it. When my business closed, I had two choices in terms of the story I told myself about it. One story was I failed. I built something and I could not sustain it. And that means something damning about my ability and my judgment and whether I should try again. But the other story was I learned. It's just what happened. The first story kept me stuck. The second story set me free to build again. So I chose the second story. Not immediately, not without grief. I grieved that business the way you grieved something that you poured yourself into. I let myself feel that. And then I asked, what did I learn? What did I know? What do I know now that I did not know before? What would I do differently? And what is the smarter version of this? So layered love gourmet is the answer to all of those questions. It is everything I learned the first time, applied with intention the second time. The brand identity is intentional in a way that the first business never was. The aesthetic is dark and editorial and rich because I wanted you to open a box from Lay Love Gourmet and feel like you received something genuinely luxurious. The pricing reflects the quality and the craft. The distribution strategy is built for scale in a way that my first business was not. And I'm so excited to be going through this journey again with the knowledge that I had from building and failing and building again. So that when I relaunch Layer Love, I'm truly happy of what it is right now and what it is becoming. And the banana pudding, we definitely need to talk about the banana pudding for a moment because it deserves its own moment. But this is a from scratch real vanilla bean layers built with hands of someone who has been doing this for 20 years. A woman told me once it tastes like a hug. I wrote that on a sticky note and I put it on my refrigerator. It's still there. This is what I am making. Go to layeredlovegourmet.com and change your life. Change your taste buds. Trust me, you'll be welcome. Let's pivot. I want to talk about the 100 method because it is the framework behind how I built most of what I built, and I think it is the most accessible thing I have ever created for people who want to build something but cannot figure out how to find the time. The premise of it is simple: 100 minutes a day, 100 days, one goal. And after this seven-day sprint and may completes with our three vlog episodes, you'll see me utilize it in real time and building my podcast channel as well as my YouTube channel. We'll be going through the 100 method and building it out for both platforms. And you'll see me walk through the 100 method in real time, things that I've done time and time again with different goals in my life. So, like I said, it's a simple premise. It's 100 minutes a day, 100 days, one goal. Not eight hours a day, not quitting your job, not a complete restruction of your life before you're allowed to start. 100 minutes, that is one hour and 40 minutes. Most people spend more time on scrolling than they do with getting out of bed. And I do say that without judgment because trust me, I have been that person, and some days I am still that person. Where I look up and be like, girl, you have been scrolling for two hours. What can you be doing with your time? But I also have to give myself grace in those moments because sometimes we do need to rest and not feel guilty about rest. But here's what I know about why most people do not make progress on their goals. It is not motivation. Motivation is actually not the problem. Most people are motivated. Most people genuinely want the thing that they say that they want. The problem is margin. They do not have a protected block of time dedicated to the goal. They are working on it reactively in the leftover minutes when everything else is handled, and the leftover minutes are almost never enough and never reliable. Let's take a drink. I use the 100 method to write my first book. I used it to develop the Layer Love Gourmet product line. I use it to build out the Remember Her Publishing catalog. And I'm using it right now to build out the Layer Love Universe content strategy. And you'll see that in real time. The book and the planner are both available at rememberherpublishing.com. The book walks through the full methodology. The planner gives you the daily structure to actually track your 100 minutes across 100 days. Together, they are a complete system. And if you want to watch the method in action in real time, stay tuned for June. So I will be doing it publicly to where you see me actually living out the actual 100 method. So let's pivot back into what I know about building now. Let's close this episode with what I know now that I didn't know when I started building things. First, you do not build something once. You build it, and sometimes you lose it, and then you build it again better. The second version is always more intentional. The third version is when you really hit your stride. The loss in between those versions is not a detour from the path, it is the path. Second, the best builders are not the ones who never doubt. They are the ones who learn to doubt and build at the same time. Doubt is not a sign that you should stop. It is a sign to care enough about what you are building to take it seriously. Feel it and keep going. Third, ask for help earlier than feels comfortable. I spent way too many years trying to figure everything out alone because asking felt like admitting I did not know something. I did not know things. Nobody knows everything. The builders who grow fast are the ones who identify their gaps quickly and fill them with people who are better at those things than they are. That's why I'm looking for an editor now, because that's just not my ministry. So if you know any editors that edit podcasts or YouTubes, have them drop a comment or just drop me a line. And then fourth, build for the person you are becoming, not just the person you are right now. The version of layered love gourmet I am building today is sized for who I am going to be in three years, who I am going to be in five years. The publishing house I am building is structured for the catalog it is going to have in five years. Build ahead of yourself. Give your future self something to grow into. And fifth, start. Just start. I know that sounds simple, but it's not simple. Starting is one of the hardest things. The starting requires you to admit that you are not ready and go anyway. It requires you to be bad at something before you can be good at it. And you're watching it in real time. In public, where people can see. It requires the specific kind of courage that does not feel like courage in the moment. It just feels like doing the scary thing anyway. Start. Build imperfectly, learn as you go, build again better. That is the whole method. Episode 5 drops tomorrow. We are talking about the leader. I'm going to walk you through the pause method. And if you manage any kind of team or make any kind of high stake decisions, which is basically everyone in some version or some area of your life, you're going to want to listen to that one. See you tomorrow.