From Healing to Calling: The Kingdom Story of 820 FIFTH and Its Founder, Shaunte Williams

Subtitle: A KCN Business Feature

When Shaunte Williams first began learning about tea, she had no plans to become a business owner. In fact, she was in a season of asking God a much bigger question: the kind that makes you stop everything and listen. It was the middle of the pandemic. The world was shutting down, and people were scared, isolated, and uncertain of their future. For Shaunte, that uncertainty went even deeper.

She had been making jewelry for several years, pouring her creativity into her work, but something inside her felt unsettled. As the crisis unfolded around her, she began asking, “How am I helping people right now? What am I offering this world in this moment?” The answers didn’t come immediately, but the questions lingered long enough that she decided to do something drastic: she paused everything and stepped away for six months to seek God.

Those six months would become the turning point that changed her life.

A Season of Stillness That Turned Into a Season of Healing

In that sabbatical, away from the noise of work and routine, Shaunte faced another challenge: her health. She developed gut issues that left her discouraged, uncomfortable, and weary of relying on medications for relief. She prayed constantly for guidance, and in that vulnerable space, something unexpected happened.

God reminded her of what He’d ask her to do four years before–craft loose-leaf tea. Not simply as a beverage, but as a path toward healing, both physically and spiritually.

“I didn’t want to keep taking medicine,” she remembers. “I needed something holistic. Something natural. And God showed me tea.”

As she began experimenting with herbs and blends for her own health, something “clicked.” The first tea she ever formulated, a blend she would later name Fresh Start, felt different. Inspired. Given.

And as she shared it with a handful of trusted people, they all experienced real benefits. That was when she knew something deeper was going on.

“God convicted me,” she says. “I didn’t feel qualified to start a tea business. But through my health struggles, He qualified me.”

The calling was clear. Tea wasn’t just for her personal healing; it was an invitation into something bigger.

Birth of a Business, Birth of a Ministry

In 2022, at the height of uncertainty, 820 FIFTH was born. What started as a way to support her own healing quickly became a vehicle for the healing of others. She began small; selling teas at a few community events, then opening a booth inside a local boutique market.

And almost immediately, something surprising began to happen. People weren’t just coming for the tea.

They were coming for Shaunte.

At her very first vending event, she watched in awe as strangers lined up, not only to sample her blends, but to talk. To share their stories, to hear hers, and to find connection in a moment where connection felt scarce.

“God is giving me influence in the community,” she says. “People don’t even want to go to the shop unless I’m there. That’s not about tea. That’s about what God is doing.”

It’s been five years of slow, faithful steps, and Shaunte has watched God open doors, create new relationships, and give her favor in ways she never expected.

But it wasn’t always easy.

Finding KCN: A Return to God Through Community

Shaunte first discovered the Kingdom Capital Network cohort during a season when she was searching for more than business strategy.

She was longing for spiritual restoration.

She felt distant from God and knew that whatever she pursued next, as a founder and a woman of faith, needed to be anchored in Christ. She wanted her business to be more than a brand. She wanted it to keep her aligned with God’s purpose.

“I knew my business was part of God’s purpose for me,” she says. “And I knew I needed a community of believers to help keep me aligned with that purpose. KCN felt like an answer to prayer.”

What she found inside the cohort exceeded every expectation.

KCN became a spiritual home for her. A place where she could reconnect with God through the very work she was building. The curriculum helped her reflect on the way God forms His people through entrepreneurship. The mentors poured into her with wisdom, truth, and encouragement. The other business owners became the community she had been praying for long before she knew where to find it. And within a year after joining KCN, Shaunte’s sales quadrupled.

“God cares about our work,” she says. “He cares about what we do. He uses it. Nothing is by chance with Him, and every experience prepares us for the next thing.”

Slowly, she began seeing her story with new clarity: her health struggles, her time of sabbatical, her creative calling, her longing for purpose, even her fear of visibility—all of it was part of a larger narrative God was orchestrating. And KCN helped her recognize it.

“KCN’s content grounded me spiritually,” she says. “And the community I found there, people to pray with me, speak into my life, support me, was something I had been praying for long before I joined.”

Through the program she gained mentors and fellow entrepreneurs who would walk beside her for years to come. Their business wisdom opened new doors. Their spiritual insight deepened her trust in God. Their encouragement helped her step into opportunities she once felt too small, too inexperienced, or too afraid to pursue.

“I used to separate business and spirituality,” she says. “But KCN helped me understand that God is at the center of all of it. It took KCN to wake up the gift in me.”

This awakening didn’t just give her spiritual fuel. It gave her courage. It gave her obedience. It gave her a desire to pursue God’s mission for her business and to let her testimony be seen. It formed her into the kind of founder who leads with conviction, vulnerability, and purpose.

Steeping Hope and Healing Into Her Community

One of Shaunte’s long-term goals is to help people in her community prioritize health and well-being. She sees a deep hunger around her, people longing for rest, wholeness, and peace.

Her top-selling tea blend, Evening Retreat, sells as well as it does because people are exhausted. They need rest. They need stillness. They need something that feels like a breath in the middle of a heavy week.

“I want to serve that need,” she says.

But the tea is only part of what she offers. Her real ministry happens in the one-on-one moments at her shop, when someone shares their story, expresses their struggles, or asks for prayer.

“People tell me their testimonies. They open up. And those little moments matter. That’s where God moves.”

She believes God has placed her strategically in her community to bring hope, one conversation at a time.

The Story God Is Still Writing

From the outside, 820 FIFTH is a tea company.

But spend five minutes with Shaunte and you quickly realize the heart of her business is discipleship, healing, presence, and Kingdom influence. What God started in a season of sickness and uncertainty has become a ministry brewed in faith and poured out in love.

Shaunte’s story is a reminder that God often begins His greatest work in the quiet places—in sabbaticals, in sickness, in simplicity, in cups of tea crafted at a kitchen counter. And when that work is surrendered back to Him, it becomes a blessing to an entire community.

“I never imagined God would use my story this way,” she says. “But I’m grateful. And I’m ready for whatever He wants to do next.”

Her journey with 820 FIFTH is far from over. If anything, this is only the beginning.

And like any good cup of tea, the longer it steeps, the richer it becomes.

To learn more about business owner's like Shaunte or how you can join or support Kingdom Capital Network, reach us at info@kingdomcapitalnetwork.org.