From the NFL to $350M in Real Estate: Logan Freeman on Mindset, AI, and Commercial Wealth

Steven Weinstock: 0:01 Hi everyone and welcome back to the Wealth Clock with Steven Weinstock. I've been investing in real estate for almost 25 years, started off in single family homes. Now I invest in multifamily, some retail little office, and recently I've been buying lots of first lien positions. This show is brought to you by We Capital, my company, and the We Capital Mortgage Fund, where we invest in first lien positions in real estate, mostly in New Jersey, 60, 65% LTV, monthly distributions to myself and to my investors. But this show is not about me. It's about operators, founders, and closers who are building real results. In real time Today I'm joined by Logan Freeman, one of the leading voices in commercial real estate, a man who's truly redefining how data and relationships intersect in business. Logan has executed over 350 million in transactions, is maybe more land development multifamily retail. He also is a top voice on LinkedIn close to 35,000 followers. He has his own podcast. He'll tell us the name of that and he's been doing it for about two years, the podcast. So definitely check him out over there. And his company's called Live Free Investments and his last name is Freeman. So I guess that's where he got that name from. Before becoming a commercial real estate leader, you were an athlete, or maybe you still are an athlete you even spent some time with, did I see the Oakland Raiders? That is correct. Okay. I'm not sure if it means you were seasoned ticket holders or you played, I guess you'll tell me about that. Logan Freeman: 1:43 Logan, it's great to have you on. Great to be here, Steven. Thank you so much. Yes. I was not a season ticket holder as I live in and am a big Kansas City Chiefs fan. So after the draft in 2013, I was called and picked up as an undrafted free agent with the Oakland Raiders and had a very brief stint with those guys. Ultimately changed positions. I played offensive line at the time and. Change positions was cut and had the opportunity to continue on with the 49 ERs. But, I just felt like I had a different plan, and or God had a different plan for me. And so I moved in a different direction, went back to school, finished my master's program and got my life started. But not a season ticket holder. When did you get into Steven Weinstock: 2:28 real estate? How old were you? Logan Freeman: 2:30 Yeah, so I was 27, 26, 27 years old. My first deals were. Live in flips here in Kansas City. So buy the property low percentage down, work on it myself, I had done a ton of construction up to that point and live in it for two years and then go sell it. And by the time I did that a couple times, it was the sales check whenever I got it back from escrow. Was much larger than my salary at that time. And I said, you know what I need to start thinking about this. So I didn't jump all in at that point, but those were the first projects that, that kind of opened my eyes. Steven Weinstock: 3:06 You mentioned you lived in it for two years. I guess people call this house hacking. Logan Freeman: 3:11 That's right. Steven Weinstock: 3:11 But why two years? Is there a significant number to that or is that just what happened with you? Logan Freeman: 3:15 Yeah. If you live it in two years, there's some capital gains tax that you don't have to pay in regards to that. Up to $500,000, at least here in Missouri I think that might be federally, I don't know. But so for me it was okay, live in, for two years, add some value, and then sell the property and not have to pay that capital gains tax. Steven Weinstock: 3:36 Okay. So you're living in houses, you're, having roommates, friends, strangers help you pay your rent, and then you are selling it tax free. Some of it, most of it, putting it into the next deal larger. At this point, are you in real estate or you just happen to be doing real estate? Logan Freeman: 3:56 I wasn't in real estate right when I started. I had a W2 job at this time, and up until about 2017, I had a W2 job. So I guess it's been close to eight years now that I have been full-time in real estate. I was fired from my last W2 job in 2017, and that's when I went full time as the head of acquisitions for about a $50 million fund here in Kansas City. So my job was to source. Single family homes for them to purchase, to renovate, rent them out. And I believe we were about the sixth group in the country to go through at the time the new Corevest portfolio refinance program. So we had to go back and reappraise all of those homes. And we were able to, or the sponsors were able to return about 85% of the capital to investors and still be cash flowing. So that opened my eyes to syndication and that's when I moved from doing single family homes to multifamily and commercial real estate. And that's what I've been doing ever since, both on the principal