How the Married Owners of a Tea Company Make Space for Life Outside of Work
Just Add Honey is a tea company, retail shop, wholesaler, and the financial heartbeat of the family that owns it. The husband-and-wife duo share their hard-won tips for finding balance.
Author Novo
For Brandi and Jermail Shelton, the ways to build a business (and a life) together weren’t exactly written in the tea leaves.
The owners of Just Add Honey, an Atlanta-based loose-leaf tea brand and retail shop, have been married for 18 years and business partners for 10. Brandi, who founded Just Add Honey in 2006, brought Jermail on board in 2016 as chief development officer to support brand growth.
“Our goal was to give it one year as a family business and see if we could add onto it,” says Jermail, who’d previously worked in real estate sales and saw an opportunity for Just Add Honey to grow significantly. But fusing work and life created more blurred lines than the pair anticipated.
“Often our home life did revolve around what was needed for the company,” Jermail says of Just Add Honey, which was born out of Brandi’s love of tea and a nurtured hobby, but has since scaled to a $1M+ operation. “We had to get more intentional and find moments to put Just Add Honey on the back burner.”
After years of trial and error, here’s how they keep the peace, and progress.
1. Divide and conquer
Jermail joined Just Add Honey a solid 10 years after Brandi had launched the business and eight years after the pair had married. As a seasoned sales professional, the couple bet he’d be able to grow the business with speed and efficiency, prioritizing wholesale growth. What they didn’t anticipate was how much their respective work styles would conflict.
“I don’t take a shot until everything is perfect, but Jermail comes from sales: you always shoot the shot,” Brandi says.
“Our energies were conflicting,” Jermail admits. “I’m looking for results. Next month, we should make more money than the month before. The internal connection to the product is important to me, but I’m a results-heavy guy, which means I throw stuff at the wall, learn and adapt.”
The Sheltons spent four or five years with “too many cooks in the kitchen” before they sat each other down and created territories for each of them to own.
“I saw opportunities that we missed because I was waiting for the perfect opportunity,” Brandi says. Now, she heads up retail, and Jermail manages all offsite events and wholesale accounts. “We realized that we both want the same outcome for the company, even if our approach is different. Once we got over that hurdle and leaned into the trust we have in each other, things improved. But it was hard.” (“Really hard,” Jermail echoes.)
2. Keep work at the office…
“We are married. We have three kids. We have a whole life outside of this company. Some of those conversations would find their way to work, and vice versa. If I missed a shipping deadline, I might hear about it over the dinner table — and that creates friction,” Jermail says.
They’ve consciously worked to evolve beyond those easy pitfalls, scheduling daylong dates like a two-hour drive to a hike followed by drinks at a winery, no Just Add Honey talk allowed. “There’s an ever evolving connection between the Sheltons and the company, and at the beginning I didn't know what I didn't know,” he says. “But we’ve gotten better at separating work from our relationship, and family from work.”
That’s a savvy move: A 2022 study suggests that our brains better recover from the day when work has predictable boundaries, like times, spaces, and routines for discussing it.
3. …But allow boundaries to be flexible
In a family business, complete work-life separation is impossible — and that’s ok, Brandi says. “Work creeps in, and we’ve gotten better at cutting it off. But this business does fund our family. If I bring up work on personal time, Jermail will say, ‘That sounds like a meeting, but I’ll give you x minutes to get this out,’” she explains. “We’re conscious of it, and we give it the space it needs, but we do what we can to keep work from taking over every day, date, and evening. We check and monitor each other.”
4. Embrace a digital calendar
A shared overlapping view of the Shelton family calendar, Brandi’s calendar, Jermail’s calendar, the Just Add Honey calendar, as well as the kids’ school and activities calendar creates a bird’s eye view and clarity for all members of the family. “It’s color-coded, and the kids know their colors too, so we all know where everyone is and where everyone needs to go,” Brandi says. “It helps me to not overextend or overcommit.”
5. Prioritize alone time
As partners in work and life, both Jermail and Brandi know they need time that’s just for them. For Brandi, it’s finding small ways to squeeze in personal luxuries, like a trip to the nail salon or just a few moments of peace to respond to personal emails while her kids are at practice. For Jermail, it’s more structured: A 3-mile walk every morning at 5:30 am, followed by meditation.
“There was a moment where my personality was tied to the finances of the company, which was not mentally healthy for me,” says Jermail, who launched a nonprofit, The Ugundu Foundation, in 2018 to help men of color address their mental health needs. “I had to carve moments out for myself, and counteract that. I’m a lot more intentional about putting down my computer and taking time for myself. I had to learn.”
That no-work time can be vital to productivity, studies show. A 2025 report found that constant connectivity can reduce recovery quality and increase brain strain — but quiet time like meditation, walks (no podcasts allowed) or other “unproductive” activities can boost our recovery.
