Elaichi Co founders Mojo and Zainab Joyo say running a Berkeley chai café blurred their marriage and their business—until they stopped treating work-life balance like a set of boundaries and focused instead on how they wanted to live and collaborate.
A chai café was supposed to feel like a shared dream—late nights. familiar stories. the warmth of Pakistan’s chai culture recreated in Berkeley. When Elaichi Co opened in 2024, it brought that vision to life. But it also brought something they didn’t expect: every quiet moment at home turned into a brief on the company.
Mojo and his wife. Zainab Joyo. built their café around a feeling they missed from childhood—sitting with cousins in chai cafés in Pakistan. staying out late. trading stories over tea. After the social isolation of the pandemic, they wanted that closeness again. In 2024, they opened Elaichi Co in Berkeley.
At first, both worked full-time while running the company. Zainab, especially, felt social pressure to keep her stable job. That changed in November 2024, when she was laid off. From then on, they decided she would work at Elaichi full-time, while Mojo continued with his day job.
As responsibilities stacked up, the couple started noticing a pattern in their home life. Zainab was wearing “many hats”: marketing, events, HR, inventory, and more. Mojo said that when he got home, she would fill him in on what he needed to know. Soon, he realized that “about 95% of our conversations were about the business.”.
“It wasn’t what we wanted,” he said—because business kept pushing into their relationship. Mojo described the emotional result in blunt terms: he felt like he was “living with my business partner, not my wife.”
They tried tools, then rules
They weren’t unfamiliar with problem-solving. Finding the right tech tools helped them get quick insight into their finances without getting lost “in the weeds” when they started using Mercury, a fintech company. Yet tools didn’t fix what was happening emotionally.
Zainab wasn’t getting the emotional support she needed from her husband, and Mojo said he was stuck feeling like work was constantly in the driver’s seat. Business kept getting in the way of their relationship, so they decided to make a shift.
The first attempt was to carve out “free zones” inside the house. Mojo and Zainab designated certain areas for personal talk only—spaces where business questions wouldn’t be raised. The bedroom and dining room were for their relationship.
But once life settled back into its routines, the idea collapsed under its own friction. Mojo said it was inevitable that business would come up when it popped into someone’s head. And the moment the rules were invoked, it only made frustration worse. He explained that if Zainab asked him a business question and he reminded her about the “no business talk in bed” rule. she would be even more frustrated. They abandoned the approach within a week.
Next came a schedule. They blocked off certain days for family time: Saturday night was for them as a couple, and Sundays were for extended family. Mojo said it worked better at first, and they were able to stick with it for about three months.
Then the reality of running a business returned. As the owners, they were always on call. If an employee called out or there was a big event, they needed to be there. Mojo said it became hard to maintain the rhythm of family days when they were constantly being thrown off.
Puerto Vallarta changed what they asked
About a year after these efforts started, the pressure finally peaked. Mojo and Zainab traveled to Puerto Vallarta for Zainab’s 30th birthday. It should have been time for just the two of them. Instead, they felt disconnected throughout the trip.
Mojo said they didn’t like where things stood: they were still unhappy with their relationship, even after trying different solutions. Neither their marriage nor their business, he believed, was going to succeed unless something changed.
When they got back, they stopped focusing only on the rules and began asking a different question—why they were using them. They realized they were trying to fit into other people’s ideas of what makes a good relationship.
That realization shifted the tone of their daily conversations. They said they really enjoy running their business together. If they were having fun talking about Elaichi, it was okay. They didn’t have to force themselves to have a business-free night out together if they were genuinely excited about working on a new business project.
Mojo framed it as a kind of unintended trap: fighting against their natural enthusiasm had actually been making their work-life balance harder.
From boundaries to partnership
This year, they moved to more fluid boundaries between marriage and business partnership. They focus on what they want to do together instead of keeping to “arbitrary boundaries” they thought they needed. If they want date night. they do—but they also sometimes talk about business at the dinner table because it’s something they’re both passionate about.
Mojo said this approach has “defused a lot of tension,” allowing them to communicate quickly and more honestly. He also described a level of trust and understanding they don’t have with anyone else.
Today, he says, he no longer feels like he’s living with his business partner. He feels like he’s “doing business with my life partner.”
That shift, he said, is much better.
Elaichi Co Mojo Joyo Zainab Joyo Berkeley chai café Mercury fintech work-life balance entrepreneurship marriage and business