Little did I know I was going to stumble across some books mentioning bigger pockets, start listening to their podcast, and make a post saying this house is now going to be a fix and flip!

The course came with PDF texts (not books) and a very lengthy excel sheet to memorize and tackle on my own.

You've definitely come to the right place to build connections and learn, but you want to pair these forums, books, and podcasts with in-person real estate investing meetups in your area.

Without this foundation any money spent on gurus, courses, books mentorships that teach techniques and methods is WASTED, even if the methodology being taught is valid.  

Listening to podcasts and reading quite a few books.

I think the bookshelf looks better and people will put more than books on it too if they don't have any so it will get decorated. 

The only place I see more cheating is in the recruiting of SEC football players (SEC fan here).

If it’s not a partnership or other entity then the balance is not that important, but if you’re already reconciling books and have A solid set of books it’s best to provide the balance sheet.

Without complete financials up to that point, extra work (and headache) will be required to get everything straight after years of failure to keep complete financials.There also might be an asset protection wrinkle by not maintaining complete books for an LLC, but I won't comment on that as I'm not an attorney.

That said, I don't think you are getting new bookings because of it.