Listening to one of Brandon Turner's books and he mentions this (https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/plan-to-make-a-million)My question is how do you calculate your loan paydown for the principal and how much equity you've built up?

Take a look at BP's blog where new articles are published every day: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog4.

Again, the BiggerPockets store has some books on this topic, or you can learn about it by watching podcasts, reading blogs, and interacting on the forum.

Here are a few suggestions on how you can maximize the wealth of information available: Check out the blogs and podcasts, or take advantage of the search feature (magnifying glass).

Take a look at BP's blog where new articles are published every day: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog4.

.- Conventional loans remain the top financing option (44%).Give it a full read on our BiggerPockets Blog

All the podcast episode transcripts are posted to the blog, which runs on wordpress and you can use any RSS reader to subscribe to that.

We don’t know any PMCs to recommend in the area mentioned, but since selecting the wrong PMC is usually more harmful than selecting a bad tenant, you might want to read our series about “How to Screen a PMC Better than a Tenant”:https://www.biggerpockets.com/member-blogs/3094/91877-how-to-screen-a-pmc-better-than-a-tenant-part-1-services-and-processesWe recommend you get management contracts from several PMCs and compare the services they cover and, more importantly, what they each DO NOT cover.

Lots of posts and back links.  

Most people that have limited experience go the thought leadership route.Start learning everything you can about real estate investing and then regurgitate it by writing blogs, starting or being featured on podcasts, blab about it on YouTube and social media.