Celebrating the cracks

My guest for this episode is Janey Martino — Founder of Smiling Mind, the not-for-profit mindfulness app with over nine million downloads, now used across thousands of Australian schools, homes and workplaces.

Smiling Mind was built with deep intention and generosity, with a focus on impact rather than personal gain, a unique story in itself.

But Janey’s story doesn’t stop at success. In many ways, it begins after it.

Janey is a leader who has lived all sides of the experience. Founder and CEO. Board member and coach. Builder and rebuilder. Her work today, coaching leaders and recently returning to the CEO role but with a different lens, is shaped not by avoiding challenge and what it asks of her, but by allowing it to inform her.

This conversation explores what happens when we stop trying to appear invulnerable and instead learn how to live, as well as lead, with an honesty that makes leadership a dimension of who we are, an expression of self. Something so easily lost in the complexity and conflict of the role and all of its expectations.

This conversation with Janey is about something we spend most of our lives trying to avoid.

The cracks.

As Leonard Cohen reminds us in his song ‘Anthem’:

"There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in”

The lessons in the cracks

For a long time, Janey believed cracks were something to manage, hide or control. A signal that something had gone wrong. What changed was the realisation that cracks are not deviations from life — they are part of it.

Drawing on the Japanese philosophy of Kintsugi, Janey reframes cracks as places of possibility. Not something to erase, but something to work with. Perfectionism and control exhaust leaders. Acceptance, rather than avoidance, creates the conditions for real growth.

The cracks don’t weaken us. They ask us to see the world differently and reveal all of its possibilities.

Thinking less. Feeling more.

Leaders are trained to think. To analyse. To rationalise. To make sense.

But what if the deeper work begins somewhere else?

Janey speaks powerfully about learning to feel before she thinks. To notice what is happening in the body before trying to solve it in the mind.

This is not about abandoning judgement or rigour, but a way of restoring balance.

When leaders reconnect with sensation, emotion and intuition, they access a different kind of wisdom, a quieter and more truthful version of us and our situation, often hidden.

Balancing the role of coach and CEO

This episode also explores a tension many leaders will recognise: CEO as coach.

Janey reflects on returning to executive leadership after years of coaching others, carrying with her a deeper understanding of trust, intention and human complexity.

We talk about leadership that unlocks rather than extracts.

About knowing when to step in, when to step back, and when not having the answers is not a weakness, but a responsibility.

Leadership, as we discuss, is situational. And wisdom often comes not from control, but from context.

This is a conversation about leadership without armour.

About success without denial.

And about learning to go deep to go forward.

Notebook ready.

Play on!