For Rich Jackim, being inducted into the Exit Planning Institute®’s (EPI) Circle of Excellence truly is a full-circle moment. Rich founded EPI in 2005 along with Peter Christman, and today, he joins a prestigious group of exit planning practitioners recognized for helping establish the exit planning profession.
“It’s a little surreal to get an award from an organization I co-founded, yet it’s such a wonderful honor at the same time,” he shares. “I’ve always tried to play a leadership role in the exit planning community, so being named into the Circle of Excellence is gratifying. It means an awful lot.”
Rich’s entry into exit planning evolved with his career. He started as a lawyer working in mergers and acquisitions. While it was great training, he realized he wanted to structure deals—to be the one to orchestrate them—so he attended business school to round out his skill set. After working at a large M&A firm, he moved to a smaller “mom-and-pop” firm. This appealed to him as it allowed him to invest more in his clients and their journey exiting from their businesses. In this role, he conducted exit interviews with clients and was astonished to learn that upwards of 70% of the owners regretted selling their company.
“Their reactions weren’t a response to what we did for them, but they revealed that they didn’t fully understand the impact of their exit—the tax implications, the time, the stress, the impact on their family, the feeling of lost identity,” he explains. “So, when I started a firm with Peter [Christman], I realized I wanted to take the personal approach of the smaller firm yet be more intentional with the exit process from the owner’s perspective.”
When EPI was Born
As the firm began to take off—Crain’s Chicago Business quickly recognized it as one of the Top Investment Banking firms in Chicago—Rich authored a book that remains an exit planning must-read today: The $10 Trillion Dollar Opportunity.
“Exit planning was a novel business concept back then—a completely new idea.” He says. “We used the book as a lead generation tool, handing it out to clients. But then we found that clients were asking for copies to pass to their clients.”
Rich says that people called wanting to shadow him and Peter so they could learn more about their process. With enough interest, the duo decided to rent a hotel conference room and teach the concepts from the book. Before long, this led them to establish EPI in 2005 and then the Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA®) Program in 2007.
“It was an amazing experience to create a professional organization and then a credential for advisors,” he recalls. “We had never done anything like that but researched and figured it out. Now, it’s satisfying to see something we started to grow into what it has today.”
What it has grown into today is a professional designation that thousands of advisors hold across the world, with new advisors being added daily.
Establishing Momentum
Rich says he knew the organization—and, specifically, the credential—had really made inroads when he was at a conference and realized one of the senior financial planning executives had CEPA listed after his name.
“Initially, it was difficult to engage financial planners. To see this executive with CEPA illustrated how far we’d come,” he says. “Establishing the credential is one of the accomplishments of which I am most proud. It’s just amazing to see how the exit planning field evolved. It’s part of every businessperson’s lexicon and on the tip of every business advisor’s tongue.”
An Evolving Legacy
Rich and Peter sold EPI to Christopher and Scott Snider in 2012. Since then, Rich, a serial entrepreneur himself, co-founded Jackim Woods & Co. and its sister company, Sports Club Advisors, which focuses exclusively on sports, fitness, and leisure companies.
Today, Rich is a nationally recognized expert in middle-market investment banking. He has closed over 100 transactions and helped over 100 clients realize more than $650 million in personal wealth.
About the Circle of Excellence
The Circle of Excellence is an annual recognition that honors the individuals who have established the exit planning profession. It aims to acknowledge those who have built a community and the body of knowledge that we all rely on to advise business owners.
This year, we will induct five new members at the 2025 Exit Planning Summit. Throughout the year, we will feature each of them in a blog series to celebrate their contributions to the exit planning profession.
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