If by sophisticated you mean achieved net worth or accrued talent in owning successful properties, I think there are varied paths to sophistication. 

Started a new LLC in October, I have accrued a lot of expenses but no income.

FEES UPON TERMINATION: At the time this agreement ends, Owner must pay Broker:A. all amounts due Broker under this agreement; andB. if the Property is leased to a tenant on the date this agreement ends and Owner terminates thisagreement, an amount equal to the lesser of:(a) the management fees that would accrue over the remainder of the term of the lease; or(b) $ .If more than one property or unit is made part of and subject to this agreement, this paragraph applies onlyto those properties or units then leased and applies to each property or unit separately.Other issues I have with this property manager is that I was charged 14.286% extra management fee than what was in the agreement for all my properties.

This can drive up your costs as taxes and municipal bills keep accruing.

I've been on the LP side of a few deals, and generally avoid them because while things may start out well, a few years down the road things change....The only LP deal I've entered after I got some degree of sophistication was a commercial deal something like this:1-It was a good deal, rehab of an existing building with a planned tenant.2-I put my money in, and it accrued 6 or 8% interest.3-The first series of payments were 100% return of capital and of interest, with a 95/5 split (95 to us LPs)4-all payments after that were 70/30 (70 to LPs)5-If building is sold after all capital and interest is returned, 70% of net proceeds go to LPs.The thing I really liked about it was that my exposure was at 0 after 2-3 years in.

A little about me:I live in Juneau, Alaska in a desirable 1 bedroom condo and am going to buy a house with the help of equity accrued (about $60k).

In this case, you would get the points up front as a fee and then the interest that accrues + the balance at the sale of the flip.Private money tends to be low or no upfront points and a lower interest rate (6-10%) but the flipper typically has an established track record and oftentimes experience doing it with that lender.This post has some good discussion on Private Lenders vs Hard Money Lenders:https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/311/topics/433920-private-lending-vs-hard-money

The next hurdle was finding financing.Ideally, the $8,800 I had accrued from the rent and security deposit would be used as my down payment.

After 6 months, I pay the accrued interest and start making regular payments if I want, or I can defer the payments another 6 months if I need to.

So what I do first is go to my area's largest chain supermarket, Giant Eagle, and buy a gift card for Giant Eagle Supermarkets.I pay for the Giant Eagle gift card with the Barclays Mastercard, accruing their travel miles in their frequent flyer program (American offers the most flights out of Pittsburgh).I also link the purchase to my Giant Eagle rewards account, which offers me cheaper prices on gasoline at the many GetGo gas stations Giant Eagle runs all over my area.The next step is to use the Giant Eagle gift card to buy a Home Depot gift card at another or the same Giant Eagle, which means that the same purchase eventually gives me double fuel rewards (you cannot use a Giant Eagle gift card to buy another Giant Eagle gift card or of course that's what I'd be doing, again and again, until they'd be paying me to pump gas at their stations).Finally, I use the Home Depot gift card at Home Depot to buy the stuff I need.Understand, you need iron financial discipline with credit cards to run these kinds of travel and rewards hacking schemes, or sooner or later, you're going to be spending with no sure way of paying them back ON TIME EVERY TIME.