Sue Foley, Author at Sanguine Strategic Advisors

Optimistic Leadership Fuels Motivation and Resilience

In the business world, optimism is a leadership advantage, not a personality trait. When leaders genuinely embrace optimism, they create a ripple effect throughout their organization. Employees become more engaged, teams become more collaborative, and setbacks become stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks. At its core, optimism is about maintaining the belief that challenges can…

How Compassionate Leaders Build Stronger Teams and Loyal Relationships

Leaders often misunderstand compassion. Some people hear the word and assume it means being too soft, too emotional, or unwilling to hold people accountable. But compassion is not weakness. It’s not lowering standards or avoiding difficult decisions. Compassionate leadership means recognizing the human side of work while still leading with clarity, fairness, and responsibility. This…

Courageous Leadership Creates Clarity Across Your Business

Fearlessness and courage are often grouped together, but they are not the same. Courage is not the absence of fear. Being courageous means recognizing fear, pressure, or uncertainty and still choosing to act responsibly. In business, courage often shows up in everyday moments. Addressing underperformance, admitting a mistake, changing strategy, or making a difficult decision…

The Ripple Effect: How Leadership Enthusiasm Shapes a Business

Leaders often underestimate the impact their mindset has on how employees show up for work each day. People rarely separate how they feel about their work from how their leaders show up to lead it. In SMBs, where teams interact with leadership daily, their mindset sets the tone for the entire business. When a leader…

The Mindsets That Move Small Businesses Forward

Strategy, systems, and processes make up much of what a business is and can become. However, they are not the only factors. It’s also shaped by mindsets. The way leaders think, respond, communicate, and make decisions directly impacts how the rest of the organization functions. This is especially true for small and mid-sized businesses, where…

The (real) cost of workplace health for law firms.

Recently, Micki Love of CJ Advertising invited Sanguine CEO Kevin Chern to speak with a group of law firm clients about a subject that rarely gets the direct attention it deserves: the state of health inside law firms, and what it is quietly costing them. The conversation was candid, practical, and grounded in the reality…

ICP First: The Strategic Foundation for Smarter Growth

“Don’t count the people you reach; reach the people who count.”— David Ogilvy In the rush to launch, many founders skip the most foundational step: build an ICP (your Ideal Customer Profile). It seems obvious, almost too simple. But ignoring it means misalignment that can become impossible to unwind. Working with companies navigating product-market fit,…

The Health Crisis Inside Law Firms

Law firms are built on pressure. Deadlines, demanding clients, emotionally complex cases, long hours, and high-stakes decisions are part of the profession. In many firms, that pressure is creating a health crisis that is easy to overlook until it becomes costly. Attorneys and staff sit for long stretches, skip meals, lose sleep, delay care, and…

Hang on. That’s not a growth strategy.

Field Note 01: When plans look confident, I look underneath. I’ve spent close to 30 years working inside marketing, sales, product, partnerships, customer retention, revenue systems, and executive decision-making. Scary to write that number down (and also rude of time, if I’m honest). Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the patterns I’ve seen. The…

The Power of Transparency in Vendor Relationships

Most vendor relationships operate in the shadows, leaving you guessing if you’re getting the full picture. That lack of transparency breeds doubt and stalls business trust, two things no growth-minded entrepreneur can afford. Clear, honest communication with your vendors builds solid business trust and unlocks stronger strategic partnerships that drive real success. Importance of Transparency…