Where I am going with this is someone may trade a W2 wage slave job for a job of owning rental units to house people and their pets.

Start at home, do the maintenance work in your home, if something is broken and needs to be fix try to do it yourself before your parents call for a trade to have it fix .

The result is that Sbux is paying $60 - $70 dollars in rent, but the market rent in the area is only $30 to $40 so an investor who, say, trades out of a small MF property into a Starbucks thinking they're getting a great "hands off" investment could find themselves owning a building that's worth half what it was when they bought it (or less, depending on what the tenant pool is to back fill it).

I know this could mean switch to another job to keep learning my trade or taking courses on project management.

Since you have your GC license, I would get the trades together and start building houses.

it seems like a confluence of factors have made it difficult to get started - there is lots of competition for deals, both on and off market; money is expensive; the trades are booked up forever; etc. 

In the land business out west especially low value desert land pretty much all of those deals are traded with QC ( Quit Claim) Deeds prepped by the seller and mailed in to record.

Network to find a great PM or trades.

Another option would be to trade or leverage another property for a portion of the payouts. 

Side jobs are few and far between in my line of work but I do currently options trade the spy index when I see the proper entry.