Joanna Gaines reveals soul-weary experience that made her pause Magnolia brand - USA Today
Joanna Gaines is opening up about why she stepped back from her Magnolia business empire three years ago.
The "Fixer Upper" star, 48, appeared on Hoda Kotb’s "Joy 101"podcast and explained why she and her husband Chip Gaines, 51, decided to take a three-month sabbatical from their lifestyle and retail brand.
"Chip and I, you know, we’ve been doing this business for almost 25 years," she told Kotb in the Sept. 7 episode. "So, that was the show we had stopped temporarily, and that was good, but it was also just a lot as we were building our company."
After nearly 25 years of continuously operating Magnolia, the pair "stopped seeing the vision" at the time, Gaines said.
"We stopped remembering, like, 'Why are we doing this?'" she said.
The pair decided to take the summer off, which she said "meant disappointing our team, disappointing a lot of things, to just up and leave."
"So it cost us something," Gaines added. "But that three months was time for us to go, 'We need a break. We need clarity. Why are we building this? What are we doing this for?' And so that was three years ago."
Gaines said the experience helped her see how dread of her daily routine made her lose her vision for the business, which she described as "soul weariness."
"The soul is like this deeper place that we all experience that, when you're aware of what it is, you know when it's kind of running dry and you know when it's weary," she said. "I can just push past the weariness, the physical. But then you get to that layer of, like, the soul weariness, and that's dangerous. I think that's really dangerous."
Despite the downside of their decision, the HGTV alum said the time away allowed her to refocus and reignite their passion. "I think once you start realizing those moments of maybe burnout, you never really want to experience that again," she explained. "So now the discipline is, the daily discipline of 'I feel it creeping up.'"
The interior designer and reality TV personality shares five children with her husband and Magnolia cofounder, Chip, whom she married in 2003 in Waco, Texas. Their children include sons Drake, 21, Duke, 18, and Crew, 8, as well as daughters Ella, 19, and Emmie, 16.
They founded their first Magnolia store in Waco in October and eventually grew their efforts into a media and retail empire. Their home renovation series "Fixer Upper" aired on HGTV for five seasons from 2013 to 2018.
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