David Toko, a dynamic Business Connector at the Hawkes Bay Chamber of Commerce. David’s career journey is a compelling narrative of perseverance, adaptability, and the power of community. Born in Otago and raised in North Cromwell, David’s path has been shaped by diverse experiences and a relentless drive to support others.
In this interview, David opens up about his early career struggles and triumphs. From working long, gruelling shifts in the printing industry to seizing a life-changing opportunity with Harvey Norman, David’s story is one of resilience and transformation. His candid reflections on the challenges he faced, including a significant setback in Palmerston North, reveal a man who has learned to turn adversity into opportunity.
David’s role as a Business Connector involves meeting with small and medium enterprise owners, understanding their aspirations, and helping them achieve success. His ability to empathize and genuinely connect with people has been a cornerstone of his career. He shares valuable insights into the importance of mentorship, the necessity of asking for help, and the impact of community support.
One of David’s defining moments came from handling a difficult customer situation with grace and finding innovative solutions to business problems. His journey underscores the importance of backing oneself, staying persistent, and continuously learning from both successes and failures.
David’s advice for aspiring business professionals is rooted in his own experiences: believe in yourself, leverage your skills, and don’t be afraid to seek support. His story is a testament to the power of resilience and the importance of community in achieving professional success.
Join us as David Toko shares his inspiring journey, offering practical advice and heartfelt reflections that are sure to resonate with anyone looking to make their mark in the chamber of commerce.
The six pou of Mata Ārahi Manomano drive the questions we have used to profile Māori & Pacific role models, in the Service sector.
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Representing the levels and forms of aroha that can be found throughout our lives across our many communities. We acknowledge the wide range of obstacles and the journey it takes to overcoming everything that stands in our way to expressing aroha within.
Maitaki – Kia ora koutou
My name’s David Toko. I grew up in Murihiku, born in Otago, and raised in North Cromwell. I’m currently the Business Connector with the Hawkes Bay Chamber of Commerce. What does it mean to be a Business Connector? Essentially, my role involves meeting with business owners of small and medium enterprises, typically businesses with under 50 employees. I sit down with them, much like this interview, to identify their aspirations and what success looks like for them. Through the Chamber of Commerce and my role, I assist and support them in their growth and journey.
Skills and Weaknesses
I left school in ’93 and didn’t really find my calling until 2001. I started working for a company; I didn’t go to university. I honestly had no aspirations and didn’t know what I was doing. I was a bit of a repeater to start off with, but I ended up getting a job with a printing company. For people who aren’t familiar with the printing industry, it’s kind of dying out now, but think of newspapers—how they are made and produced. That’s what I did. I was a young 18-year-old father who needed a job. I played a lot of football and continued playing football. I just got a connection there. Somebody said, “Mate, you need a job.” So he dragged me along to his work. He was a printer, and I ended up being a printer.
I didn’t finish my apprenticeship. After a couple of years there, I started learning more about myself, my strengths, and the skills that make me a great Business Connector. It’s probably just the ability to listen to what people have to say and take it on board without talking a lot. I struggle to talk; it’s definitely one of my weaknesses. I don’t open up very often, but just being able to empathize and understand people’s struggles, and having the ability to say, “If I don’t have the answer, I’ll go out and find it.” There’s nothing more genuine than telling people you don’t have the answer and being honest. That’s probably why I’m so successful at what I’m doing now.
Seeking guidance from our kaitiaki Hiwa-i-te-rangi, we take a journey through our different aspirations, goals and dreams. This tohu acknowledges hard work, wisdom, the reach of ones goals and the desire that comes from this mahi.
Going back to before, I spent four years and didn’t even complete my apprenticeship. Through my connections, and this is a funny thing, I met up with an old friend that I went to school with. He was working for Coca-Cola as a regional sales rep, and he said to me, “You should give us a go.” Quite honestly, I was getting sick of being a printer.
You know, working 12–14-hour shifts, I was doing it basically just for my family. So, I guess my driver at that age, I was 21, was just to feed my family. It wasn’t because I loved being a printer. I didn’t enjoy getting up at 10:00 at night and working through to 12:00 the next day. There were a lot of night shifts.
