But just a few months ago I spent six weeks in a jury trial after getting sued by a former homeowner who claimed that we mishandled their personal property after evicting them after a foreclosure. 

Variation of a 419 scam.

MBA is great, if you can get somebody else to pay for it :)Control Systems engineering helped to design automated business systems and assess what can be measured and controlled and what can't.Spacecraft engineering helped with risk management and contingency planning (multiple exit strategies).The rest was from DIY research, trial, and error.

An excerpt from a book review last year:In his worldview, great success is only achieved by heuristic trial-and-error, not stability.

We have been through lots of variations on who is selling the house and what liens, judgements are attached. 

You might benefit from listening to podcasts on Bigger Pockets to hear trials and errors of an investor summed up in 60 minutes.

This is a variation on the cash flow vs. appreciation topic.

The key for me has been (through trial and error unfortunately) finding 2 good contractors who I can be almost entirely hands off with and leveraging some basic technology so I focus most of my time and attention on finding deals.I've found that in order to do a decent volume of houses the vast majority of my time and attention needs to be on finding good deals, since that's the hardest part of this.Having really solid contractors who can make some minor paint/tile/house layout decisions and do a decent job with it has been crucial.Also- leveraging basic technology- for example I have a part time employee I pay to go around to all my rehabs once per week to take 5-10 minute videos and upload them to my google drive.

My long term goal is to leave my day-time job (Project Manager for pharmaceutical research trials) and spend time RE Investing as my source of income and spend time with my children (10 weeks old and 3 years).

Outlook is slight increase, but wide variation in opinion on where we go from here.