Beginner Real Estate investor Midwest, Scale, have cash?

[Bradley Payne]

Hello my name is Brad from the Chicagoland area. In the past couple of months I have become extremely interested in investing in rental properties. My wife and I just had a beautiful baby girl and really wanted some guidance. Ideally we would like to be financially free ASAP (Don't we all lol). Currently my wife and I hold commissioned sales jobs in which we take home anywhere from 500- 1m per year. We have the cash but want to select the correct strategies in order to maximize cash flow/ value which is why we came to this forum. RIght now all we are really doing is constantly furthering our education (podcasts,surfing MLS, books, forums etc). I see time and time again that we just need to " take action ASAP." I somewhat agree with this but would feel more comfortable with 100 more hours of education and some guidance.

I believe the the best strategy for us would be starting to look for multi- family deals and starting with 1 to gain experience ( then maybe a couple or move to apartment buildings)... not sure Chicago is the best area so maybe Milwaukee, or some chicagoland suburbs, or maybe im wrong, maybe i need to think about different areas of the country since our area doesnt seem too promising. This brings me to my next question. Should we consider Turnkey?  I could invest in turnkey initially in order to learn the process, get the hang of everything (even though im sure cash flow would be less than ideal). Many people think that we should build our own team. Would love to build our own team once we decide on which cities/state to focus on. Once we secure a region to pursue should be start building the whole team before we even have any potential units to offer on? ( broker, contractor,lender, PM, etc-- or which ones are absolutely necessary when you want to offer).

Sorry I am kind of all over the place now.. but hoping someone on BP would be able to shed some light for us.

Basically, we have a good amount of cash and what people think is the best strategy for us knowing all of the above information. We would like to act as soon as we can but want to make sure we have all our ducks in a row.

Looking to connect to anyone and everyone in Chicago/ milwaukee, surrounding areas to learn as much as possible.