Confidante & Strategist to Founders & CEOs

When the business you built
starts to feel like the problem

I'm Amanda Foister. I work — in complete confidence — with the people leading exceptional businesses, to find what's really holding you back and build the strategy that frees both you and the company to move forward.

Discover how we work

What We Do

You built this.
You shouldn't feel trapped by it.

Most leadership challenges aren't strategic problems. They're human ones. The work is seeing which is which — and knowing what to do about both.

Running a business is one of the most psychologically demanding things a person can do. The pressure is constant, the stakes are personal, and there's rarely anyone to be fully honest with. Over time, the things that hold a leader back stop being purely commercial — they become tangled up with confidence, identity, and exhaustion.

I work with founders and chief executives to get to the root of what's getting in the way — some of it in the business, some of it personal — and then build practical strategies that let both you and the company succeed.

Our Approach

A clear path through
what feels tangled

The work moves in a deliberate sequence — from understanding what's really happening to putting a strategy in place that holds.

01

Find the barrier

I start by getting honest about what's actually in the way — the obstacles holding you and the business back, including the ones that are hard to name.

02

Understand the person

Drawing on my training as a psychotherapist, I explore the personal side of leadership — the patterns, pressures and beliefs shaping the decisions you make.

03

Unpick the business

Thirty years across every kind of organisation means the commercial issues get read quickly and clearly — what's structural, what's symptomatic, what matters most.

04

Build the strategy

Then I turn insight into a plan: clear, practical strategies that allow you and the business to move forward and succeed — on your terms.

Amanda Foister

Amanda Foister

Founder, SBJ Partners · OBE

About

Three decades.
Every kind of business.
One constant.

I'm Amanda Foister. For nearly thirty years I've run SBJ Partners, and in that time I've worked at the heart of start-ups, family businesses, global corporations and not-for-profits — in fields as different as finance, fashion, retail, education, membership bodies and sport.

Different worlds, but the same truth in all of them: businesses get stuck for human reasons. That range is exactly why I can read a leader's situation clearly, and quickly. I draw on that experience to unpick what's happening in the business — and on my training as a psychotherapist to understand what's happening in the person leading it.

I'll be straight with you: I take on only a handful of people at a time, because this work only succeeds when it's close, honest and unhurried. Everything we discuss stays strictly between us — that confidence is the foundation everything else is built on.

My work has been recognised with an OBE. But what matters to the people I work with is simpler: they leave less stuck than they arrived.

In Their Words

Quiet work.
Lasting change.

“

I'd reached the point where every problem felt like my fault personally. Amanda helped me separate the business challenges from my own head — and once I could see them apart, I could actually solve them. The change in how I lead has been profound.

J.E.

Founder, Events Company

“

She has a rare ability to understand the person and the business at the same time. The strategies we built were practical and grounded, but they only worked because she'd first helped me get out of my own way. Genuinely invaluable.

D.T.

Owner, Beauty Manufacturing

“

I was losing the plot a bit — too deep in the weeds, questioning everything, wondering if I still had it in me. SBJ Partners helped me find the clarity and confidence to make some big calls. The business is in a much stronger place as a result.

P.F.

Founder, Gift & Lifestyle Brand

Get in Touch

Let's have
a conversation

I take on only a handful of clients at any one time, and I don't dress sales calls up as discovery calls. If something here has resonated, write to me directly — we'll have a straightforward, completely confidential conversation about whether, and how, we might work together.

amanda@sbjpartners.com