Kyle Norton (CRO at Owner.com) sits down with JD Saint-Martin, President of Lightspeed Commerce, to unpack how he went from startup founder to public-company executive. They discuss scaling Lightspeed from $75M to $1.2B in recurring revenue, and the leadership lessons behind that growth. The conversation covers building high-performance sales cultures, promotion systems, enablement investment, RTO and culture philosophies, and more.

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Chapters

00:01:51 – Startup to Acquisition

00:03:34 – Global Upbringing & VC Start

00:04:03 – Scaling to $1.2B ARR

00:05:25 – Growth Through SaaS & Payments

00:05:44 – Founder to Exec Transition

00:07:21 – Empathy From Doing Every Role

00:09:11 – Leading 3,500 Employees

00:11:07 – "Roll in the Mud" Leadership

00:13:28 – Early Lessons & Advice

00:16:37 – Building High-Performance Culture

00:18:28 – Candid Hiring & Fit

00:21:42 – Transparency in Recruiting

00:22:06 – Obsession With Metrics

00:23:55 – Inputs vs Outputs

00:24:58 – Manager Pyramid Framework

00:27:57 – Promotions & Company Values

00:29:42 – Elite Points System

00:33:29 – Systemized PIPs

00:36:20 – Retaining Top ICs

00:40:31 – Investing in Enablement

00:42:05 – COVID & Lost Osmosis

00:45:06 – Return-to-Office View

00:49:18 – GTM Owns Enablement

00:51:05 – Balancing Autonomy & Consistency

00:53:32 – Payments & Compensation

00:55:35 – No Work-Life Balance

00:59:41 – Energized by the Work

01:18:34 – Favorite Book & Takeaways

01:20:13 – Closing & Outro

E51: How Lightspeed Commerce Built a $1B+ Sales Engine - JD Saint-Martin, President @ Lightspeed Commerce

The Revenue Leadership Podcast with Kyle Norton