Ep208 – Jane Martino (Co-founder & Chair – Smiling Mind) on founder mental health, mindfulness & multiple exits

March 27, 2025
rohitbhargava
Podcast

My guest for Ep208 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Jane Martino.

Jane has had an incredibly successful career as a director, investor, advisor and founder of a number of companies that have successfully exited.

She’s best known as the Co-founder & Chair of Smiling Mind, one of the worlds leading mindfulness and mental health tools with over 9.3M downloads and 14M young people reached globally.

She now helps individuals reach their maximum potential through her coaching business, Kintsugi Way.

In this episode, we cover:

Lessons from launching, scaling and exiting several businesses
The role of good advisors and board members
How to deal with co-founder conflicts
How to deal with emotions and stress as a founder
And much more.

PS we go deep into several important topics in this episode and they are just some of the topics we dive into at The Komo Club.

The Komo Club is a private program I’ve launched for high-performing founders, operators and executives who want to win not just in business, but across all areas of life—from health and relationships to personal growth and leadership. It’s an 8-week cohort experience that combines world class content, practical systems and frameworks a curated community to help you reach your goals.

And I’m incredibly proud to share that Jane will be joining us as one of the featured guest speakers for the upcoming cohort. She’ll be diving deeper into the frameworks and lessons she’s used to lead with purpose, avoid burnout, and create lasting impact; personally and professionally.

If this episode resonates with you, I think you’ll love what Jane will be sharing inside The Komo Club as well.

Cohort 1 applications are now open. You can learn more at TheKomoClub.com or by reaching out to me directly at [email protected].

Timestamps:

3:07 Janey’s background
13:49 Founder mental health
18:59 Experience with meditation and practical uses for business
24:27 Communicating with co-founders and colleagues
35:33 How she applied these to the situation at Unlockd
45:40 Thoughts on hustle culture
56:48 How she’s approached being a founder
59:30 Her approach to advisory roles
1:09:58 How she helps co founders decide on the roles they’ll play in the business
1:20:55 The journey with Smiling Mind

Our partners:

A big thank you to Laura Henshaw and Andrew Duncan for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our long-term partners for the show:

Scendar

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
The Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/podcast to get access to this exclusive discount.

Links mentioned:

The Komo Club – Details & Cohort #1 applications available here

Janey’s links:

People mentioned:

Companies mentioned:

Feedback/connect/say hello:

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

https://youtu.be/JZ9chMylhxA

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