The benefit to this was—I was able to purchase cheaply, and put more money towards some interesting renovations that boosted the home value, and made for some awesome perks for my future tenants. 

Anyone know is there is link/video/tutorial/webinar etc that can walk me through the PRO benefit and how to access and use the benefits.

He is the one that benefits from not using a realtor, not you. 

I assume that although you took on a pretty big project in a new area making you essentially a 'newbie' - your previous BRRRR experience definitely must have contributed to the success on this project. 

I also know very little about the tax benefits, or lack of with each option.

Another benefit is getting a list of cash buyers in the area in order to build your buyers.

One vacancy every 2-3 years would devour most, if not all, of the profits.If a person owned 20 of these houses, yearly income ($36,000) is about as as much as the manager of the local Video Rental store, but it comes with $1,000,000 in debt.15 years is long time to carry around a deal that is essentially all equity and bare minimum cash flow.

It sounds to me that he's saying, I as a landlord of a residential property would not benefit from this tax change because it wouldn't apply to me.  

This way essentially have very little to no money in the home, and you can turn around and buy more properties.

Furthermore, it is very easy to "pierce the corporate veil" because, presumably, you will be living in the house i.e. you are getting direct benefit from the asset (and the asset protection is in name only).