Frustrated and lost...

[Sean Harris]

So I will start out by saying that I am a person who over analyses EVERYTHING whether its trying to buy real estate or deciding where to eat lunch, its terrible. I guess i'm lost in what I want to do in real estate investing and how to get this what seems to be, massive ball rolling to gain momentum. Long story short, here is my back story and what I want my end goal to be and I would like to see if anyone could grant me some advice/knowledge. 

I have currently owned a single family home for the last 8 years now and it has an addition unit on the property which I rehabbed and rented out immediately and has worked out extremely well for me (this is my first real estate investment). I have been looking into buying real estate for somewhat of 2 or 3 years now and still haven't pulled the trigger for one reason or another. I want to start investing but it will have to be out of state because anywhere here in California is too expensive and the numbers don't align to make money. My end goal is I want to retire from a normal 9 to 5 job by 40yo, which is 10 years away and I feel its absolutely doable. I pulled out a HELOC on my house for 100k to get started buying properties and was looking really hard into Ohio but I passed on a lot of properties because most of them in my price range were 100 year old properties and I didn't feel safe throwing my money into a potential problem child I knew nothing about.. Long term I would love to own large apt. complexes or trailer parks bringing in steady passive income that what day I could pass on to my kids (I want to go BIG).

Questions

1. What would be the most efficient way in using a 100k HELOC?

2. I am absolutely open to syndication and partnerships but where and how do I find these people best besides family and friends?

3. Would it be better to buy a few small properties with the HELOC to get my credibility up for much larger future projects?

4. Should I start learning how to write up business models to find investors for much larger projects like cardone suggests?

Absolutely any advice will be greatly appreciated. Such as people to get into contact with, books to read, skills to sharpen and learning to leverage anything I have to go bigger and bigger. I hope to get to talk with a few of you. Have a great day