let's talk cepa

Every day, we deal with a few acronyms to make communicating professional achievements easier: CPA, JD, MBA, MD, etc. Today I’m adding one more to that always-growing list: my recently acquired CEPA certification and what it means for me as well as you.

So, What Exactly Is CEPA and What Does It Qualify Me to Do?

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CEPA stands for Certified Exit Planning Advisor and is a continuing education credential sponsored through the Exit Planning Institute. 

To earn the credential, I had to complete a rigorous educational program that I LOVED because it was the best of the best, remarkably insightful, and will allow me to be a better exit plan coach for my clients. 

The CEPA certification qualifies me to help small business owners accelerate the value they’re building in their own businesses. In layman’s terms, it allows me to educate business owners on their value drivers: figuring out what creates or drives value in a business and how to capitalize on those drivers to sell a business for the most money. These value drivers directly impact the value that a business will appraise for.

How Does A CEPA Certification Help Me Do My Job Better?

Business owners that work with me no longer have to guess at what they think might make their company scale and make it more valuable to a business buyer because there are tangible business metrics that define this value. I can coach business owners in capitalizing on these tangible, valuable metrics. Once a business owner knows what those metrics are, they can focus their resources on developing and strengthening them, in turn accelerating and maximizing their businesses’ value.

A CEPA certification helps me do my job better because it provides a proven and tangible methodology (along with a set of practical tools) to help businesses experience results even faster. 

A CEPA certification allows me to be a better exit plan coach and drive more value for your company.

Exit planning is just good business strategy: it gives business owners a practical path to follow that allows them to “begin with the end in mind.” Exit planning also helps to determine which projects should be top priority to a business owner and which are just part of “shiny object syndrome.”

How Does A CEPA Certification Help YOU Sell YOUR Business?

A CEPA certification helps a small business owner sell their business in two ways. First, there is a proven methodology and practical business scaling tools that we have already discussed which a CEPA certified exit planning coach, like myself, will utilize.

Second, a CEPA certified exit planning coach utilizes a team approach providing strength in numbers. 

In a business transaction, there are a variety of professional advisors involved. CEPA certification provides a way to work with all the advisors in a collaborative approach for the benefit of the transaction and the business owner’s goals. 

Additionally, a CEPA certification can be earned by almost all professional advisors so it provides a network of professionals (think CPAs, small business attorneys, wealth advisors, and business brokers) who are like-minded and use the same playbook to help business owners (that’s you) achieve their goals. 

These are oversimplified responses edited for the brevity of a blog post. The full process, methodology, and tools of selling a business are so much more! 

Schedule a discovery call now to determine if the timing is right for you to take a closer look at how this might help you and your business.