How are you coming up with that much larger market rent for all those units?

Rod is an ACTIVE mentor, which takes a lot of time/energy. 

I think we are competitively priced, so most of out tenants have been renewing, but we plan to test higher rents in 2025  for our larger apartment buildings to account for the steep increase in insurance prices.There have been A LOT of new apartment buildings put up recently in the Cedar Rapids metro area, so depending on the class of tenant you have, maybe that could account for some of softening you are seeing? 

It enables me to pool resources, leverage my partners' skills, and gain access to larger investment possibilities that would be impossible for me to pursue alone.

I'm the single breadwinner for my family (2 kids) so I don't know if I'd have the time and energy to both run this rental and manage my work so I can reach the income level to handle the bigger mortgage comfortably.I feel like this chance for us to have a rental property with positive cash flow won't come often so I really want to explore it.

By adding an extra bedroom, and opening up the 2nd unit by restructuring some of the walls, switching around some of the rooms in the first unit to make it more inviting and give it a larger kitchen.

If they can get what they want, they'll sell - often trading up for a larger property by way of 1031 exchange. 

He also said he'd help me acquire large multifamily, but then had never even heard of Crexi, or Loopnet and had never owned anything larger than a duplex. 

On the other end of the spectrum you have those teaching others how to syndicate larger transactions.

If you can't shape yourself into a solution maker the cold hard truth is this isn't for you and you'd be better focusing time and energy elsewhere.