side. We've done about 1500 multifamily units and about 600,000 square feet of commercial space and on the brokerage side. Helping a lot of out-of-state clients with 10 31 exchanges, selling properties for owners. Yeah, and that's what I do now. Property Steven Weinstock: 5:17 management actually collecting the rent on these properties dealing with day-to-day. Is that something you and your company are doing? Is that outsourced to a, a third party that's a professional in that space? Logan Freeman: 5:30 Yeah we do the property management in-house for our properties and that's a tough business. It's a lot easier on the commercial side than it is on the residential side, having a few people on that commercial portfolio versus many people on the residential side. We do outsource some of the third party management on the multifamily side, but we do manage some internally as well. Steven Weinstock: 5:53 Yeah, no I'm right with you over there. I we own some multifamily in the Louisville, Kentucky Cleveland Suburbs. Okay. My office is here based in New York. But yeah, property management is definitely a tough part of the business. We are property managing our property. A lot of my day is spent managing the property and. Definitely is very tough, especially if you're dealing with B minus C class properties with a value add strategy. But when it comes to controlling costs, it's something that needs to be done in my opinion, but it definitely takes some hours out of my day that might be that utilized elsewhere. So I struggle with that. Recently, I've been investing in first lien positions and. Honestly, it's pretty easy on my day to day because there's no management, issue with the toilet, issue with the renovation going longer than it's supposed to. I act as the bank and obviously we have protective equity. We're doing 65, 60% LTVs, underwriting the borrower, underwriting the property. And really just making sure the check comes every month. But again, correct. Most of my day is spent on property management and it's definitely very tough in the residential space. So I'm right there with you. What what markets do you operate out of? I'm sorry. Logan Freeman: 7:18 We're in Kansas City, Missouri, and we have invested in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. So very Midwest focused, but most of the properties are all in the Kansas City metro area, which, it spans 320 miles, square miles, and so it's a large area. We have about two and a half million people that live in that MSA. It's very unique because we pull from. The Kansas side and the Missouri side, and depending on what type of property you're looking for and what your strategy would be, I will direct you to different locations and each side of the state line has very different demand drivers as well as demographics. And so it's a very unique, I think, position to be in. But we have found that Kansas City. Has continued to be a good spot to invest in. Fundamentally, it's a very strong market. We will never have huge population growth. We add about 20 to 25,000 people per year. But as I have learned, even in Louisville, I was with some guys from Louisville in Nashville last week, the population gains pretty static, and they're all moving. Actually, Indiana is doing better from a population gain just across the state line is what they were telling me. And so it's unique. We have very steady market. We've continued to fall on these lists for best places to live from an affordability standpoint as well as I think apartment developers have started to see, the opportunity to build here because the supply hasn't been as much as what you would find in one of those larger markets, five to 6,000 deliveries, and they're all being absorbed. So rent growth is still around 3.4% on the multifamily side. And fundamentals outside of specific office is pretty strong here in Kansas City. So if you would've asked me five years ago, I would've said that, Kansas City's not really on that many people's radars. It sure is tracking in that direction. And more and more capital's being attracted to our MSA. Steven Weinstock: 9:12 You are a very influential voice on LinkedIn. Tons of followers. How'd you get into LinkedIn? What are you posting over there? Tell me about it. Logan Freeman: 9:23 Yeah Yona Weiss, about 7, 8, 9 years ago I got connected to, and I talked to him about his strategy on LinkedIn. And one thing I wanted to force myself was to become a better writer, more clear, concise and compelling. And what better way to. To be able to force myself to become a better writer. I need something to write about. So then I had to become a researcher, and this was before AI would send you 19 different articles that made sense to, to work on. So I was reading the Business journal, I got the physical version right here, Kansas City Business Journal. All right. What's interesting to me, lemme see if I can write something about that. And as I