Master Real Estate: 7 Secrets from a DIY Project Managers Journey

John Harcar (00:02.445)
All right. Hey guys, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Roy Logan. And what we’re going to talk about, obviously, besides his journey in business and real estate, we’re going to talk about and maybe give some ideas how you can be your own project manager on your on your deals, right? Not having to outsource and maybe just have a maybe little more that control. Remember, guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers. I mean, really all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their business.

We’re providing the tools, the resources, the community to scale your business to the level you want, which in turn helps you live the life that you want to live. Roy, welcome to our show.

Roy Logan (00:43.02)
Yeah, John, thanks for having me. I appreciate the time.

John Harcar (00:47.171)
Yeah, I’m looking forward to talking to you about how I can be my own project manager. I know some people are a lot of times looking to get out of doing things, but you know, if it saves money, saves time, headache, hey, that might work. But before we get into all that stuff, why don’t you give our audience a little bit of background on you, you know, kind of your journey in business, you know, how you got into real estate and what brought you to today.

Roy Logan (01:09.934)
Sure, thanks. So, Journey in this World started fresh out of college. I was running a natural stone fabrication and installation company that was based out of Chicago. I was in charge of managing the day-to-day projects that were installing countertops, flooring, or wall covering throughout apartment buildings and condo buildings downtown Chicago. So I was able to hone in skills with being able to

talk to different subs or vendors on the phone and high level people, you know, up in these general contractor roles that are making the decisions of actually what’s going in there. Throughout that career path or start of my career, six, seven years, I was always bugging the owners about real estate and, you know, potentially

buying multi-unit buildings on our own and putting, you know, the finishes we were able to put in, you know, these larger scale buildings and give it a go. Well, my bugging never really worked. And yeah, I know, didn’t do it enough. Or they were just setting their ways and had enough money and didn’t need to worry about it. So, so, you know, it never left my mind.

John Harcar (02:20.133)
You just didn’t do it enough, man.

Yeah.

could be true.

Roy Logan (02:34.926)
And I decided to, you know, stop paying for the real estate that I was living in. I decided to make a big decision and sell a house that I had built in the west suburbs of Chicago. And I used the proceeds from that to buy two properties in the northeast corner of Grand Rapids. It was during…

And this market is still a little, you know, nuts compared to the macro economy in, you know, the U.S. But I was able to pick up a couple of properties. Yes, they were distressed, but I found value in them and the little neighborhoods and pockets that they’re actually located in within Grand Rapids. And I decided to live in one and see if I could, you know, rehab another one and

John Harcar (03:08.879)
Right.

Roy Logan (03:29.486)
have it pay for, you know, my house and itself. And with just those two properties, I was able to achieve that. And, you know, I decided, well, why not try to give this a go? Okay. Well, then I learned banks really don’t like you or want to work with you if you don’t have a W-2 income. So, you know, I decided I got to kind of go back, find a career. I found a career.

Again, in project management, and this is just in the past year and a half, but I was able to implement a CRM into this company and take control of over 289 projects for 99 % U.S. government DOD contracts. And I organized their company in a fashion that helped them automate things and be able to, you know.

John Harcar (04:20.005)
Wow.

Roy Logan (04:27.17)
Follow up with vendors and PMs from the government side, you know, fast and quick. But throughout this process, I was also able to buy a few more properties. I continue to buy single family homes here in the northeast corner of Grand Rapids as well as duplexes. Have I rehabbed them all yet? No. I would say I’m still building and stabilizing each property.

Does each property provide me cash flow right now? Yes, it does. Is it the cash flow that is at the peak of what that property can be? Some of them, yes, but the others, no, and I’m okay with that right now. recently I’ve been able to leave that job with the properties that I have. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now talking to you, John.

John Harcar (05:21.769)
Yeah, right, you’re probably rich at 95, man.

Roy Logan (05:24.65)
Yeah, right. So I’m sort of enjoying my time. I’m really enjoying my time with real estate. And, you know, I still consider myself a newbie. But I’ve been able to still find tricks and trades that work for the little guys that save us a few percent here and there, especially with trying to do things on your own. And yeah, I

John Harcar (05:32.559)
Good.

John Harcar (05:43.437)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (05:50.351)
Yeah.

Roy Logan (05:53.41)
That’s probably the best background I could give you. I don’t know why.

John Harcar (05:55.521)
I love it, man. No, I love your story. And the cool part about what you did is you got to, you learned kind of on the job type of training, right? You’ve learned from where you started doing the countertops and all those types of things, to then you went into project management. So as you learn, like some people would go out, maybe get an education or a mentor, you kind of just learned it the right way. My question to you originally, I wanted to ask before is,

In your growing up, when you grew up, in your life, was there any exposure or influence or anybody in real estate that kind of planted that seed? Like what sparked this interest in real estate of all things?

