Jason Cheperdak Of the Shepherd Homes Group: The Financial Guidance Framework That Takes Clients From A Fifteen Thousand Dollar Net Worth To Over Three Hundred Fifty Thousand

As a part of my series about the ‘Five Things You Need To Know To Succeed In The Real Estate Industry’, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jason Cheperdak.

Jason Cheperdak is the founder of the Shepherd Homes Group, a Washington, DC based business that helps individuals, families, and investors buy and sell residential real estate as well as build new homes across the DMV. Originally from Vancouver Island, Canada, Jason first moved to the United States to train full-time with internationally renowned ice dance coaches. In just a few years, his real estate team became one of the fastest-growing teams in the country.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us the “backstory” about what brought you to the Real Estate industry?

I am a former international figure skater for Canada. I came in third at the junior level at the Canadian National Championships. My mother is American, so I’m a dual Canadian and American citizen. I moved to the U.S. to train and after skating, at the age of 25, became a manager at a Target Store in Virginia and was the youngest manager in the company at the time. I grew this store to be the #1 grossing Target store in the country. At the same time, I got my real estate license and within three years sold more than $100 million in residential real estate, all while working part-time.

I have since left Target and so far this year alone, with my team, Shepherd Homes Group, we have sold more than $100 million and we’re on track to sell $150 million by year’s end. We are proud to be the fastest growing real estate team in the Washington, D.C. area and in the top 1% for sales nationwide.

Can you share with our readers the most interesting or amusing story that occurred to you in your career so far? Can you share the lesson or take away you took out of that story?

My most interesting story is that of a military couple that really shows the power of military couples and how amazing our military couples are. The wife was a senior officer on a ship in the Pacific Ocean and had extremely limited periods of time where she had internet access, not to mention being in a different time zone. Her husband was stationed on a base in Iraq. Between the two of them, they were able to virtually buy a home with me, from different ends of the world, and, in the middle of COVID.

If that is not the most interesting, crazy real estate story I’ve ever seen in my life, I don’t know what is.

My takeaway from this is that when people say real estate is tough for them, I just think about these amazing military members working together as a couple from the Pacific Ocean and Iraq and I think, WOW!

It’s important to note though that you have to have the right resources in place. You have to have the right information in front of you and you have to have the right people guiding you. Then, anything is possible, and it should not be that hard.

Do you have a favorite “life lesson quote”? Can you share a story or example of how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Don’t reinvent the wheel. Borrow the wheel and put it on your car.”

A lot of my success comes from learning from the absolute best, like Tony Robbins. I love how Tony Robbins brings the most brilliant people from all over the world together and he shares, not just what he’s doing, but what the best of the best are doing.

We take that approach with our team. We have experts in all aspects of real estate from financial planning, home renovations, builders, Realtors, etc. and we take what we learn from them, the best in their fields, and we share it with our clients.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We are! We are expanding our Shepherd Concierge Program, which is a robust network of vendors that we trust implicitly. We have a trusted vendor category for anything that someone would need even if they’re not present in the home buying or selling process.

We have a lot of international State Department clients, people who are overseas, and they leverage our Shepherd Concierge Program where, for example, they give us the keys and we renovate the entire home at no cost to the client. We get paid at closing. We are able to help with other details in their lives like coordinating family members or driving people places or decluttering their home or shipping their personal goods across the country or putting their stuff in storage, anything and everything. We’re really excited about this new level of service in real estate through our concierge service.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Our mission statement is what makes us stand out. For a lot of real estate teams, their pitch is a person. It’s about them or their real estate team. Our team is about a mission statement. It’s about a symbol, which is a shepherd. A shepherd sacrifices themselves to guide and protect those they care for.

Real estate transformed in amazing ways, and our goal is to positively transform the lives of our clients through real estate as well . With that, one really important thing I want to add on is that we take our job as a fiduciary to help our clients financially to a whole new level — more than any other real estate agent I know. We even partner with a CPA firm, a financial planning firm and other resources to guide our clients not just through a real estate sale, but through a plan to make them financially fruitful.

