How do you self-manage your rentals?

[Shamus Wheeler]

To provide some background, I am purchasing my first 4 unit property in a rural area. This town is my hometown, but I now live ~5 hours away. I need to put some sort of property management in place. There is only one property management company in this town, and when I talked to them, they were just OK. Slightly expensive, a few too many fees, slightly poor quality services. They could work as my property manager, but are not ideal in my thinking. 

I am aiming to acquire 20 units in the same town this year (or as many as possible). I am considering "self-managing" from a distance. By this, I mean dealing with all tenant communications and hiring someone to do the on-site management. Obviously I need to do my own analysis about what the best option would be. This seems like something that would make sense at 20 units, but possibly not at 4 units. That's enough for background, my questions in general are: 

1. If I were to self-manage, how should I structure this? Start a property management LLC and hire someone on a 1099 basis?

2. How do you self-manage/ run a property management company for only your units?