In short I want to know ways that you have made deals like this work and/or any creative solutions for keeping a tenant in place. 

That’s why they pay $40,000 to a mentor - as a SHORTCUT.  

Like @Laura Chotkevys said, you can raise money, creatively finance from the seller, partner, get lower money down loans (SBA - although this is harder for the first deal sometimes), get a private note... lots of ways to go about this with low money down if you put in the work and know how much you need. 

I cannot get over the hump with that, more time, more work and more costs for me and I can't convince myself that the juice is worth the squeeze.

I find investors are just as much work and sometimes more than a regular buyer and seller. 

Your doing all the hard work and they do the rest..it's been a year since I started and I was informed today that I will most likely not be seeing any kind of payment because I have a low amount of files turned in.

Clearly you don’t have many of your own clients to attend to lmao  in the day it was legal to do foreclosure rescue in Or and WA I bought all my sub to deals with no title insurance and did my own paper work and of course no escrow and recorded my own deeds.

I did all the work and I had to pay half of the first rent for it.

Both can be true.I understand the need of emphasizing the business side of things, but I feel like the way to do this shouldn't be to take shortcuts that don't necessarily match reality and are, to an extent, dehumanizing.

At the end of the day, neither are effective without understand how they work and their limitations but if used correctly they can be used in conjunction with one another.