When life brings you to your knees, how do you rise and lead from a deeper, truer place?

In this powerful and intimate conversation, Robbe Pearson shares the moment his world shifted with an unexpected cancer diagnosis—and how the journey that followed transformed not only his health but his leadership, mindset, and sense of purpose. His story is a reminder of how quickly life can change, and how much inner strength we discover when we’re forced to face our own humanity.

Robbe talks openly about navigating fear, building resilience, finding meaning in uncertainty, and learning to receive support when he’s always been the one to give it. His honesty, vulnerability, and grounded presence offer a masterclass in leading with heart, especially when the path ahead feels unpredictable.

In this episode:

✅ The moment Robbe learned of his cancer diagnosis and how he navigated the immediate emotional shock

✅ Facing a health crisis with resilience

✅ The mindset needed to stay grounded, positive, and purposeful during uncertainty

✅ Returning to “normal” after life-changing news

✅ The essential role of reflection, routine, and purpose in sustaining strength

✅ Facing fear honestly and learning to live with its presence

✅ Learning to receive support from others

✅ How this journey deepened Robbe’s leadership, priorities, and sense of purpose

Connect with Robbe:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-pearson-29b7943/

About Janet Ioli:

Janet Ioli is a globally recognized executive advisor, coach, and leadership expert with over 25 years of experience developing leaders in Fortune 100 companies and global organizations.

She created The Inner Edge—a framework, a movement, and a message that flips leadership from mere success performance to presence; from ego to soul. Through her keynotes, podcast, and programs, Janet helps high-achievers find the one thing that changes everything: the mastery within.

Her approach redefines leadership presence—not as polish or tactics, but as the inner steadiness people feel from you and the positive imprint you leave on individuals and organizations.

Chapters

00:00:00 Receiving Life-Changing News

00:06:04 Drawing on Early Resilience

00:09:09 Choosing a Grounded Mindset

00:16:48 Redefining Normalcy

00:19:55 Leading With Renewed Purpose

Connect with Janet Ioli:
Website: janetioli.com
Linkedin: Janet Ioli
Instagram: @leadershipcoachjanet

If you want to become more grounded, confident, and aligned with your deeper values in just 21 days, check out Janet Ioli’s book Less Ego, More Soul: A Modern Reinvention Guide for Women.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Select “Listen in Apple Podcasts,” then choose the “Ratings & Reviews” tab to share what you think.

Produced by Ideablossoms

There comes a moment — sometimes quiet, sometimes painfully loud — when something in your life that once felt effortless begins to feel heavy. Maybe it’s the sinking feeling as Sunday night arrives, the subtle dread before opening your laptop, or the growing awareness that you no longer feel like yourself.

In today’s episode, Janet explores these moments not as inconveniences, but as invitations, signals from within that something in your life is no longer aligned with who you are becoming.

This conversation is about the real, grounded work of letting go. Not the inspirational-quote version, but the soul-level honesty it takes to admit when a job, relationship, role, or identity no longer fits. You’ll also hear practical, compassionate guidance for navigating change when you have real responsibilities and can’t simply walk away overnight.

In this episode:

✅ How misalignment first appears in subtle emotional or physical signals

✅ The quiet internal process of letting go before any external change occurs

✅ How to create a grounded, realistic runway for change

✅ Why strengthening your financial foundation is essential for meaningful freedom

✅ The importance of boundaries, support systems, and honest self-reflection

✅ Key questions to help you uncover what your deeper self is trying to tell you

Resources:

Questions for reflection:

• Where in my life am I misaligned, but I'm forcing myself to stay?
• What part of me is asking for growth?
• What physical or emotional signals have I been ignoring?
• What am I afraid will happen if I leave?
• What am I afraid will happen if I stay?
• If nothing changed in the next year, how would I feel?
• What would I choose if fear wasn't making the decision?

About Janet Ioli:

Janet Ioli is a globally recognized executive advisor, coach, and leadership expert with over 25 years of experience developing leaders in Fortune 100 companies and global organizations.

She created The Inner Edge—a framework, a movement, and a message that flips leadership from mere success performance to presence; from ego to soul. Through her keynotes, podcast, and programs, Janet helps high-achievers find the one thing that changes everything: the mastery within.

Her approach redefines leadership presence—not as polish or tactics, but as the inner steadiness people feel from you and the positive imprint you leave on individuals and organizations.

