Bank Teller Becomes CFO

Andrew Wilkinson shares a story about taking a chance on an inexperienced bank teller who became his longtime business partner.

"About 2 years into my business, I went to the bank trying to get a corporate credit card. The teller sent me to talk to Mr. Sparling, who turned out to be this skinny 23-year-old. We started chatting and immediately hit it off.

After finishing the paperwork, I asked him about his plans. He mentioned thinking about getting his accounting designation. I just blurted out, 'Do you want to be my CFO?' He was taken aback and suggested we get coffee to discuss it.

I convinced him to join as CFO despite having almost no accounting experience - on paper, he was the wrong guy to be CFO of a business doing over $1 million. But I trusted him completely from day one - gave him my social security number, banking information, everything.

Chris is now my business partner of 12 years and is responsible for a significant amount of everything good that's happened in my career. For every success story like this, I have someone who was terrible or fraudulent, but when you take a chance on someone, 1 in 10 times it pays off big."