Sales is Not Magic, It's Math w/ Loren Padelford (Founding CRO, Shopify)

03/19/25 • 34 min

Index on impact, not work. Care about the impact people have, not the work they're doing. It's something too many sales leaders forget.

Loren Padelford, who transformed Shopify Plus from zero to $1 billion in revenue in just seven years, is proudly a non-traditional sales leader. He positioned Shopify Plus as "anti-enterprise," instead looking beyond the current Fortune 500; saying "we want to build the next one."

Loren also reflects on the personal toll that constant grind culture had on his personal life and relationships. Something I encourage every sales leader to hear and reflect on themselves.

Get our Database! Real Playbooks from Billion-Dollar Companies: https://clickhubspot.com/scienceofscaling

Index on impact, not work. Care about the impact people have, not the work they're doing. It's something too many sales leaders forget.

Loren also reflects on the personal toll that constant grind culture had on his personal life and relationships. Something I encourage every sales leader to hear and reflect on themselves.

Get our Database! Real Playbooks from Billion-Dollar Companies: https://clickhubspot.com/scienceofscaling

Previous Episode

How to Hire Sales Reps for AI Products w/ Lauren Nemeth (Fmr COO, Pinecone)

You're a CRO at a $4B company with 2,000 sellers. You've made it. Then comes an unexpected call: Want to lead sales at a 40-person team doing $25M? Most would laugh.

Not Lauren Nemeth. As Twilio's sales leader, she saw something bigger in Pinecone - a chance to shape how AI transforms enterprise selling. From hiring algorithms to handling objections, she recognized that AI wouldn't just change tech sales - it would rewrite the entire playbook.

Get our Database! Real Playbooks from Billion-Dollar Companies: https://clickhubspot.com/scienceofscaling

Next Episode

Predictable, Scalable, Revenue w/ Ron Gabrisko (CRO, Databricks)

Start the GTM section of your investor pitch deck with three words: Predictable, Scalable, Revenue. I don't know why it works so well. It seems so intuitive, but like every investor's like, "I love this guy! That's what I want."

Yeah, , we all want that, but the question is how do you get there?

So many startups get that wrong. They think it's a sales deck. They think it's a pitch deck. And in fact, that hurts the GTM system. So with the help of Ron Gabrisko (CRO, Databricks) we unpack how to build an effective sales playbook.

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