continued on, I just stayed very. Consistent on this. And so it's been seven, eight years worth of day daily posting and engaging with people in the comments and meeting people. Steven, you and I were able to connect off of LinkedIn, and figure out how to get on a show together. And so it's opened up a lot of doors, which now has become, I think one of my differentiators. In the marketplace is I have a lot of folks in different markets that I can call upon. I know that I'm able to get visibility on specific properties faster than most other folks can, and we'll be able to get, the impressions and engagement on something that maybe another brokerage company or investor isn't able to. So it's been very beneficial from a business perspective. You know what I try to post now is, things about proof stacking. Ed Winslow is always talking about proof stacking and Bob Knackle is doing the same thing. I try to say, look, this week I analyzed five people's properties in California. We did return on equity analysis and now being able to utilize. Gamma app, I can now visualize that data in beautiful presentations in less than one minute for each thing. And so I'm able to now showcase this with a link that people can click, right? So you have the visual data if you're a visual learner. And then I need to write that. In a context that somebody can just read it and make sense of it. And so we'll post things about our findings from working with clients. Here's a new listing that we've got. Here's what we think is interesting about it. Here's a project we just closed on. Here's what we're finding. This week is all about Q3 2025 market overview. How much real estate was sold this quarter? What's the market actually looking like? Now I know that. In September, in October September of this year, we had$42 billion of real estate sold. That's the strongest marker yet, right? And so you can start to come up with these inferences that if you are tracking things like I'm tracking because I'm writing about them, you now have information and intel that you've aggregated together. It's available for everybody. You've aggregated together in a way that is clear, concise, and compelling. People wanna follow you. And so I'm very data statistic heavy on all my posts on LinkedIn so people understand this isn't really my opinion. The comments might be my opinion, but what I'm posting, at least in the body of the post is data that you can look at and say, Hey, maybe I should talk to Logan and his team about real estate in Kansas City. Steven Weinstock: 12:27 Besides LinkedIn, are you active on other platforms? Are you networking in person? Are you writing blogs? Did mention you have a podcast. Tell me about the podcast. Tell me what it's called where we could listen to you and what else are you doing besides LinkedIn and other. Logan Freeman: 12:45 Yeah all of them. I think, especially on LinkedIn, I have a newsletter, it's called Beyond Buildings, the Freeman Factor, and I blend together real estate analysis with, mindset. I think that's important in this business is having a mindset. So I openly share my faith, I share about my fitness journey and what I'm liking to do there. You said, former athlete. I still like to think of myself as an athlete. I don't really know in what, but, living, I think I'm an athlete of living right now and surviving three kids, six and under, and trying not to try not to be tired all the time. That's my newsletter. You could find that on LinkedIn. The podcast was, something that. I've always been doing and what's called the Kansas City Commercial real Estate market Pulse. And I've made it very specific because I think that it's very noisy out there in the marketplace with podcasts, and hey, if you wanna find something about Kansas City, here's a commercial real estate market pulse about what's going on in the city, right? And that's very specific in regards to that. Definitely still doing a lot of networking. Mostly networking, honestly in person would be. Just from going to industry events that are here locally. The last two weeks I have been traveling. I've been in Nashville and I've been in Scottsdale slash Phoenix meeting with real estate investors, so that's been a lot of fun. But with the small children, I don't travel too much. So I'm not a big conference goer by any means, but I'm able to build that network by doing things like this, hosting my own round tables, inviting people onto the show, getting to meet them there. On average I have about. 