Stop hanging out with your deadbeat buddies who spend all day drinking, talking sports, and otherwise wasting away.

It is much more efficient to spend some time up front to really understand the market.

The successful wholesalers I know spend $8,000 + per month on online marketing, SEO, SEM, landing pages, lead conversion, etc.  

Yeah they will spend thousands of dollars to fight $1000 claim.

Spend your time on your contracts, insurance, and operations.Contracts-  copy, borrow from someone else as a starting point.  

I try not to overdo it, but I also don't want to spend 30 minutes typing it fresh when it's literally asked every. single. day.

Real estate, by default, is passive and the primary way to avoid the passive loss rules is to qualify as a real estate professional.Full-time employees and non-real estate business owners cannot qualify as a real estate professional (aka REPS status) because one of the tests is to spend more time in real estate than anything else (and it’s unlikely that you can convince the IRS or Tax Court that you spent more time in RE than your day job).

*In addition to the $7,000 weekly salary that she drew from ORES, Van Gundymisappropriated more than $5.7 million in investor funds for her own personal use, spending thosefunds on a variety of purposes, including payments for her nanny, private school tuition for herchildren, veterinarian bills and boarding costs for horses, cash withdrawals, auto payments, retailstores, and debt extinguishment, among other personal expenses*

Using your own funds to pay down your loan so you get a bigger loan sounds like a zero sum gain (aka IE using 1 dollar to pay down loan so you can net 1 more dollar from the new proposed loan) So how are you going to net more cash when spending 1 dollar to get another 1 dollar ?

The ONLY reason to invest in real estate syndications rather than REITS is better return.  2- if you decide syndications are better for you,  spend due diligence on vetting the syndicator - eliminate any that do not have the experience, verifiable track record, or investment philosophy you want.