We've made mistakes along the way, but nothing so detrimental it put it us out of business.

Remember that you can only get one home equity loan per year, you can only have one home equity loan on your home, and you cannot convert your home equity loan into a different type of loan, so choosing the wrong loan can be an expensive mistake that you cannot quickly fix.Time Factors: If you need money quickly, don’t forget the schedule for closing a home equity loan, and make sure you will have time to complete the process, close on the loan, and wait through the cooling off period before you have access to the money.

And someone jumping into this as a complete newbie can expect that they have a decent chance of making some expensive newbie mistakes.

Learn from my mistakes and properly screen your tenants and you should be ok.

Just because you don't make any money on them, doesn't mean you aren't responsible, along with the source of the actual plans, for any mistakes in the plans, or even any mistakes in construction from lack of info, misunderstanding, or just plain stupidity of the builder/user of the plans.

Side question: How can you help ensure a good, timely, mistake free lending process? 

It's a very common mistake where an investor sold and bought properties and then when it's tax time they find out they didn't do the right process to actually qualify as a 1031 exchange.  

I wasn’t sure if i am making a huge mistake or forgot to consider certain important detail such as a getting an LLC.

So I've been doing my own taxes in Turbotax for 20 years now (I only own 2 rental properties but both were BRRRs), and I finally got stuck on something and went to a CPA 2 years ago, and he reviewed my past 5 years of returns and pointed out that I had made multiple mistakes (incorrectly categorizing repairs vs capex, calculating basis and therefore depreciation wrong, failing to realize that certain expenses for a home converted to a rental property start being deductible the day the property was placed in service vs actually occupied, the list goes on). 

@Vy LeRecommend exploring as many sources as possible to get referrals AND cross-reference them to get as much accurate information as possible.Check out NARPM.com, BP’s Property Manager Finder (BiggerPockets: The Real Estate Investing Social Network), etc.Also, encourage you to learn from the mistakes of others - by reading posts here on BiggerPockets about owners not having their expectations met by their current Property Management Company.