4.7 meaningful conversations per day, meaning this is somebody that can buy, sell, or invest in real estate. I track that all year long and I'm having about 14, 13 to 14 revenue generating meetings per week. So I'm very. Focused on making sure that I track where my time is being spent, and those are either scheduled Zoom calls or in-person meetings. So yeah, still doing a decent amount of that. My job is, the transference of feeling and information, right? I'm in the information and relationship business, and so I need to be doing that on a regular basis. So every medium that I can, I'm not real big on, other social media platforms like X or Instagram. I've really just gone on all in on, on LinkedIn, but the podcast is on all the platforms, right? YouTube and things like that. The one unique thing about the market pulse is it's always live. And so we invite people to come and ask questions live on LinkedIn and on YouTube. I think that's the unique part about that show is it's, it's live and you can ask questions and we can engage together. And that's been pretty cool because a lot of people will show up and ask myself or the guest questions live and that drives a lot of the conversation. Try to be a little more interactive on that. Steven Weinstock: 15:25 Got it. Yeah, doing it live is definitely something I I guess I would like to try. Not sure. I I'm up to that yet. This is we're recording. I think this is 33 or maybe 31. We released at this time 25 or 26. I don't remember offhand, but it's quite it's quite a busy schedule you have. How's technology helping you with all of this? obviously the podcast is, a microphone and all that, but are you using any thing to help you maximize time? Ai. How's AI helping you? Tell me a little about Logan Freeman: 15:59 that. Yeah, I've been using AI for close to three years now, I think. And. Obviously started with chat. GPT. It's expanded into what I like to call super agents. And now I can build automations to have, the super agents go scrape certain databases of information, find what I'm looking for, aggregate that, and then email it to me on a regular basis. So one way to do that would be, Hey, I'm interested in all. Properties sold that are reported in a certain municipality, you can set up an automation through spar or other, agents that will actually go find that information. Same thing with news articles now. I think that's really unique. So the research side has been absolutely game changing in regards to. I was just doing some research on a skilled nursing facility the other day, and I was looking for some recent sales comps, and it's really hard to find vacant senior living facilities in this specific submarket. It's not very big. I set off one of my super agents for that and it was able to locate. Which I would've never found a HUD foreclosure sale that mentioned a property in this submarket and that the sale was on, seven days ago. And so I was able to go to the owner and say, Hey we can give you our price opinion and our broker opinion of value, but we probably should wait to see kinda where this foreclosure sale, really shook that out, so here's what we can do in that period of time, coming up to that. So that's a really cool way. And then from a digital marketing standpoint, it's absolutely a game changer. I'm able to build slides presentations in, which you, which used to take me weeks and things like that. I can build 'em in minutes. And so being able to get the word salad from Spar or Chad GPT and then that transferred over to Gamma App, that then uses, a large language model to help you put the slides together, puts the visuals in there. It's just unbelievable. The ability to give people information in a way that they want to digest it versus a 12 page document from, chat GPT. Using it on a regular basis. I'd say on average right now it's probably saving me 10 to 12 hours a week. Steven Weinstock: 18:05 What advice would you give to investors GPS sponsors that are trying to raise capital or find partners on social media or by networking? Logan Freeman: 18:17 I think you have to tell people what you do. And you have to do it in a way. Aristotle said, and this is going way back, but Aristotle said, you gotta tell people what you're gonna tell 'em. Then you tell 'em, and then you tell 'em what you told them. So I follow that methodology to a t and if somebody doesn't know what you do, and you can't explain that in, 20 to 30 seconds Hey, I'm Logan Freeman. With Midwest commercial real estate advisors, I help people buy, sell, or invest in commercial real estate in Kansas City. Like it's very succinct and I'm always asking, do you know anyone who might want to buy, sell, or invest in commercial real estate in Kansas City? And I'm asking for referrals on a regular basis, so you need to put yourself out there. But I was just at an event and we were talking about where to get started at in this process. And I think that everyone has some sort of. Database or you know what I'll call sphere of influence and you need to put that down on paper and a hundred people that you know that might be willing to meet with you and talk about commercial real estate. Or multifamily, right? And then it's just about going and meeting those people. Based off of those conversations, they're gonna ask you questions. So those questions that you've got from those