When I got the opportunity to try something else through an old school friend of mine, I said, “Man, why not?” So, I did a bit of merchandising through Coca-Cola and learned a lot there, meeting a lot of grocery shop owners and other suppliers from other brands that go into these grocery stores. Then after merchandising, I spent another couple of months in a sales rep role. That’s when I met my wife, who was in early childcare. We decided to move up north to Whakatane, and I think that was probably the driver. I landed a role straight away with my sales background and became a furniture coordinator for Warehouse Stationery. So still in the sales space of retail. That’s when I think I started to really enjoy interacting with people, which is strange for somebody who doesn’t like being around people too much. But I don’t know, maybe it’s that Pacific thing. I just wanted to help people and always be there for others. It may even be tied to my childhood too. But just being there, not being looked down on, and always looking to support and solve problems—all that sort of stuff rolls into working in retail.
It was there that I was shoulder-tapped by a man named Robert from Harvey Norman, who was opening up a store in Whakatane. Harvey Norman at the hub. They shoulder-tapped me and said, “Hey man, you are doing a really good job here. You should come start with us.” And I was just like, “Oh, who are you guys?” I didn’t understand how Harvey Norman operated then, but they like to go out and find people who have the right attitude.
It was around 2005-2006 when I got the shoulder tap to work at Harvey Norman. That’s really when my career kind of kicked off. I was like, “Man, I love this. I love retail.”
After about nine months with them, they really saw potential in me. This was in the electrical department—TVs, whiteware, all that sort of stuff. They said, “Would you want to be a proprietor one day?” I never thought of becoming a franchisee and owning my own business. So, I was like, “Yeah, what do I have to do?” They said, “Literally just keep doing what you’re doing now, and we’ll keep monitoring. We have what we call a proprietor training program.” It was about teaching me the systems, processes, logistics—how a product is loaded into the system, just everything. It was unbelievable. That’s really where I guess my business acumen started. So, I began there and moved down to Hastings.
With adventure comes challenges as well as obstacles to overcome. We stand proud as we overcome these obstacles. This tohu draws inspiration from the Niho Taniwha and Aramoana patterns. We acknowledge reaching our destination and preparing ourselves for the many new adventures ahead.
I got a promotion in departmental management of Brownsville, which is the television and speakers department. Obviously, there was a lot of money to be made. In those days, the commission was good. I learned how to effectively run that department under proprietor Sam Hyde. He decided that I should look at other sides of the business, so I moved into whiteware for a couple of years and learned more about different products and services through Harvey Norman. Then I got a phone call one day from the general manager of Electrical Harvey Norman, and that would have been 2010. So, it was about five years of hard yards.
Both Luca, Toni in Hastings, and I got given a shot to take over part of North Harvey Norman Electrical. Yes, I’m pretty sure it was 2014 when I sat back and just went, “Holy shit. I’m running a business!”
I keep telling everybody I haven’t gone to university. I haven’t got any fancy degrees. I still haven’t read them. All I’ve done is a diploma and an NZIM management certificate, but I haven’t gone to university. I just felt I didn’t have that path in me. I wasn’t going to go to tertiary education. I just got to know a little more about myself in this space. That’s really where I found my strengths and weaknesses—in retail sales and franchise operations. Then I just spent, I guess, the next 10 years there.
In 2018, I finished up with Harvey Norman, so it was a long time. In that time, I made a lot of friends, a lot of connections, and a lot of contacts from Heretaunga to Dunedin. I came back to Hastings as a furniture proprietor. I moved down to Dunedin as a furniture proprietor again. Each store was successful. A lot of my strengths were the ability to see where things were going wrong in the business and fixing them, making them more profitable than they were. A lot of stores that I went into were losing money, and that was kind of like my superpower, I guess—just the ability to fix things very quickly and get them turning around and getting the cash flow going again.
Interviewer: So you became the fix-it man?
Yeah, it was funny. I used to go into some stores, and they’d be going, “Oh my god, it’s the Grim Reaper.” If I turned up in a store, even if I was working in another store and I was asked, I’d say I’m in Hastings, and then I’d get a phone call saying I need to be down in Wellington to look at their panel reports. If I walked into that store and the proprietor saw me coming, he knew that he was in trouble. But I was always there to help him. I just said, “Hey mate, we need to have a look at things and see how we can turn them around.”
It’s funny because, as I talked with Zeena a lot, it’s stuff that you can’t teach people at all—it’s work experience. So, a lot of my skills have been gained working in it and just seeing things. It could be just a change in staff rotations. Just really weird stuff that some businesses don’t look at.
