Hoda Kotb’s final Today Show sign-off wasn’t a slow-motion montage or a tear-streaked hug-fest; it was a single, steady sentence delivered at 7:58 a.m. on a Friday in January 2025: “I’m stepping off the carousel to build my own ride.”

No violin swell, no Savannah Guthrie eulogy—just the click of her heels on the plaza concrete as she walked out past the Rockefeller Christmas tree still shedding needles like confetti from a party that ended too soon.

The decision had been marinating for eighteen months, ever since a 4 a.m. wake-up call found her staring at her daughter Haley’s crayon drawing of a sunrise taped to the fridge and realizing the real sunrise was happening without her.

The math was brutal. Twenty-six years at NBC, seventeen on the fourth hour, five as co-anchor—translated into roughly 4,500 mornings of fluorescent lights and 3 a.m. alarm clocks that felt like fire drills for the soul.

“I was good at the job,” she says now, “but the job was starting to mother me instead of the other way around.” Hope, her youngest, had begun asking why Mommy’s face lived inside the television.

Haley, at seven, drew stick-figure Hoda with a coffee cup the size of a swimming pool. The drawings weren’t accusations; they were invoices. Kotb paid them.

The exit interview with NBC brass happened in a conference room that smelled like burnt coffee and corporate caution. She laid out her terms: no golden parachute fanfare, no forced farewell tour.

“I want to leave like a guest who knows the party’s winding down,” she told them. They blinked, stunned—she was, after all, the woman who’d survived cancer, single motherhood, and live-TV hot-dog-eating contests.

But Hoda had already sketched her next blueprint on a napkin at Sarabeth’s: a wellness empire called “Rise & Thrive Collective,” equal parts podcast network, adaptogenic lattes, and pop-up “courage cafes” where strangers swap stories over oat-milk matcha instead of small talk.

The pivot wasn’t whimsy; it was archaeology. Kotb spent six weeks in a rented beach house on the Outer Banks, no Wi-Fi, just a stack of Brené Brown books and a legal pad labeled “What Scares Me.”

Item one: failing at something that isn’t scripted. Item two: succeeding at something that can’t be measured in Nielsen ratings.

By week three, the pad was a business plan. She cold-emailed a former Today producer who’d launched a mushroom-coffee startup; they met at a gas-station taqueria and sketched the logo on a napkin—sunrise orange, no serif font, “because serifs are for obituaries.”

Seed money came from her own savings and a quiet angel round led by a Today makeup artist who’d always dreamed of bottling “anchor glow” as a serum.

The first product launched in April: “Morning Mercy,” a caffeine-free adaptogen blend that tastes like cardamom and second chances. Kotb insisted on sourcing the ashwagandha from a women’s co-op in Rajasthan—fair trade, carbon-negative, packaged in compostable pouches printed with QR codes linking to voicemail hotlines where users could leave 60-second “gratitude rants.”

Pre-orders crashed the Shopify site; Reese Witherspoon posted a selfie sipping it on a hike, caption: “Tastes like Hoda’s laugh—warm, slightly spicy, impossible to quit.” By June, Whole Foods shelves groaned under turquoise boxes, and Kotb was on factory floors in Jersey, hairnet over her signature bob, tasting batches like a sommelier of serenity.

The podcast arm, “Thrive After Thirty,” dropped its debut episode from a converted Airstream parked outside a New Orleans jazz club. Guest: her former co-anchor Jenna Bush Hager, who confessed to stealing Hoda’s emergency chocolate stash.

The chemistry was still nuclear—Jenna’s Texas twang bouncing off Hoda’s Jersey grit like cymbals—but the stakes were different. No commercial breaks, no chyrons, just two women dissecting midlife pivots over beignets. Downloads hit a million in 48 hours; Spotify wrapped it in a bow labeled “For the woman who’s done pretending.”

The courage cafes opened in strip-mall purgatory—think Charlotte, Knoxville, suburban Philly—because “glamour is great, but strip-mall rent is real.” Each location is a 1,200-square-foot hug: reclaimed-wood tables, mismatched mugs, and a “story wall” where patrons pin Post-its: “I left my marriage at 45,” “I started coding at 60,” “I finally told my mom I’m gay.”

Baristas are trained not in latte art but in “radical listening”—a 90-minute workshop Kotb cribbed from her cancer support group. On opening day in Charlotte, a retired nurse pinned: “Hoda’s voice got me through chemo—now I’m buying her coffee.” Kotb, incognito in a baseball cap, read it and cried into a bag of oat milk.

The entrepreneurship isn’t without landmines. A viral TikTok accused Morning Mercy of “gentrifying calm”; Kotb responded with a raw Instagram Live from her kitchen, blender whirring: “If calm feels gentrified, let’s democratize it—first 10,000 DMs get a free sample, no strings, just send me your zip code.”

The backlash flipped into a waitlist. Investors wanted a unicorn valuation; she wanted a co-op model where baristas own equity. “I’m not building an empire,” she told Forbes, “I’m building a lifeboat—room for everyone who’s ever felt like they’re drowning in fluorescent lights.”

Motherhood is the non-negotiable North Star. Mornings now start with Haley’s off-key rendition of “Roar” and Hope’s sticky hugs instead of hair-and-makeup at 4 a.m. Kotb’s home office is a corner of the playroom—whiteboard scrawled with “Q2 Goals” next to finger-painted unicorns.

She FaceTimes suppliers from the floor, LEGOs underfoot, explaining to a turmeric farmer in Maui why “mom o’clock” means meetings end at 3 p.m. sharp. “I spent years teaching America to rise and shine,” she says. “Turns out the real shine happens when you’re on your knees building a blanket fort.”

The Today Show chapter closed with a quiet ritual: she mailed her old alarm clock to 30 Rock, set permanently to 3:30 a.m., with a note: “Give this to someone who still believes hustle is a virtue. I’m trading it for sunrise pancakes.”

Savannah Guthrie texted back a photo of the clock on her desk, captioned: “It’s ticking louder than my heart.” Kotb laughed, then cried, then booked a flight to Raleigh for the next cafe opening—because grief, like good coffee, is best served fresh.

In the end, Hoda Kotb’s entrepreneurship isn’t a pivot; it’s a homecoming—to the girl who survived cancer by journaling gratitude on napkins, to the single mom who learned resilience is just love with calluses.

The empire she’s building smells like cardamom and possibility, and its cornerstone is a question she now asks every supplier, barista, and investor: “What keeps you up at night?” The answer, she says, is never ratings—it’s always the people waiting for you to come home.