Chapters

00:00:00 Discovering Early Misalignment

00:05:53 Understanding Workplace Disconnection

00:11:10 Beginning Inner Letting Go

00:15:03 Creating a Grounded Path Forward

Connect with Janet Ioli:
Website: janetioli.com
Linkedin: Janet Ioli
Instagram: @leadershipcoachjanet

If you want to become more grounded, confident, and aligned with your deeper values in just 21 days, check out Janet Ioli’s book Less Ego, More Soul: A Modern Reinvention Guide for Women.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Select “Listen in Apple Podcasts,” then choose the “Ratings & Reviews” tab to share what you think.

Produced by Ideablossoms

Have you ever noticed that your biggest insights rarely show up when you’re forcing yourself to figure something out? They arrive in the shower, on a walk, in the quiet moments between all the doing. They come when your mind finally slows down enough for something deeper to surface.

In today’s episode of The Inner Edge, Janet explores this “higher wisdom” we all have access to but rarely create space to hear.

Drawing from neuroscience, decades of leadership coaching, and personal stories, Janet reveals why relying solely on rational analysis leaves our decisions incomplete and how integrating intuition, stillness, and embodied awareness leads to truer, more aligned choices.

In a world obsessed with speed and productivity, reconnecting with our inner intelligence is not just helpful, it’s essential.

In this episode:

✅ Why your deepest insights emerge when you stop overthinking

✅ How leaders limit themselves when they rely only on rational analysis

✅ What neuroscience reveals about intuition and the default mode network

✅ How to create stillness to regulate your nervous system and think more clearly

✅ What your body signals before your mind catches up

✅ The power of stepping away to let unconscious processing work for you

About Janet Ioli:

Janet Ioli is a globally recognized executive advisor, coach, and leadership expert with over 25 years of experience developing leaders in Fortune 100 companies and global organizations.

She created The Inner Edge, a framework, a movement, and a message that flips leadership from mere success performance to presence; from ego to soul. Through her keynotes, podcast, and programs, Janet helps high-achievers find the one thing that changes everything: the mastery within.

Her approach redefines leadership presence—not as polish or tactics, but as the inner steadiness people feel from you and the positive imprint you leave on individuals and organizations.

Chapters for Apple Podcasts

00:00:00 Beyond Rational Analysis

00:10:37 Awakening Inner Wisdom

00:16:22 Slowing Down for Clarity

Connect with Janet Ioli:
Website: janetioli.com
Linkedin: Janet Ioli
Instagram: @leadershipcoachjanet

If you want to become more grounded, confident, and aligned with your deeper values in just 21 days, check out Janet Ioli’s book Less Ego, More Soul: A Modern Reinvention Guide for Women.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Select “Listen in Apple Podcasts,” then choose the “Ratings & Reviews” tab to share what you think.

Produced by Ideablossoms

So often in our daily interactions—at work, at home, and even with strangers—we slip into automatic judgment without even noticing it. In this episode of The Inner Edge, Janet invites you to pause before reacting and explore one of the most quietly transformative leadership practices available to all of us: choosing curiosity instead of judgment.

Drawing from her bicultural upbringing in Greece and the United States, Janet shares how being immersed in multiple cultural worlds from a young age shaped her understanding that there is never just one “right” way to see things.

Through warm storytelling and reflective insight, she explores how our socialization, backgrounds, and lived experiences shape the lenses we carry—and how embracing multiple truths can expand our leadership, deepen our relationships, and open pathways for connection in an increasingly divided world.

In this episode:

✅ Why our brains are wired for snap judgments and how to interrupt them

✅ The power of pausing before labeling someone as difficult or wrong

✅ How curiosity reduces conflict and strengthens trust in teams

✅ How disagreements can become opportunities to learn

✅ Why honoring multiple truths expands both personal growth and leadership

✅ A simple challenge to shift one relationship from judgment to curiosity

About Janet Ioli:

Janet Ioli is a globally recognized executive advisor, coach, and leadership expert with over 25 years of experience developing leaders in Fortune 100 companies and global organizations.

She created The Inner Edge—a framework, a movement, and a message that flips leadership from mere success performance to presence; from ego to soul. Through her keynotes, podcast, and programs, Janet helps high-achievers find the one thing that changes everything: the mastery within.

Her approach redefines leadership presence—not as polish or tactics, but as the inner steadiness people feel from you and the positive imprint you leave on individuals and organizations.

