My Life at Palmetto: Loren Padelford

Loren Padelford is Palmetto’s new President of Consumer Energy Platform. He sat down with the Comms team on day one to talk about his new role, how he got here, and why he’s excited about the opportunity Palmetto has at this moment, one few companies ever get.

What is your role at Palmetto? And what was your path to joining? 

I’m the President of Consumer Energy Platform at Palmetto. My entire career has been in tech, primarily focused on providing solutions for small and medium businesses. I started in enterprise software, selling operational risk management platforms to oil and gas companies and governments — basically helping them not blow themselves up. Eventually, I moved into the SMB space at companies like Shopify, BILL and Slice.

I’ve always been attracted to seemingly "impossible" problems. Truly transformational companies attack problems that everyone says can't be solved.

That’s where Palmetto sits right now. Energy prices are never coming down. There’s plenty of technology to reduce costs, but no one adopts it. Why? Because the energy market, both generation and technology to save money is complicated and opaque. It’s created a massive trust problem where consumers don’t trust the producers or the solar companies to actually help them out. 

So we have a big problem; How do you reduce energy costs for a consumer who doesn't trust the market?

I don’t know the answer yet, but this is Palmetto's opportunity, and why I am here. I want us to solve that problem. 

If you know at this point, what will a typical day look like?

I don't know totally, because this is day one, but I can tell you this: You have to obsess about the needs of our customer, the consumer. Everything we do has to be measured against the impact it has on the problem the consumer has, high prices.

My days will be filled with asking: How does this help the consumer? Are we talking about things in a way that a consumer would actually want? Nobody cares if we think it's cool; if the consumers don't agree, there's no game to play. The problem isn't technology or power generation — we have those. The challenge is that consumers aren't listening and they don't know who to trust. One thing is for certain, we are going to have to create far more value for our customers than we will ever take from them.

So my days will be filled with figuring out how to give the consumer what they want: trust, savings, education. 

Padelford and his family.

What excites you about joining Palmetto now?

Timing is everything in companies. Palmetto has been running at the idea of solving energy for consumers for 16 years. It’s learned a lot, it’s pivoted a lot, and it’s created a foundational set of technology and information services that is extremely valuable and very hard to create.

Palmetto created a substantial defensible moat with things like LightReach and Energy Intelligence. We have this unique set of assets which would be very hard to recreate and is very valuable to a consumer. It’s valuable because it helps a consumer understand their reality. It helps a consumer engage in this journey to energy independence and understand the market they live in. It gives us the opportunity to become the trusted resource for a consumer.

I think Palmetto has created a really great business, and we're still very early. We have the foundation that allows us to build a truly impactful company, and that's an exciting place to work

What excites you most about the impact our work could have on the world?

I think you can look at impact from a number of layers. The first is the consumer. The cost of energy production will never go down. It has no incentive to go down. It is structurally flawed. Generally, people just want to pay less for stuff, and that's what technology is for. The promise of all technology is to make things better, but in energy, it hasn't actually worked on scale yet. 

I personally built a Net-Zero house with solar, batteries, etc., so this is also personal to my own desires and expectations. What I can say is that it was a super frustrating process.

If we truly want consumers to save on energy we have to bridge the knowledge and trust gap. Once you bridge that, more people will see their energy consumption and costs go down. That is also good in aggregate for everyone because climate change is a factual truth. Unless we get mass adoption of things that reduce greenhouse gases, we are going to find ourselves in a real problem. If you give consumers what they want — lower costs for better stuff — you will get mass adoption. Let's get there.

Lastly, the impact on Palmetto's employees is really high. It is fun to build companies where you impact the neighborhoods you live in. You get to talk to real people, your own neighbors, who you impact every single day. That is a rare thing. 

Padelford with his family at University of Guelph, where he played football.

What's the best piece of advice you've received?

I’ll go back to the thing I said earlier: Create more value than you take. In business and personal lives, people are often trying to get more than they give, thinking that getting more means they “won”. I don't know that I've actually found that to be true. I think the more times I've tried to create more for the other side, I end up getting a lot out of that. Arguably, I think I end up getting more in the long run — not necessarily in that moment, but over time.

Your outcomes are directly proportional to how much outcome you give someone else. Create more value than you take; it’s an immensely powerful idea for building companies, careers, and relationships.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work that keeps you energized?

My partner Katie and I travel a lot and love going to restaurants. We cycle. I have two teenage daughters who are a lot of fun. I read, watch movies, and play a lot of video games.

As I’m getting older, I’ve mellowed out and become more like the "Yes Man." I used to be more specific or picky, but now I’m just up for it all. I’m curious about life and want to experience everything. If I go do something new, it might be fun — so what's the downside?