A great example of that is we have a young couple that started with us about six and a half years ago and their net worth was about $15,000. Today they own three properties. We are selling their first property, which they bought with us, for a $60,000 dollar profit and their net worth is well over $350,000. We have helped them through real estate and other financial planning to go from $15,000 to $350,000 net worth in the last six years. We have so many stories like that. It’s a really salient example of the power of real estate and the power of helping people not simply selling or buying a home.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I can’t just pick one person because I get a tremendous amount of help. All of my success comes from the people I surround myself with. One of my favorite quotes is, “all of my ideas or inspiration for much better ideas and most of the ideas I get come from somebody else.” It’s not really about me. I have always had a life coach of some kind. I had a life coach through Tony Robbins. I also have a really amazing business coach. His name is Tim Ray and he runs an incredible real estate team and sells over 700 homes per year. Then we also have some personal mentors that are really successful entrepreneurs here. I also am enormously grateful for my team, and most especially my operations director, Sharon. The people who are surrounding me are all really remarkable people that have helped me achieve the success that I have.

Ok. Thank you for all that. Let’s now jump to the main core of our interview. Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the Real Estate industry? If you can, please share a story or example.

The first is technology. I can be a highly effective real estate agent through my cell phone. I have the Super Max Pro 11 iPhone, and I have every app in the world on there. The technology and apps that are coming are phenomenal. I have apps where I can click on someone’s house, see their personal information from my cell phone and even the debt service on their house. It is phenomenal what I can do with my cell phone and the ability to serve my clients and get data information for them from my phone is amazing.

The second thing is our ability to help model things financially for clients. The financial tools that we’re now able to use, whether it be analytics from our association or other software systems that we’re able to buy and use, allows us to protect and help our clients financially.

The third thing is the amount of opportunity there is for buyers today on the development side and the opportunities there are for people who want to invest in real estate.

Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to reform or improve the industry, what would you suggest? Please share stories or examples if possible.

The first thing is the number of realtors and their lack of experience. The average real estate agent in our market sells about four to five homes per year, and that’s between buyers and sellers. We, therefore, get a lot of inexperienced realtors on a day-to-day basis that are not being fiduciaries for their clients and create a lot of havoc within the real estate industry.

There are not enough systems in place or mentors to support these agents. That is a concern. The second concern I have is some people’s client’s over-confidence in their ability to conduct real estate. They have this confidence that they can complete a real estate transaction without a real-estate agent and the clients that have come to me who have done this in the past generally have been burned or have lost tremendous amounts of money. That concerns me as well.

The third thing that worries me is how buyers and sellers are making decisions in real estate and how agents are making decisions in real estate, too. A lot of people don’t plan long-term, and a lot of agents are only in it for the next deal. A lot of agents need the next transaction. What worries me is this combination of agents who are forcing people to get the next deal and then there are people who are buying real estate for the wrong reasons. Combining those worlds together, I see realtors failing to be the fiduciaries who guide their clients and provide true expertise they way they should.

What advice would you give to other real estate leaders to help their teams to thrive and to create a really fantastic work culture?

The first thing is to have a very clear mission statement and reason why you are doing what you’re doing. Our number one reason for doing business is to guide and protect those we work with. We care for and create a life of abundance through real estate for our clients.

If your mission statement is not abundantly clear when someone joins your team,then you’re probably doing real estate for the wrong reasons and building a culture that’s not right for your team. That’s not great for you or your team.

The second thing is you need to be a true expert. I pride myself in being an expert in everything that I do. And if I’m not, I have somebody on my team or a coach or a resource who is, so that if we do have a problem or do need to reach out, we have the resources to do exactly what we need to do for our team, and for our clients, and that helps us grow for the right reasons.

