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The quiet fire that got you here isn’t finished with you yet.
Coaching for leaders and their teams who are already succeeding and still choose to grow. Some of the work is transformational. Some of it is accountability. Outside your comfort zone is where the magic happens.
Where it usually starts
What brings leaders to Quiet Fire?
- 01You’ve grown the business, but you’re becoming the bottleneck.
- 02Your leadership team needs to step up.
- 03You’re facing a decision you can’t discuss openly with everyone around you.
- 04Growth has created complexity and you need clarity.
- 05You know something needs to change, but you’re not yet sure what.
- 06You need your leadership team in a room having the conversation you’ve been avoiding.
About
Julie Grieve
Before coaching, she built and sold two businesses. As MD and eventually shareholder of Abbey Business Centres, she turned a loss-making serviced office business into one turning over more than £21m, selling to Regus (now IWG) in 2011, and chaired the Business Centre Association along the way. She then grew Lateral City’s serviced apartment business from nothing to £4m, before founding Criton in 2016: a hospitality tech company simplifying digital transformation for independent hotels, which grew fast through Covid and sold to Nonius in December 2021.
Julie knows what this shift feels like from the inside: being a Vistage member made her a better leader. As a Vistage Chair, she now facilitates peer advisory groups where already-successful leaders challenge each other further, protected time, real accountability, and the kind of support only genuine peers can give.
Through Quiet Fire, Julie delivers 1:1 coaching for leaders, as part of Vistage or directly. Based in the East Neuk of Scotland, delivered face-to-face or online across Scotland.
She’s at her best outside her comfort zone, and wants the same for the leaders and teams she works with, alongside her ongoing work supporting start-ups and scale-ups, including plenty of female founders, through Techscaler, Barclays Eagle Labs and AccelerateHER. Away from work she’s usually walking her two cocker spaniels on Elie beach, working on her golf handicap, or murdering a tune at the piano.
Vistage Chair · Founder, Quiet Fire
The name
Where “Quiet Fire” comes from
The name is borrowed from Jim Collins’ research in Good to Great, and the idea of Level 5 Leadership: leaders who hold themselves accountable when something goes wrong, and point to their team when things go right.
Underneath that humility is a quiet fire, a drive toward excellence that doesn’t switch off just because you’ve already succeeded. It’s the belief, shared with Vistage, that better leaders make better decisions, and better decisions make better results.
Quiet Fire exists for leaders who still have that fire lit, and for the teams who feel the difference when they do.
“Level 5 leaders display a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will.” Jim Collins, Good to Great
Who I work with
Curious enough. Humble enough. Ambitious enough.
- I. Curious enough to know they don’t have all the answers. Already successful. Still asking better questions.
- II. Humble enough to ask for help. Ego under control, sometimes to the point of impostor syndrome.
- III. Ambitious enough to keep challenging themselves to be better. Willing to leave the comfort zone on purpose, that’s where the magic happens.
- IV. Accountable first, credit-giving second. The Level 5 instinct, and it tends to run through the whole team.
Leadership has never been easy, and it feels tougher just now - multi-generational teams, constant change, economic uncertainty, AI, geopolitical noise - and you have to navigate your way through it all while bringing your team and stakeholders with you. You don’t have to do it alone.
How we work together
Coaching, facilitation & Vistage
01 - Coaching
One-to-one, with an edge
Direct conversations for leaders ready to be challenged as well as supported, the transformational work and the accountability work, in the same room.
02 - Facilitation
For the room, not just the leader
Peer groups, teams and offsites facilitated with the same rigour Vistage chairs bring to their boards, protected time to work on the business, not just in it, and the constructive challenge only genuine peers can give. See what I facilitate ↓
03 - Vistage
Peer advisory groups
Two confidential Vistage groups for business leaders, one in the West of Scotland and one in the East: a day a month with peers who’ll challenge you, plus monthly one-to-one coaching with your Chair. About the groups →
Facilitation
What you can bring me in to facilitate
An independent facilitator lets the whole leadership team take part, including you, while someone else holds the room, keeps it honest and makes sure it ends in decisions.
- Leadership team strategy days
- Board & leadership offsites
- Alignment sessions
- Difficult strategic decisions
- Leadership team development
- Growth planning
“Julie as a coach is calm, focused, compassionate, purpose driven and has a brilliant sense of humour to boot! She helps to turn my concerns or insecurities into actions and change, and I’m so grateful to have her on my side.” Lindsay Fyffe-Jardine · CEO, Apex Scotland
Get in touch
Find your flame.
If you recognise yourself in this - already doing well, and still not finished - let’s talk about what’s next for you or your team.