or just an individual with self produced contract?

Network and try to find a mentor in these groups or wherever you can to help guide you through this industry.But if your market doesn't provide the cash flow you're lookng for I would check out single family and duplexes in Cleveland, OH that can produce strong cash flow such as 44102, 44109, 44111, and 44135.Go into Zillow under rents and look at days listed and contacts.

I'm almost at the point I cannot pay retail any longer as it's always cheaper to develop our own new buildings or systems. https://www.alibaba.com/produc...

Don't ever sell unless you have a rock-solid plan to invest in something that produces a better return or moves you closer to your goals.

You can still find cashflowing properties in the STR areas people have been investing in, butit is just hard to find "great cashflowing" properties producing +25% cash on cash returns when planning accordingly for capex.

There are dozens of other marketing routes but in my experience, they do not produce the highest quality potential buyer leads.

We then refinanced the property and it has given us $140k in cash back and continually produces $1,800/month in cash flow. 

In truth, you do not need to invest where you live as there may be better markets that produce better cash flow with solid capital appreciation in many areas throughout the US.

We no longer want to sacrifice any of my wife's income to invest in our rentals and only want to grow with the income that the business produces.

I also have to mentioned that the biggest advantage of using AI is for internal company usage, especially in a companies where it has multiple product, multiple supplier , or producing very competitive product ; company like home depot , medical device or even Adobe, can really make killing productivity by leveraging AI.For people in tech, the ability of AI to generate a code , a database or to articulate complex system , is very valuable.I have been moving from search engine to AI too in last few months and result was great.