Joanna Gaines Gets Candid About Feeling ‘Burnout’ While Building Magnolia Empire, Choosing to Hit Pause for Months

Natalia SenanayakeFri, September 11, 2026 at 2:17 PM UTC

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Chip and Joanna GainesCredit: Joanna Gaines/Instagram -

Joanna Gaines shared how she and husband Chip took a three-month break from their Magnolia business during a recent appearance on Hoda Kotb’s Joy 101 podcast

The couple paused their work on Magnolia, their lifestyle brand, after nearly 25 years of nonstop building and growth

Joanna says the break helped her refocus and recognize early signs of burnout to avoid it in the future

Joanna Gaines is keeping it real when it comes to needing to take a break.

During a recent appearance on Hoda Kotb’s Joy 101podcast, the Fixer Upper star and Magnolia co-founder, 48, reflected on building her lifestyle brand with husband Chip, 51, and why the pair chose to take a brief sabbatical in response to Kotb’s question about the “power of pausing.”

“Chip and I, you know we’ve been doing this business for almost 25 years,” Joanna says, before referencing her and Chip’s former HGTV show Fixer Upper, which ended back in 2018. “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.”

She continues, “As far as Magnolia, we’ve been doing this for almost 25 years and we’ve never really stopped. And about three years ago, we stopped seeing vision. We stopped remembering like, ‘Why are we doing this?’”

As the couple felt they were losing sight of the message and intention behind their business, they decided that taking a three-month break was the right next step for them at the time.

“I remember I was like, ‘Okay, we’re going to take the summer off,’ which meant disappointing our team, disappointing a lot of things, to just up and leave. So it cost us something,” Joanna says candidly. “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.”

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She adds that taking some time off helped her not only to refocus, but also to be able to recognize those feelings and act on them right away.

“I think once you start realizing those moments of maybe burnout, you never really want to experience that again,” Joanna explains. “So now the discipline is, the daily discipline of ‘I feel it creeping up.’”

Chip and Joanna Gaines at one of their ‘Silobration’ eventsCredit: Courtesy of Joanna Gaines

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In 2023, the couple celebrated 20 years of Magnolia, which they officially launched in 2003 shortly after they got married. Since then, Chip and Joanna have built a lifestyle empire that includes their own TV network; a store, restaurant and hotel; books; product lines; a quarterly magazine and much more.

The company is also currently gearing up to host its annual fall Silobration in the pair’s hometown of Waco, Texas for the 11th year in a row this October. The festival will feature live music, seasonal activities and over 90 vendors.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”