Joanna Gaines Reveals Her New Role at Magnolia After Dealing With Imposter Syndrome: “I Was Going To Step Out” 

Joanna Gaines may be famous for leading a lifestyle, retail, and media empire with her husband, Chip Gaines, but the HGTV star has admitted that even she deals with burnout and imposter syndrome.

The 48-year-old mom of five recently opened up about her new role at Magnolia, and how a bold decision to switch things up has reinvigorated her relationship with the business.

During a podcast interview on the Sept. 7 episode of “Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb,” Joanna candidly spoke about her professional life, noting that just a few years ago, she and Chip took a three-month break from work to reconnect with their vision.

“We’ve been doing this for almost 25 years, and we’ve never really stopped. And about three years ago, we stopped seeing vision,” she recalled. “We stopped remembering like, ‘Why are we doing this?’”

Joanna admitted that the decision “cost” the couple, as it resulted in “disappointing” their team, but that it was necessary to find “clarity” and remember what they were working toward.

“It’s really grown in such a beautiful way,” Joanna said of her family’s bustling business. “But the intent and purpose of why we do what we do is to truly make space for meaningful moments in people’s lives and homes.”

The brief hiatus wouldn’t be the last time Chip and Joanna would take an honest look at the state of Magnolia to assess what might be missing.

She went on to reveal that “six or eight months” ago, she took on a new role at Magnolia, where she’d long been operating as the CEO and founder. These days, she boasts the title of “president.”

“When this ‘Fixer Upper’ thing happened, it catapulted me into this creative lane, and I was like, ‘Oh shoot,’ and for years, had this imposter syndrome that I’m not really a designer,” she said. “But for 10 years, when you start exercising that muscle and you nurture it, I mean … creative was what I lived and breathed for.”

Joanna explained that she had chosen to “let other people run the operational side” of the business in an effort to prevent “the knowledge of numbers” from dampening her creativity.

But when she realized she was lacking vision “for what is next for Magnolia,” a productive conversation with Chip—and a spiritual experience—changed everything.

Last year, Chip told Joanna that he wanted her to remember what her “gift” and “talent” was when they first met while she was working as a “bookkeeper” at her father’s local automotive business in 2001.

“He was like, ‘You love the business side, you love the operational,’” she shared. “Chip starts challenging me, and I start digging into the operational and business side. So now, I’m in the day to day.”

Joanna’s new role requires her to be creative and analytical simultaneously, a balance that seems to have reinvigorated her work.

“Now, I’m like, on fire,” she claimed. “The very thing I was avoiding was the very thing I needed to see the full picture.”

“What I’m realizing is yes, there’s instinct, there’s intuition,” she continued. “But there’s also data and knowledge. And you bring all of that together, and it creates magic.”

While Joanna’s new role has brought positive change, she shared that she still deals with feelings of imposter syndrome.

“To be completely transparent and honest, I feel like a very little girl at a really big table,” she said, noting that her educational background is in communications, not business.

She even joked that on her very first day in her new role, she was overwhelmed by hearing team members use business acronyms that she was “Googling under the table.” Now, she has picked up all the lingo and is feeling more inspired.

“I thought this next three years, I was going to step out,” Joanna admitted, noting that she was prepared to let “someone else” take her place.

She decided not to step away, but to dig in even deeper when she had a spiritual experience she described as a “moment of clarity” in which she felt called to sit at a decorative piano in the Gaines family’s home.

“I started playing something with my left and all of a sudden my right hand. I played a song, and I don’t play the piano. I had the chills, and I was like, ‘What is happening?’”

The moment helped her realize that “you can use your left and your right brain, and you can create beautiful music.”

Joanna shared that now she’s in a “new space” in which she is encouraging her team “to simplify” instead of grow for the sake of becoming bigger.

“I don’t know what tomorrow is going to hold. I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. “But I have never felt more fulfilled in my life by not knowing the outcome … it feels a bit reckless but it feels right.”