Roy Logan (06:34.848)
Of all things, I would say the ability to control your time rather than someone or a company controlling your time for you. And that’s the main thing I would say what drove me towards real estate. Yes, being in sort of the construction world throughout my life.

has, you know, kept me in that realm and probably helped me understand it more than average person. But yeah, definitely the time, the value of time is why I continue to go after, you know, real estate and the passive income it can generate if you do it right.

John Harcar (07:18.159)
Sure. And even when you’re starting out, it’s still kind of like, it’s still a full-time job, right? Because you’re having to put so much time to build. as you put it, but I like, know, kind of what we talked about before we got on here is, you know, having that, you know, when you get to that point and you can have the time to do what you passion about, things you like, is why we get into business, right? Yeah.

Roy Logan (07:39.532)
Definitely. Again, like we just said, I don’t think I’d be here having a glass of water and a cup of coffee talking to you if I was at my job, you know? And, you know, I could go do the landscaping at my house, water the flowers in the morning, and actually wake up, not rush out of the door, being all spun up in the head. I was there, I did it, and I was happy that I chose to pursue real estate.

John Harcar (07:45.669)
I know.

John Harcar (07:58.659)
Yeah.

Roy Logan (08:08.418)
the same time I was working W2. And who’s to say I won’t go back and get a W2 job that offers me something that I enjoy doing? You know? Yeah. Yeah.

John Harcar (08:16.227)
Yeah, exactly. Living proof. So when you turn the corner into entrepreneurship, right, and you left, started your own, what were some of those struggles that you had at the beginning? You know, some people might say it might be, you know, doing all the books and doing all the marketing and all the hats I have to wear. So for you, what were the challenges?

Roy Logan (08:41.498)
yeah. Again, it’s like putting yourself into a fire. You know, everything’s gonna come at you and you’re gonna kinda have to teach yourself. like finding this initial property. Was I great at analyzing deals? Did I know everything about, you know, cash on cash return, IRR, cap rates? No, I didn’t. What did I do? I went to people who’ve been in the industry.

learn from them. So trying to soak up as much as you can because you don’t know everything and if you think you do I’m sorry you’re wrong even if you’ve already made a few million dollars you can always learn. So biggest struggles for me was yeah just the unknowns that you didn’t know were gonna pop up but they do pop up in real estate and sure one of the things that I bought it and when I bought this property

I didn’t know that one of the joists in the ceiling was falling, you know, down and that’s why the ceiling in one of the bedrooms was coming down. I didn’t know that was going to lead to probably replacing all the joists in the house, but hey, you live and you learn. What did I do in that situation to not pay the full bill? I did some of the work on my own, but you know, it’s, again, you live, you learn, and you know, you are going to fall on your face a few times, but

John Harcar (09:51.482)
Yeah.

Roy Logan (10:06.584)
You have to get back up and I think real estate can afford you that opportunity. I would say that’s probably why I went after rentals rather than flipping initially because flipping you’ve got to be very tight on everything and know those numbers. yeah, I probably went on a little tangent that tends to happen with my brain, but…

John Harcar (10:23.095)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

John Harcar (10:28.613)
That’s all good. It’s all good. The biggest thing I took from that in the beginning when you talked about is you took action, right? And I think that’s the problem a lot of people have is that they have to in their mind have to know it all before they actually just do it. Like they have to know if they have when they have to replace the joists. You went in, you knocked the roof came down, you found out and you dealt with it. So what does your business look like now? I know you mentioned you have a couple rentals. How many total rentals do you have? What does your team look like?

Roy Logan (10:59.278)
So team consists of me and my wife We do own five properties and it’s a total of six units looking, you know right now, especially in this market for I would say another small size multifamily, but at least four plex to a ten unit building But what does the business look like I would say I’m

you know, self-employed contractor at this point. I’ve given the opportunity to, I’d say, failed filmmaker or rejected filmmaker, that’s better, in Hollywood to come out and sort of film the progress of another 100-year-old home renovation. I’ve just gutted that to the studs. And I want to kind of show how, you know, one to two people can actually take on a full-scale project.

and it not destroy the time. It’s something that others are looking to do.

John Harcar (12:04.143)
So that’s awesome, man. I’d love to see something like that. So let’s talk a little bit about that topic that we mentioned earlier about how can someone be their own property manager, or project manager. For you, what skills or what things did you have to learn that helped you to do more of that project management stuff?

