Dave Shoemack – CEO, Goodnature

My first paid job was working in a dairy in Tauranga for $5.25 an hour; it did have the added bonus of free pies that went unsold. Before that my brother and I would bake muffins or fudge and sell them roadside - at full profit thanks to Mum and Dad buying the ingredients ;)

I got a place on the Westpac Graduate Programme back in 2006. One night while studying in the library a friend was applying and said the application process was easy so lazy old me went for it! I was then invited to a second phase assessment day at the Cake Tin in Wellington which I used as leverage for an assignment extension!

I never dreamed of being a banker. In hindsight the fact that I didn't really want the job is probably what got me it - I was relaxed and authentic through the process.

I got access to parts of a corporate business on the graduate programme that otherwise would have taken years. I was part of the corporate affairs and later the marketing team - so I worked with people across functions like PR, internal comms, investor relations, consumer research, and even content creation.

I also drove an old Cadillac the length of the country and attended every o-week wearing a mullet wig as part of the 'Westie Pac' campaign (it was peak Outrageous Fortune). That was as part of the team tasked with growing student account signups.

If you're not doing something you're passionate about then don't do it. The people at Westpac were great, but my heart just wasn't in it so the days felt really looooong.

I’ve made a couple of big pivots that were pretty scary at the time. The first was to quit our jobs and move to Amsterdam (with my now wife Frances) back when we were 27; I was pretty conservative then so it was terrifying. The second was to pivot away from the safety of a corporate (Heineken) to a startup e-bike company called VanMoof.

I took a risk and walked away from the corporate world and reinvented myself with startups and scale-ups. I started at VanMoof as the CMO (but being a startup I was the only person in Marketing too!) and ended as Chief of Staff, working alongside the two founders.

I worked for VanMoof remotely from NZ for two Covid years at crazy hours of the day. I decided then I was ready to have both feet in NZ and throw myself into a new challenge.

I've followed my heart throughout my career, said yes to opportunities. I worked at three companies, nine jobs, over 18 years before my CEO role. Over time, I realised that although I liked Marketing it wasn't my true passion and there were many even in our company who were better at it than me.  

I was on the board of Goodnature for 1.5 years before I applied for the newly created CEO role. So I was in a unique position of knowing the people, product, problems and opportunities pretty well already.

About a decade ago, I started to have this concept of an effective CEO being someone who was able to blend brand, product, and culture into one cohesive force. I figured I would be in my 50s before I got there and I certainly wasn't counting chickens or building a clear career roadmap.

The CEO job was so unbelievably difficult, and I felt so alone and exposed. After 6 years of uncomfortable chaos during a high growth period at VanMoof, I thought Goodnature would be more relaxed and that everything was already sorted and ready for me to come in and supercharge it. The following 3 years were so so hard and sometimes I was only holding on by the skin of my teeth, but I learnt more from that tough period that I could ever have if things had of 'gone to plan'. And then we came out the other side, and the future looks pretty bright from here.

Ask for help and build a network. In hindsight, I felt ashamed at not knowing all the answers and retreated a little. 18 months in I found an incredible mentor (who still supports me to this day) and joined a two year leadership course which has been transformational - mainly due to the cohort I was part of and realising that EVERYTHING I had been through and was going through was totally normal for a CEO role.

I'm proud that Goodnature (and Abel, and before that VanMoof) makes a net positive difference - I firmly believe there are too many companies making or selling sh*t in the world. Beyond that, I just love watching people grow and hopefully contributing to that in some way.

Don’t make becoming CEO a goal! It's an incredibly challenging and lonely role, with very little positive reinforcement along the way and constant problems to solve - so if you're expecting rainbows once you get there you're in for a nasty surprise.

If you’re still keen and you're good at seeing the bigger picture, don’t be afraid to reach out to any CEOs you know (or don't know) and offer to buy them coffee or lunch and pick their brain - I've never said no to a request like this.

Lastly, don't assume that other people have all the answers - we're all just muddling along doing our best.