Its also a good idea to build relationships with realtors, contractors, insurance agents, real estate attorneys, and property managers in your area so take advantage of events, conferences, and meetups.

In additional to conducting educational workshops, I also write blogposts for their websites.

As I stated above, maybe it is because I'm in the south, but if you attempt to speak with people, conducting due diligence, they become offended you would question anything they provide. 

For the turn Key program, Dmitri insisted that I would need to pay an up front fee of 10K per property that I intended to purchase through their program before they'd ever send me deals upon which I could conduct my due diligence. 

However, if you've picked up on signs of potentially problematic behavior during your interactions, you might be able to highlight them by adding “good tenant conduct” to your list of standards. 

I had a brief F2F with Ivan a couple weeks ago when I ran into him at a conference in FLorida.

We went to a bigger pockets conference to get us started. 

Start small, build a strong network, and conduct thorough market research to align with your investment strategy.

Based on my experience coaching investors with my husband, who was a realtor many years ago, I strongly advise that, regardless of whom you work with, you meet the team, conduct thorough market research, get an appraisal, schedule an inspection, and also arrange for a site visit.

I was at a local (Bay Area) REI conference a few weekends ago and Brian Burke (CEO) spoke.