I would say (as a new investor myself) that the best place to find stories like this are cruising throughout the blog or my favorite of the podcasts on iTunes which really have some great information and would be able to work you through some of those MFR questions!

You flip through the 75 coupons and pull out a few for your favorite restaurant.

I've gotten great advice here from both experienced and newbie investors so I'm once again turning to my favorite forum for advice.Currently house hacking and one year later I am ready to pull out some cash for my next deal.

The property needs s lot of TLC.

Furthermore, at the end of every BP podcast, each guest is asked about their favorite real estate related book.  

My personal favorites so far are shows #6, 14, 37, 60, 61, 74, 152.

The podcast are my favorites.

I'll invest it in chunks in relatively stable performers (either an index fund or something which is essentially an index - BRKB is one of my favorites), but use different investment vehicles for each "chunk" so they are easy to track.  

One of my favorite lines to use is "In essence I'm like a property manager who works for free and pays your rent and by the way I'm going to buy your house with in a few years too" The most common response is "That sounds too good to be true."

Start a Corp, deed 2-3 props over to it thereby opening up another 2-3 "slots" for conventional mortgages2.