It’s a bit of a dark art, you know. I guess people like to sit down and look at your business plan or your business strategy. I mean, it’s good to have the nuts and bolts, but sometimes it’s organic. It’s just being in that space to see. To say that it is a dark art—seeing some of those little things that facts and figures aren’t going to pick up. It’s just being in there and feeling what’s happening in the space, feeling that gut instinct.
These patterns represent bravery and being strong in the face of adversity. We strive to be persistent and positively challenge anything that threatens to alter, restrict, and put a barrier in the way of our desired pathway.
I don’t know if this makes sense, but I guess that’s why I accelerated through Harvey Norman. There was a guy named Rob Chadwick who was a proprietor who had been moved over from Australia. So he’s back in Hastings. He’s a Flaxmere boy. He saw me at the warehouse and said to me later on, “You know, you should look at those jobs at Harvey Norman. I think it will be really, really good for you.” I said, “Oh, OK,” and applied for a role. I actually had a foot in computers because at Warehouse Stationery, obviously, there wasn’t so much about TV and all that sort of stuff. I thought, “Man, if I’m gonna do something and take these sales skills I’m developing, I think I would be better off learning about computers because that’s where the future is.”
So, the interview days were at this motel, and they had two doors. Harvey Norman is made up of four franchises, but two franchisees—the electrical and the computer proprietors—were sitting in motel rooms next door to each other. And yeah, I walked in the wrong door.
I walked out and then Rob looks up and goes, “Man, I knew I was going to see your face again.” Rob goes, “How are you?” And he goes, “Are you meant to be in here?” I said, “I’m here to see Joel,” and then they looked at each other and said, “No, no, no. Sit down, mate, you’re in the right place.”
They pretty much robbed me. That’s why I keep laughing—two Robs. He robbed me from day one, but they really gave me my opportunity. What accelerated me after spending a couple of years with them was Tony, and another young proprietor from Lower Hutt, who came up to Hastings. His name was Sam Hyde, and he had a very, very long illustrious career with Bond and Bond, who aren’t around anymore. So he already knew the dark arts inside out.
There’s one moment when we had a really bad customer walk into our store. He was running a My Kitchen Rules promotion through Harvey Norman at the time, and he had a whole lot of dignitaries sitting in the back of the training area in our shop. This woman came in just ripsnorting, going, “Where’s the fing manager? I wanna fing rip his head off.” Somebody needed to sort this woman out. Long story short, she was getting really, really bad service with our furniture team at the front, and Sam just sort of gave me that look. “Man, this is embarrassing. What’s going on out there?” You know, having four proprietors under a roof means you’ve got to negotiate and wiggle with whatever the dynamics are. But he gave me that look, and I just walked up to the woman and said, “Hey, what’s wrong?” She said, “Oh, it’s just losing a nut,” and then I just said, “Hey, what can I do to make it right?” And she goes, “I just want to deal with somebody that’s going to help me and not bug me around at this moment.” So, I just explained to her and said, “So if we could find somebody out there that can answer your questions, would that make you happy?” And she said yes.
That’s all I really did, and Sam came up to me the next morning and said, “You know, there was always one lesson that you were always going to have to learn, and that’s how to deal with customers.” He loved how I took her aside into another room, deescalating the situation. I wasn’t taught this stuff; it was just kind of intuitive. The next part was finding a solution and keeping her from buying goods off another person. That was the customer service she was after. She really just wanted a little bit of a discount.
You know, and that’s all it took. But that’s, I guess, my defining moment. If anyone’s gonna learn anything, it’s that some people have bad days. We all have bad days. You don’t have to wear it, and sometimes avoiding bad situations is not the way to tackle it. It’s just being honest and straight up, just saying, “How can we help?”
Here we are drawing inspiration from the Pūhoro pattern. The pūhoro is used here to represent the strength, speed and agility needed to move forward and accomplish ones goals.
Well, that’s a funny one, because I’m a Business Connector now. Before I got into this role last August, I spent five years working. After retail, I left and went into QA—quoting, tendering, project management for a roofing/plumbing business. It’s a 50-year-old business based here in the Hawkes Bay. I took all my customer service skills and added quoting and tendering work to my skill set. I think you just have to have faith in what you’re doing and back yourself.