Roy Logan (12:26.062)
Can you say that question one more time?

John Harcar (12:29.219)
Like what are some of the skills, you cause you know, we mentioned that, you know, in the beginning of the topic of, you know, how people can be their own project manager, right? What’s it? Yeah. What, what things, you know, can they do on their own versus not having to outsource? Like what, what do you recommend or what are the things you do that you don’t outsource?

Roy Logan (12:38.851)
Yep.

Roy Logan (12:48.59)
Sure, well just understanding if you’re a newbie in this world and you purchase a primary residence, you’re able to pull the permits on your own. You can pull the permits and a builder doesn’t need to charge you $1,000 to pull the permits when the permits might cost 200 bucks. There’s some savings right there. On top of it, if you work with the city as a homeowner, they want you to improve homes.

I can submit drawings on sketches on napkins and basically tell them what I’m going to do to the house and you know they’re going to approve it. Why? Because they actually have to come out and still do their inspections. What am I able to do? What inspections do we need to pass? A rough-in inspection. What does it entail? Well what’s behind your walls? We’ve got electric, we’ve got plumbing, we’ve got gas, and we’ve got a track, you know?

Those are the things that they’re going to come look at. And if you have or need to hire a contractor for those things, and I do, you know, you are going to do the work with them. They know the code. And as the inspectors come through the houses with you, you’re able to sign off on it and learn from them. How big are the holes that can go through Joyce? Where are they located? You know, things of that nature.

Why do windows have to be tamper-proof when they’re in bathrooms? Silly things like that. But it’s putting yourself into the situation to actually learn. there’s definitely ways to do it on your own, be your own project manager, instead of outsourcing it. Because it does save you, I would say, least 10%, 15 % upfront. I don’t know many builders that aren’t putting that on top of.

John Harcar (14:42.575)
Yeah.

Roy Logan (14:46.264)
pretty much anything that they do on a job site.

John Harcar (14:49.861)
Yeah. And, know, I, I, once again, you, you, you outsource at the beginning to learn and till you get confident enough to do it on your own. Are there any things that you say, Hey, 100 % outsource don’t do that on your own.

Roy Logan (15:03.832)
Well it all depends on how much you like drywall and sanding. Or just demo work. I don’t know why I enjoy that so much but it saves me a buck at least. Yeah exactly. If you’re okay with getting itchy and whatnot you know it saved me five grand on this house I know that because I’ve paid five grand for someone to demo another property. So it’s I don’t know.

John Harcar (15:06.628)
Yeah, there you go.

John Harcar (15:15.947)
You take out anger and frustration, man. That’s what that’s what devil work is.

Roy Logan (15:33.806)
If you want to put in the time and effort, anyone can do it. And I believe in

John Harcar (15:43.171)
What advice would you have if someone’s listening to this and they’re like, hey man, I wanna do that, right? What advice would you give to them to help set them up for success?

Roy Logan (15:52.782)
Well, make sure you find the right area. You know, you can’t just buy any property, right? Location, location, location is something I think about. Even if you’re in a major city, there’s different locations within that city. Know what those pockets can provide you. Do a lot of comps, you know. Check what local people are renting things out, maybe on the same street.

Check what the city is allowing now. Can you add additional ADUs to properties? Things like that. Find hidden gems within properties that average people aren’t looking at. Just because a property is listed at a certain number and you look at it one way, maybe it will work another way. But also don’t be afraid to actually jump in and buy the first deal.

Because, you know, you could think about it and dream about it for as long as you want, but jump in. It’s worth it. Yeah.

John Harcar (17:00.217)
take action and do it. I love it. Roy, I appreciate you coming on here and sharing all this information. there’s anybody out or listening to this that’s out in your area, maybe someone who just wants to call and talk to you about what you’re doing in real estate, how can they get in touch with you?

Roy Logan (17:16.482)
Well, I’m not a big social media fan, but since we’re gonna make a video for every single day of the renovation of this hundred year old home, they could find me on Facebook. As weird as that sounds, just look up my name. And I probably look something like this in the photo. Now that I don’t have to dress all fancy and go to work. Yeah.

John Harcar (17:37.937)
right on. Well, cool, man. Thank you again, guys at home. I hope you enjoyed the show. Hope you took some good notes because there were some good nuggets that were dropped. Roy, good luck in your business, man. I’m excited to see that video of the home, man. The reno, that’d be killer. appreciate you coming out here again. And guys, we’ll see you on the next one. Cheers.

Roy Logan (17:58.99)
Thanks, son.