The third thing is investing in training. It’s not about us. It’s about our teams and our clients. You need to really train and invest in your team so that all team members have the expertise needed to serve those around them. If you have all of those things, it’s pretty hard to fail.

Ok, here is the main question of our interview. You are a “Real Estate Insider”. If you had to advise someone about 5 non intuitive things one should know to succeed in the Real Estate industry, what would you say? Can you please give a story or an example for each?

1. Provide services, don’t sell people. I pride myself in the conversation service versus sales. For example, a typical call from a Realtor goes like this: “Hi, this is Jimmy from XYZ real estate company. I was wondering if you need to sell 123 Main Street.” No one is going to take that call. Instead, if you call somebody and you say, “Hi. This is Jason. I sell your neighborhood regularly and I wanted to share some information about a home that I just sold. I have buyers in your area and we just want to educate and teach people about what’s going on in the market and if that makes sense for you great, let’s chat. If not, I don’t want to bug you with the phone call.”
2. It’s a service instead of a sale. We get hired so often because we’re providing services to our people. We care for them instead of trying to sell them and push them into doing something. We guide them through the process. Service versus sales. I think a lot of people just feel that people know that they are a Realtor. Nobody knows and nobody cares. Because guess what, there are 29,000 Realtors in Virginia and you’re one of 29,000. So, you cannot assume that people around know that you’re a real estate agent. You have to reach out. Be proactive. Be excited to share who you are and get yourself out there. This is a really important thing for people to understand to be successful in this industry.
3. The third thing is never assume. This is so powerful. This is just a life lesson whether it be a personal relationship or business. For example, when we called somebody and we left them a voice mail and they didn’t call us back,we assume they don’t want to talk to us. In reality, when I call somebody and leave a voicemail and then I call them six more times, the response is usually, “Oh my gosh. Thank you for all of your follow-up. You have been so amazing. You are so proactive. I am so busy. I have two kids. I have a full-time job and you’re on it. I’d love to work with you!” 99.9% of the time that’s the answer. Jump on top of that.
4. Be positive with everything you do in your life. If you’re not on a real estate team, you’re solo, you’re by yourself. Sometimes this gets hard for those individuals. What happens for these Realtors is during the day, they’re in their home office, alone. They aren’t talking to people. It’s very easy to get a negative mindset. And when you get a negative mindset, you start to assume things and you start to assume you can’t do anything and nobody wants to talk to you and that negative mindset comes across when you’re talking to people on the phone. Then you can’t serve them. But if you’re positive and you think “ I know Jimmy needs my phone call” and you reach out and have a call, even if he doesn’t want your services, if you are positive and help him out, that positivity not only helps you connect with people but it also helps you solve problems for your clients. Stay focused on the end goal. Keep the energy up in the transaction, which is so important because you need to always be that positive energy source for your clients.
5. The last one and most importantly is you have to have a real reason why you are in real estate. If you don’t have a clear reason why you’re in real estate, you will not be successful. It is not just that you can get licensed and then just start helping people buying and selling a home. This is the largest transaction in someone’s life and is the largest impact on someone’s life financially. If you’re not passionate about that, if you’re not educated, if you’re not enthralled by it, that is going to translate to your clients and translate to those around you and you will naturally not have business because it’s not permeating through you.

When you are doing the right things, that permeates through to want to work with you for the right reasons and getting the right results and knowing what you’re talking about.

Because of your position, you are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

One of my long-term goals is to have a non-profit organization based on paying it forward. I have a dream that this foundation would provide loans

or financial help to people who need a loan. This is just a loan with no interest, no commitment to pay it back. They just have to pay that loan forward. Whatever debt it is, you need to find somebody and identify somebody who needs the same help or different help than you did and then provide the same contributions that you received to that person.

Every loan or everything that you do to help somebody is a perpetual loan. That’s a really cool compounding message. That is an organization I would love to create and found. This actually models the principles of my team’s organization.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

@jasoncheperdak on Instagram

Thank you for your time, and your excellent insights! We wish you continued success.