When Shopify laid off 10 percent of its workforce in July, Sheena Brady’s job at the Canadian e-commerce company was secure. Then working as Merchant Success Team Lead – Key Accounts, Shopify Plus, Brady urged entrepreneurs on Twitter to hire the relieved Shopify employees.
“I started at #Shopify when there were a few hundred employees in Canada. Yesterday, over a thousand were laid off from around the planet. Today, the company is missing many top tier, talented humans who made fighting for entrepreneurs their life’s work. Hire them,” Brady had tweeted.
I started at #Shopify when there were a few hundred employees in Canada.
— 🙋🏻 sheena brady (@sheenabradyy) July 27, 2022
Yesterday, over a thousand were laid off from around the planet.
Today, the company is missing many top tier, talented humans who made fighting for entrepreneurs their life’s work. Hire them.
However, the Canadian had plans to quit the Shopify job herself to focus on her own business. Last week, Brady announced on LinkedIn that she is leaving Shopify to take her wellness tea brand Tease to the next level.
Last Day at Shopify
“In bittersweet news, today is my LAST day at Shopify. As a proud Merchant since 2013, I’m excited to share I’m going all in on Tease | Wellness Tea Blends, taking the company to the next level,” Brady posted on LinkedIn.
When Sheena Brady Joined Shopify
Eight years ago, Brady joined Shopify to earn “a little extra income” to support her small business. “My friend Mark Hayes said I might make a decent freelance writer, publishing interviews about Shopify’s successful merchants since I was a merchant myself. Little did I know, that opportunity would morph into a wildly challenging yet rewarding journey growing as a leader, merchant, and human while getting to work with some of the most ambitious and amazing people on the planet,” she revealed.
Recalling her journey at Shopify, Brady added: “I’ve had the privilege of being one of the first few hundred employees at Shopify in Canada as it grew to over 10,000 employees around the planet. As of this date, 98.75% of the company has started after me. (This is a fun + nerdy metric we have access to internally)”.
Starting as Customer Support Specialist in April 2015 at Shopify, Brady rose to the ranks of Merchant Success Manager – Shopify Plus and then Merchant Success Team Lead – Shopify Plus. Brady was acting as Merchant Success Team Lead – Key Accounts, Shopify Plus at the time of resignation.
On her LinkedIn profile, Brady explains her role saying: she “lead a high performing team of innovative Merchant Success Managers who are dedicated to making commerce better for everyone”.
Ensuring Merchants Success
In her LinkedIn post, Brady claimed that she led over 100 Merchant Success Managers in her eight-year stint at Shopify. Meanwhile, she continued to nurture her own company which became a seven-figure business in parallel. “Big thanks to our small, but mighty impactful Tease team over the years for being the MVP’s in supporting my vision to get the company where it is today.”
Brady looks forward to her entrepreneurial journey at Tease with learnings from Shopify. “I’ve spent the last few days trying to reflect on my lessons and learnings over the years in terms of what it means to me to build a company built on intentional leadership as I enter this scary, but incredibly exciting new chapter, and hope to bring some of those learnings into what we’re building next at Tease…”
“Thank you, Shopify, it’s been privilege to get to wake up everyday and work for one of the best companies in the world for as long as I have while supporting our mission to make commerce better for everyone,” Brady added.
Brady’s LinkedIn Post was supported by a medium blogpost, in which she shared eight things she learned in her eight years at Shopify. Explaining the outfit she appeared in on the last working day, which she also used in the blog, and the IP address mentioned on LinkedIn post, Brady said: “As for today’s Outfit of the Day: I’ve dug up my first hoodie I got when I joined Support in 2015, paired with my well loved and worn tank, sharing my favourite IP address”.
Parallel Businesses of Shopify Employees
Brady is not the only employee at Shopify that was running her own business parallelly. Shopify President Harley Finkelstein started a tea store — Firebelly Tea — on the e-commerce platform nine months ago. On September 5, he cherished the good nine months of his entrepreneurial journey.
“Nine months ago, I became an entrepreneur again – and it feels damn good. Why? As the President of Shopify, the best way for me to understand what our merchants are experiencing today as they build their businesses is to be an entrepreneur alongside them,” he posted on LinkedIn.
“For a year, we product tested, designed tea accessories and packaging, built our site and our brand. Finally, in November 2021 we launched Firebelly Tea on Shopify. We are nine months in, and it’s been one hell of a ride so far. But I can tell you one thing – we are just getting started. If you want to see what we’ve built, check out what’s brewing,” Finkelstein concluded the long post.
