The Limitless Equation Podcast, hosted by Chloe Hooper, has released a new episode featuring Fiona Johnston, general manager of shopper, brand and loyalty at Metcash Food. In an energetic and refreshingly honest conversation, Johnston unpacks her superpower of “limitless possibilities” and the discipline it takes to catch herself before curiosity tips into burnout.
“Fiona has this incredible ability to make you believe anything is possible, and then she turns around and shows you exactly how hard-won that belief is. Her honesty about the shadow side of ambition, and how she pulls herself back from it, is something I think everyone listening will recognise in themselves,” said Hooper.
Johnston leads the team behind IGA’s customer-facing brand and loyalty strategy, spanning campaigns, IGA Rewards, e-commerce and shopper insights. She was instrumental in launching the ‘You Can’t Beat Local’ platform, and brings more than 20 years of consumer goods and brand experience to a role built on turning customer insight into growth.
Johnston describes her gift for enabling people to dream bigger than the problem in front of them, whether that’s a struggling team member, a stuck stakeholder, or her own children.
“I start to think about what really fills my cup, what gives me energy and gets me into an incredible state of flow, is when I’m able to enable people… to dream about what could be,” she said.
She’s just as candid about the flip side. Johnston has learned to name what she calls her “shadow side” – the moment curiosity curdles into over-functioning, where everything at work and at home suddenly needs to be perfect.
“If I haven’t achieved, if I haven’t felt like I’ve pushed forward… I feel very unsatisfied,” she admits, describing how that pressure can spiral into a “doom spiral” of overachievement rather than genuine growth,” she said.
Her fix is deceptively simple: stop. “I’ve been conscious to actually, once I’ve recognised it, go, ‘You’re not going to do it,'” she said, describing the discomfort of deliberately leaving work undone to break the cycle. “The first time it was really hard, and it’s getting slightly easier each time. Still not perfect, but getting easier.”
Much of that resilience, Johnston said, was forged by leaving Australia in her late twenties with little more than a suitcase, first for London, then Singapore.
“My one piece of advice to any juniors in the world is get out of the Australian market. Go and experience a different market,” she said, crediting those years abroad with sharpening her commercial instincts and permanently widening her sense of what’s possible.
Listen to the full episode of The Limitless Equation on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