That’s my biggest weakness. Growing up, I wasn’t backed and wasn’t given any confidence. It was usually the complete opposite; being told I’d never amount to anything. So, it’s just about backing yourself. In my line of work now as a Business Connector, everything I’ve done in my life has come back to supporting those who want to start businesses, upskill if they’ve already got a business, upskill their people, train them, recruit the right people, and increase their profits. It’s my whole life pretty much wrapped in a sushi roll. That’s what I had for lunch. (laughing)
Everything I’ve done in my life has culminated to this point right now as a Business Connector. I can take all those skills and share what I still call dark arts. There are things that you will never be able to learn from books. Dealing with Jonathan at Massey University with the Bachelor of Retail, we’ve had discussions. I said there are things that you’ll never learn unless you do the hard yards because these are things that books can’t teach you.
Interviewer: “There’s a lot of our people that don’t back themselves on the skills they are accumulating.”
Yeah, it’s crazy because I was talking about this with my CEO. So many times I’ve been told that I’m not from here, I’m not from Hawkes Bay. People have been using this excuse at me since I’ve been here. “How can you just go in there and think that you can connect with all these businesses and help them out?” I’m like, well, it’s my job. I just believe that if you’re here to help and you’ve got the skills to help somebody, just do it. I’ve never cared about any outcomes apart from seeing a business flourish. It’s a weird one. Like our friends we know at the marae, cooking food for 150 people and finding sleeping accommodation and stuff. You learn you’ve just become an operations manager, a catering manager, and a project manager all in one, and you‘ve done that a million times or so.
Success, best mentioned in the whakatauki “Tūwhitia te hopo, mairangatia te angitū!” Feel the fear and do it anyway!
Some of the failures, I guess, and the biggest lesson that I learned was with my store in Palmerston North. My first store wasn’t successful. I really had to turn it around and get it going again, but I lasted just over a year. There was no specific reason; it was just a relationship breakdown between myself and my general manager. I was let go from my proprietorship in electrical, and I had to pick myself up again. You have a whole family relying on you for income. My daughter was just heading off to her first year at university—she’s my oldest girl. That was a point in my career where I said, “Holy ****.” I still really loved doing what I was doing in those 5-6 years of building up to that point and becoming a proprietor. I was like, “Man, I just failed,” and trying to pick myself up again and get going was hard. But within three months, to cut a long story short, we moved back here to Hawkes Bay. I had a good friend of mine who was on the furniture side of Harvey Norman. They kind of got me back in the door again. Obviously, I had to go through a bit of protocol and make sure that it was OK with electrical. Funny, same company but different business. Within, I’d say, six months, I was back as a proprietor again, and that’s just because of my skill sets and my value. I was lucky and back on the road again, and then I didn’t let that opportunity slip. So I learned from my mistakes.
The biggest mistake, or rather the biggest lesson I learned, is don’t do it on your own. That’s always been a weakness—thinking I can do all of this and don’t need help from anybody. But I’ve changed that now, and I teach small businesses to do that. I also say, if you need help, you need to ask. If you don’t know what’s missing, you still need to talk to somebody. Sitting down and catching up with someone, networking, just talking it out with somebody you see as a mentor—talk to them. Just talk. That was my problem, not talking about it with anybody, not feeling that I could talk about some of the problems I was facing in business. I got back on my feet again. I’m probably his mentor now. He does ring me up from time to time to share stuff that’s going on in his space.
I think he’s about to become the national sales manager for Diamond Roofing, so he’s done really well. But he will always ring me up and say, “Man, I need help with this.” If you can’t just talk about this stuff, I think that it’s a big failure that we turned around as a family. You just have to stay persistent if you really believe in something, and if you feel like you’re drowning, you’ve just got to reach out. And I mean, we can talk about that as mental health, as wellbeing. It’s more prominent now, but yeah, you need to reach out before things get really bad.
Yep, It’s funny because, getting this role here, because I’ve been in business so long, somebody said, “Hey, we need to bring you into the office. We’re looking at changing your role,” and then they send you that letter that they’re changing your PD. And I’m like, “Oh ****.” I used to do this all the time. So, restructure. I put my head down and just reached out to my connections.
My friend Rob, who I’m still good friends with, is the work broker at the Flaxmere branch for MSD. And he’s like, “Hey bro, you’re still looking for a change?” And I said, “Yeah.” He goes, “Oh, what about a Business Connector?”
I thought, “That sounds like one of those council jobs because, you know, the council has these little youth coordinators and stuff.” And that’s what I thought it was—gonna get paid a lot of money and just go out and connect with businesses. And I was like, “Oh, that’s what I used to do.” It was nothing like the role, but you can help fix businesses. I love what I’m doing. That’s the key. It’s supporting small businesses, especially Pasifika and Māori.
