The professional education industry, which was performing at a historical high, flatlined. As the sweeping stay-at-home orders changed our daily lives and our careers as we knew them, we were forced to part with the idea that business would return to normal any time soon and that we would also experience this time of uncertainly functionally alone. Away from our colleagues, away from our teammates, severed from our routines, and more distant from our community than we could have imagined. It felt like being frozen, totally immobilized; having the way things are ripped away without your buy-in or control and in such a short period of time was gobsmacking and left us feeling functionally paralyzed.
But in that same week, our phones wouldn’t stop ringing. Our community of advisors had risen to the crisis demands and were feverishly serving the needs of business owners. They needed our support, our resources, and our market intelligence now more than ever. They wanted EPI to continue to be a stronghold for them; the platform they leaned on to innovate and succeed in volatile times.
That first week was somehow the busiest week in company history AND the slowest at the same time. But like everyone else in this world, the situation continued to escalate quickly, hour by hour, constantly revealing new facts to embrace, forcing our leaders to revisit and reframe our perspective multiple times a day. Like all of you, the time came to break up the in-office comradery and send our team to work remotely, distanced even further from the present, and feeling apprehensive about the future.
Before we sent everyone home, the owners held a companywide meeting.
“We can’t do what we’ve always done. We need to focus on how we can solve problems for our members now. Nothing is more important than that. CEPA has been the market leader in exit planning education. Now is the time for us to prove what CEPA means. To show the world what being a leader means. Let’s get started…”
It was time to innovate and every person in this room has a voice. Hours of creative sharing and tactical considerations and agreement and discord and listening and debating and coming together. All surrounded around what the needs of our members are today and how to solve their problems. That nothing was more important than leaning into the EPI Brand Mission: CHANGE THE OUTCOME.
In that room, an idea was born and it was time to go to work. And 36 days later, with the help of our irreplaceable partners, faculty, members, staff, and community, EPI Masterclass™ has been fully materialized.
It is the first of many new innovations that will make critical and transformational education, like the Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA) Program, available in a digitally-remastered format that delivers results with no quality loss. That breaks the mold of what online learning has been and ushers in a new era of what online learning should be. And this success was possible because of incredible, undefeatable people who have relentless passion for serving the needs of business owners and advisors.
EPI made a decision that day.
We would not mourn the loss of “what was” indefinitely; fighting against the current or stay stubbornly held to what was now an outdated world view. Those were good times, a good market, and we will miss what that felt like. We are allowed to miss it. We are allowed to grieve it. We are allowed to wish things never changed and that we could somehow go back. But, we can’t. We are all somewhere new, somewhere we didn’t ever imagine to be, and we are experiencing this in unison with every person across the world.
But we will keep moving forward. Leading upward.
Instead, we will embrace the new times we find ourselves in. We will rally behind our mission: Change the outcome. We will show the entire profession how to lead by example through reinvention, agility, and teamwork.
With the help of likeminded CEPAs and talented collaborators, EPI will continue to showcase how to be the leaders that propel our community forward with ferocity.
We will invest in the future. In doing so, we have the influence to shape what the world is becoming before our eyes.
And all of this, all that we will accomplish together…it was made possible because exit planning is business strategy. And a business like ours, a business that focuses on how their daily decisions affect the value of the company can weather every storm and thrive.
To learn how to create, lead, or advise others on how to use exit planning in business, visit www.EPIMasterclass.com now.
Register to attend the CEPA Program on any of the six upcoming EPI Masterclass™ sessions now to take advantage of business relief tuition (extended to May 20: $1,700/attendee; full retail: $2,895/attendee).
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