At the age of 31, David Woodworth was offered CFO positions at two different firms. The first offer came from his then current employer, where as vice president of finance he was keenly aware of urgent challenges that the company’s next CFO would need to address. The second offer came unsolicited from a smaller company in the same field, where he could expect to ease into the role and set the pace for his first 100 days.

“It was a hard decision, and one where you wish there was a silver bullet,” says Woodworth, who opted to stay where he was, which was at a highly leveraged firm that had recently been taken private by a group of investors.

Woodworth’s early chapter flies in the face of the widely expressed conundrum that to become a CFO, you have to be a CFO. However, in Woodworth’s case, the price of entry to the CFO office was a cool head and an even keel—or at least being someone capable of working alongside a group of edgy investors.

“I had to embrace the role pretty quickly and operate in some unique environments,” he adds.

Thinking back on his first CFO tour of duty, Woodworth concludes by saying, “The advice that I would like to give to someone stepping into a CFO role would be about how to prioritize and how to say ‘no.’” – Jack Sweeney