Hoda Kotb is ready to channel the joy she brought to TODAY viewers and beyond for years. Allow her to introduce her new venture: a wellness brand appropriately titled Joy 101.
“It is a community,” she says during a conversation with TODAY.com, explaining that the brand will include an app, as well as a website where people can see everything Joy 101 has to offer. “It’s a retreat in your pocket,” she adds.
Hoda says Joy 101 will also feature courses and live events with some of the gurus who have helped her over the years, like NYU professor and bestselling author Suzy Welch.
She also shares there will be a big single-day tentpole event called Joy Fest. Planned for spring 2026, the festival will feature various speakers.
Read on for more on how Hoda got here — and everything else you need to know about Joy 101.
Hoda Kotb’s journey into the wellness space
She describes her journey into wellness as a “great adventure,” jokingly blaming her former fourth hour co-host Jenna Bush Hager for tipping her off to the benefits.
Hoda explains Jenna encouraged her to try a breath works class, which she did over Zoom. She had no idea she’d end up crying during the middle of the session.
“It was transformative,” Hoda says. She recalls lying on the ground doing a breathing technique utilizing the lower belly and high chest. She then says she started to feel lightheaded and get chills before she “exploded in tears.”
“It’s just a release of whatever you’re lugging around,” she explains.
Hoda then continued trying new things like meditation, thanks to a recommendation from her good friend Maria Shriver.
“Everywhere I turned, I was trying something new,” she says, “and I just felt like I was telling all my friends about it.”
She eventually came to the realization that she could create her own space, one where people could access the kinds of experiences that changed her life.
“I was like, ‘Don’t keep it to yourself. Just share it, put it out there,’” she says of this “one great place” she built, where people can hopefully feel “lighter and better and more joyful, without going 10 different places.”
What’s in a name: Joy 101
The reason behind the name Joy 101, Hoda explains, is a callback to childhood: a time when “we had joy without trying.”
Over time, that simple joy “gets kind of covered over and buried under life’s stuff, life’s heaviness, and it’s still in there,” Hoda says.
“It’s almost like a rite of passage in life and birth,” she adds. “It’s like it’s in you, and so we’re just kind of peeling back the layers and letting it out again. That’s what it feels like to me. Get rid of all the junk that’s covering up your joy.”
Hoda’s Joy 101 team is ‘built on love’ — and includes her sister and her best friend
The Joy 101 team includes some of the people closest to Hoda, like her sister, Hala, and her best friend, Karen Swensen.
Hoda describes her company as being “built on love.”
“It’s built on friends and family and friends that feel like family … which makes it so much more incredible to me,” she says.
Hoda says Karen is the team’s senior vice president of strategic operations, and Hala is the senior vice president of planning and events.
“It’s all people who are, like, a real group of friends,” Hoda says. “I was talking to Hala and Karen about it for a while, and then we’re like, ‘Can this really be something?’ And then we started bringing in some more people. And I think that’s kind of the magic of it. Everything is sort of organically happening. I don’t feel like we’re forcing anything.”
“I feel like there’s a strong root foundation to the whole thing,” she adds. “It feels real to me.”
How Hoda is embracing being ‘a beginner again’ at 60
Her 50s brought her the family she never thought she’d have and the job of her dreams on TODAY, which she left in January to pursue this wellness venture. Now, Hoda — who turned 60 last August — is embracing a new word in this decade of life.
“My 60s have turned me into a beginner again, and I like that — a lot,” she says. “It’s like I’m doing things for the first time, and I love that. I want this decade to be about that — like, being a beginner, and not being embarrassed about being a beginner.”
Part of that journey for Hoda includes starting this business and trying “all the things” to see what happens while not being afraid.
“I think my 60s have brought me all the way back to being a beginner again,” she says. “I think it’s going to be a fun decade.”
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