Chapters for Apple Podcasts

00:00:00 Cultural Roots and Perspective

00:05:34 Choosing Curiosity Over Judgement

00:10:28 Practicing Daily Curiosity

Connect with Janet Ioli:
Website: janetioli.com
Linkedin: Janet Ioli
Instagram: @leadershipcoachjanet

If you want to become more grounded, confident, and aligned with your deeper values in just 21 days, check out Janet Ioli’s book Less Ego, More Soul: A Modern Reinvention Guide for Women.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Select “Listen in Apple Podcasts,” then choose the “Ratings & Reviews” tab to share what you think.

Produced by Ideablossoms

What can the people we’ve lost teach us about who we become? And how do their everyday choices—often unnoticed in the moment—shape our leadership, our values, and the way we show up in the world?

In this heartfelt conversation, Ian Ziskin returns to The Inner Edge to share the deeply personal journey that inspired his new collaborative book, Lives Lost and Leadership Found: Lessons from Special Somebodies. After losing both his brother and his mother only months apart, Ian began reflecting on the lessons they left behind.

As we talk, you’ll likely find your own “special somebodies” coming to mind—the people who shaped you, guided you, or quietly modeled who you wanted to become. Some may be gone. Some may still be here. And all of them leave imprints that matter.

This episode is a warm, reflective invitation to pause, honor, and acknowledge the leadership lessons that come from everyday human beings—not just from CEOs or experts, but from the people who taught us through the way they lived.

In this episode:

✅ How the loss of loved ones sparked Ian’s collaborative book project

✅ Why facing reality is essential for personal and organizational growth

✅ How advocacy, values, and “showing you care” become quiet but powerful forms of leadership

✅ Why the people who shaped us often never knew the impact they had

✅ The cathartic process of writing about a special somebody

✅ How to reflect on your own life lessons and why you should share them with the people who matter now

Resources:

Lives Lost and Leadership Found: Lessons from Special Somebodies by Ian Ziskin

Connect with Ian:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-ziskin-bb1504/

About Janet Ioli:

Janet Ioli is a globally recognized executive advisor, coach, and leadership expert with over 25 years of experience developing leaders in Fortune 100 companies and global organizations.

She created The Inner Edge—a framework, a movement, and a message that flips leadership from mere success performance to presence; from ego to soul. Through her keynotes, podcast, and programs, Janet helps high-achievers find the one thing that changes everything: the mastery within.

Her approach redefines leadership presence—not as polish or tactics, but as the inner steadiness people feel from you and the positive imprint you leave on individuals and organizations.

Chapters for Apple Podcasts

00:00:00 – Lives Lost and Leadership Found

00:04:44 – Lessons From Loss

00:12:23 – Everyday Leadership Models

00:14:41 – Acknowledging Impact

Connect with Janet Ioli:
Website: janetioli.com
Linkedin: Janet Ioli
Instagram: @leadershipcoachjanet

If you want to become more grounded, confident, and aligned with your deeper values in just 21 days, check out Janet Ioli’s book Less Ego, More Soul: A Modern Reinvention Guide for Women.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Select “Listen in Apple Podcasts,” then choose the “Ratings & Reviews” tab to share what you think.

Produced by Ideablossoms

When was the last time you truly saw someone, not for what made them different, but for the human being underneath?

In this deeply personal solo episode, Janet shares a childhood story that shaped her lifelong perspective on inclusion, empathy, and what it really means to lead with humanity.

Janet explores how neuroscience forms the lens through which we see others—and how, as adults and leaders, we can either perpetuate exclusion or embody compassion and courage.

This episode is an invitation to remember our shared humanness and to lead not from ego, but from soul.

In this episode:

✅ The childhood story that forever changed how Janet sees difference

✅ How neuroscience explains our instinctive reactions to “otherness”

✅ Why belonging and inclusion begin with empathy

✅ The parallels between a second-grade playground and today’s workplaces

✅ The difference between performative inclusion and soul-level seeing

✅ A powerful reflection to shift how you show up as a leader today

About Janet Ioli:

Janet Ioli is a globally recognized executive advisor, coach, and leadership expert with over 25 years of experience developing leaders in Fortune 100 companies and global organizations.

She created The Inner Edge—a framework, a movement, and a message that flips leadership from mere success performance to presence; from ego to soul. Through her keynotes, podcast, and programs, Janet helps high-achievers find the one thing that changes everything: the mastery within.

Her approach redefines leadership presence—not as polish or tactics, but as the inner steadiness people feel from you and the positive imprint you leave on individuals and organizations.

