A week before Hoda Kotb debuts wellness company Joy 101, she is in the slack of a relentless meeting to protect sponsors, experts and more employees.
“That’s something you don’t think about. ‘Who asks the questions that are often asked?” says Kotb, 60. “All of these things that are included in websites, apps and events.”
She was “tened” ahead of the company’s launch on May 28th, but “ready.”
“I’m looking forward to it and I’m proud that we’ve done something,” she says. “We’re not just talking about it. Something’s going to be put into the world. Will it be perfect? I doubt it, but it’s really good.”
Kotb left his “Today” anchor chair on January 10th, the same day he bid for Adieu on “Today,” which reached the pinnacle of NBC’s decades-long career that began with “Dateline” in 1998. Craig Melvin replaced KOTB with NBC’s morning news program, while Jenna Bush Hager entertained the revolving doors of celebrity guests with “Today is Jenna and Friends and Today.”
In an interview at the start of Wellness weekend hosted in October on “Today,” Kotb revealed that whispers had tweaked her to leave her previous post. “In many ways, I was saying, ‘You’re an adventurer,'” she said. She also added that she was craving more time with her daughters, Haley Joy, 8, and Hope Catherine. “What is this next chapter?
Kotb first mentioned her desire to enter the wellness space when she connected in March 2024 to talk about her children’s book, “Hope Is a Rainbow.”
“I dream of one day starting something like a kind of health, a kind of mental, physical, mental movement,” she said to Ti-Ill with a smile. She recently began practicing breathing and made an emotional breakthrough in the office the day before.
“I lay on the ground with someone breathing on Zoom. Five minutes later I was blowing it away,” she said. “It’s just like a release.”
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After the first session, her daughter Haley noticed the shift and told Kotb, “You look different.” Kotb says, “They were laughing and calling me “satisfied mom.”
Kotb says she will be working on a daily intermediary in the morning and around 2pm before picking up her child from school in her precious minivan. She says she feels she has gained perspective and is getting more energetic.
“I’ve always been something to stop stress. “But when you wake up again, the next day, it’s again. ‘I overtake this. If I don’t run, all my stress will get me.” You always like to run away from your stress.
Hoda Kotb’s Journey to Joy101: “You can become a beginner again at age 60.”
Her insatiable curiosity about wellness and desire to share everything she has learned, she wants to share a willing KOTB to start Joy101. Users can pre-order the app, which will be released on June 11th and costs $16.99 on a monthly subscription and costs $99 a year.
“Everyone seems really tired, and everyone has more than they can carry, and it’s too much on the plate, ‘Not another thing!” says Kotb. “It’s like, ‘There’s no more room. I’m tapped out. There’s no room to load another one.’ It’s designed to take things off the plate. ”
In the app, KOTB offers optimism and wisdom every day, greeting users and sharing life lessons in 21-day courses. KOTB also curated additional research support classes and wellness sessions focusing on topics such as brain health, breathing, mindfulness, personal growth, and sleep. The membership includes two live streams in the month with KOTB and her trusty wellness experts. The first occurs on June 11th along with Savanna Guthrie and Bush Hager. Users will also be given early access to retreats and events. This says Kotb is really leaning.
On the October Play weekend, KOTB shared with participants, and before diving into the wellness, “I had been carrying a heavy backpack around for a long time and felt like I hadn’t known about it.” During her journey, “The backpack was empty and I began to feel lighter.” At age 60, she said, “Today, for decades, I felt better.”
Kotb says the biggest revelation she noticed is “You can become a beginner again at age 60.”
“It taught me that the learning process is never finished, and I have shown that anyone who says they are stuck in their own way is because they choose to get stuck in their own way,” says Kotb. “You can evolve. You can change. You can see the world completely differently. You can try out the brand new and dangerous things. You can say goodbye to something that is the safest and most extraordinary career in the world.”
Ready to make changes? “Stop worrying about odds.”
Perhaps it feels jarring to those who fear change and the unknown. Kotb grew up in 2024 “in a house of optimism.”
Her 2007 breast cancer diagnosis minimized what she previously felt was horrible and overwhelming, and did not hijack hope by allowing rejection or criticism. “I was constantly rejected,” she said before. “The guys didn’t like me. I didn’t get a job. It didn’t crush me. I wasn’t devastated.
“Stop worrying about odds,” Kotobu says. “Stop worrying about everything, because if you think about odds, you’re not going to do anything.”
