I plan to purchase a 2-unit+ property as a first-time owner to get all the advantages Maryland offers, and scale from there. 

It depends on the scale of the project.

My hopes is to begin to slowly scale I'm just fighting with what that looks like.

This will come in handy as you begin to scale.5.

In the mergers and acquisitions world, they call it "deal heat!"

Unlocking some of that equity to BRRRR could be a great way to scale.

In my case because of the demand, having a number of apartments of similar size and scale helps with keeping the vacancy low.  

It sounds like you have a good amount of experience already going for you which is great, it sounds like you could lean on that experience to go out and find some private equity to help you scale.

There are real benefits to hitting economies of scale when it comes to running STRs.

Much like @Rick Albert mentioned above, I would not have scaled into purchasing additional properties had it not been for house-hacking.