first conversations, now you've got answers to 'em. And so you do 10, you get the questions and answers, now you're ready for the next one. You get a couple more questions, and by the time you have 50 or 60 meetings, you're feeling pretty good about what you're talking about, right? And so I think that's the number one key is. Be knowledgeable about your market, about your asset class, and then you gotta tell people what you're doing and you gotta do it in a way that people want to digest that information today. Steven Weinstock: 19:57 You mentioned Yona Weiss before. So I had him on the podcast a little while ago. He basically told me like this, he says, in order for someone to do business with you he called it a triangle. He said, they have to know you, like you, and trust you. Logan Freeman: 20:13 And Steven Weinstock: 20:13 then he asked me what the most important part was and I was thinking, okay, trust. Wait, maybe they have to like you. And then he says, no, they have to know you. Yeah.'cause without knowing you, they can't like you 'cause they don't know you and they can't trust you 'cause they can't trust you. So that's definitely being known, being out there. Posting on LinkedIn daily or, multiple times a week keeps you in their mind, definitely introducing yourself all the time. Hey I'm Logan and I sell, buy, invest in real estate, and if you know anybody give them my number. Definitely the way to do it. Although I think if Aristotle had a podcast, he would definitely be very popular. I think so too. What do you mentioned you have some kids what do you do on your off time? Are Logan Freeman: 20:57 you just doing? Yeah, I don't have a lot of off time. I'm coaching sports, I'm spending time with the family, or I'm working out or I'm at church. That's really the four things that I do. I'm a pretty simple guy. I had some hobbies prior to having kids, playing, trying to play golf and doing competitions for fitness and things like that. I did run an ultra marathon this year just to push myself. I've always not identified as a runner, and so I wanted to do the thing that. I said I wasn't doing right. And so I proved to myself that, yeah, no, I can train for something and go execute on that. So I usually have some sort of physical fitness test that I'm training for nothing currently. I've got my one done for the year, but just trying to get better at my craft, honestly, I haven't been doing this for even 10 years yet, and if I'm not. Doing one of those things I'm likely reading some books or I'm trying to put some reps in to try to get better at what I do on a regular basis and improve upon that. Steven Weinstock: 21:52 What kind of, what name brand sneakers do you wear when you're running? Logan Freeman: 21:55 Yeah, I'm a new balance guy for sure. Always have been. And my client works on, or my wife works on their account at her firm. So I get a good discount for New Balance. Recently I found these shoes called Speed Lands and these are. From Cameron Haynes. He started posting about these, he's a runner and, I said lemme try these out, and they've got a, they've got a, a metal plate in the bottom of 'em and they've, they're all bent up the right way and they're good cushioning. You can go through water. So I've really liked those as well. Speed lands and New Balance. They're my two brands that I run. Got it. I see. Steven Weinstock: 22:29 Hokas and what is it? Scones is that how we pronounce it? Scon? Yeah. Yeah. I see That's pretty popular out there Brooks, obviously. But New Balance, definitely. Definitely, I guess you could say old school or did Forrest Gump wear those in the movies? Logan Freeman: 22:41 Yeah, he might have. I think that they're trying to become the new cool thing. And believe it or not, man, a lot of young people are starting to pick these new balances up and bring 'em back. So it's cool to see. I wear 'em strictly because they're dang comfortable. I see a lot Steven Weinstock: 22:54 of young business casual guys wearing it in Manhattan. I live in New York, so I see it in Manhattan and they're wearing it and yeah, they Logan Freeman: 23:00 gotta walk a long ways there yeah. Yeah. Steven Weinstock: 23:03 Logan had a great time. Tell our audience how they could reach you, how they could find you. I'll put it in the show notes. Go ahead. Tell us. Yeah. Logan Freeman: 23:10 M-W-C-R-E advisors.com. That's our website. But you can also find me on LinkedIn. Just search Logan Freeman, Mr. Kansas City, and I will pop up. I'm active there on a daily basis. Steven Weinstock: 23:22 Logan, I had a great time. Thank you very much for everybody listening. If you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure to follow the wealth clock with Steven Weinstock on YouTube, on Apple Podcast, Spotify. Share, connect, make a comment. I will respond at a great time. Logan, thank you so much for coming on. Logan Freeman: 23:42 It was my pleasure. Thanks Steven.