Chapters for Apple Podcasts

00:00:00 Feeling Like an Outsider

00:05:34 The Neuroscience of Difference

00:07:35 Leading Beyond Difference

Connect with Janet Ioli:
Website: janetioli.com
Linkedin: Janet Ioli
Instagram: @leadershipcoachjanet

If you want to become more grounded, confident, and aligned with your deeper values in just 21 days, check out Janet Ioli’s book Less Ego, More Soul: A Modern Reinvention Guide for Women.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Select “Listen in Apple Podcasts,” then choose the “Ratings & Reviews” tab to share what you think.

Produced by Ideablossoms

In this solo episode, Janet Ioli explores what it really means to lead when everything around you feels like it’s shifting and uncertain. Instead of trying to eliminate the storm, she invites you to learn how to become the beacon—steady, grounded, and intentional—so others can orient themselves by your light.

Drawing from real coaching conversations, leadership psychology, and her signature grounded wisdom, Janet offers a powerful reframe: Change isn’t the exception, it’s the environment we live in.

Through her story-driven guidance, you’ll discover how to stop waiting for “normal” to return and start strengthening your inner foundation to lead with more presence and steadiness in the midst of chaos.

In this episode:

✅ Why change isn’t the exception—it’s the constant reality we live in

✅ How to release the illusion of “normal” and embrace continual evolution

✅ What it truly means to be the beacon in times of uncertainty

✅ Leading with steadiness and trust even without all the answers

✅ The difference between control and genuine self-mastery

✅ Simple grounding practices to stay centered and calm under pressure

✅ The power of vulnerability and transparency to strengthen leadership presence

✅ How to identify and return to your personal anchor during transition

Resources:

In Over Our Heads by Robert Kegan

About Janet Ioli:

Janet Ioli is a globally recognized executive advisor, coach, and leadership expert with over 25 years of experience developing leaders in Fortune 100 companies and global organizations.

She created The Inner Edge—a framework, a movement, and a message that flips leadership from mere success performance to presence; from ego to soul. Through her keynotes, podcast, and programs, Janet helps high-achievers find the one thing that changes everything: the mastery within.

Her approach redefines leadership presence—not as polish or tactics, but as the inner steadiness people feel from you and the positive imprint you leave on individuals and organizations.

Connect with Janet Ioli:
Website: janetioli.com
Linkedin: Janet Ioli
Instagram: @leadershipcoachjanet

If you want to become more grounded, confident, and aligned with your deeper values in just 21 days, check out Janet Ioli’s book Less Ego, More Soul: A Modern Reinvention Guide for Women.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Select “Listen in Apple Podcasts,” then choose the “Ratings & Reviews” tab to share what you think.

Produced by Ideablossoms

When everything around us feels uncertain, divided, and loud, true leadership doesn’t come from reacting; it comes from grounding.

In this solo episode, Janet explores what it really means to cultivate presence and self-mastery when the world feels incomprehensible and brittle.

She shares how our human wiring pulls us toward defensiveness and chaos, and why our greatest act of leadership is to choose steadiness instead. Through practical insights and reflective stories, Janet offers a guide to returning to that “grounded middle” we can all stand on.

This episode is an invitation to become the calmest person in the room and to remember that while we can’t control the turbulence of the world, we can control the steadiness we bring into it.

In this episode:

✅ What it means to live and lead in a BANI world—brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible

✅ Why the ability to “hold steady” is the new power skill of leadership

✅ How to catch yourself in moments of reactivity and self-defense

✅ The paradox of calm as strength, not passivity

✅ How congruence creates real presence

✅ A simple three-part practice to cultivate calm and self-mastery

✅ Why presence is not just a leadership skill, but a profound act of service

About Janet Ioli:

Janet Ioli is a globally recognized executive advisor, coach, and leadership expert with over 25 years of experience developing leaders in Fortune 100 companies and global organizations.

She created The Inner Edge—a framework, a movement, and a message that flips leadership from mere success performance to presence; from ego to soul. Through her keynotes, podcast, and programs, Janet helps high-achievers find the one thing that changes everything: the mastery within.

Her approach redefines leadership presence—not as polish or tactics, but as the inner steadiness people feel from you and the positive imprint you leave on individuals and organizations.

Connect with Janet Ioli:
Website: janetioli.com
Linkedin: Janet Ioli
Instagram: @leadershipcoachjanet

If you want to become more grounded, confident, and aligned with your deeper values in just 21 days, check out Janet Ioli’s book Less Ego, More Soul: A Modern Reinvention Guide for Women.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Select “Listen in Apple Podcasts,” then choose the “Ratings & Reviews” tab to share what you think.

Produced by Ideablossoms