I’ll take Hilton and Marriott’s or any other resort management team over that, where they can actually benefit me down the road at one of their 1000’s of locations.

I've created a spreadsheet that maps out my plan month by month and at the rate I'm going I should be able to buy my first dedicated rental in 3-4 months and another about 6 months after that.

If you go this route, I'd do the homework on managing brokers and their teams and find a good mentor who owns their own properties. 

FWIW, here's a tip:  call a few and start by asking if you will have a dedicated account representative, or will you be assigned to someone different each time you contact their call center? 

Second, with this kind of idle cash and a lack of time, I feel like I'd rather do a few big deals, even if they're not as profitable as if I did a bunch of small individual deals - I just don't have the time to dedicate to making $30k.

I am dedicated and ready to do my diligence first hand.

I would recommend just starting to build a team.

I know that in a my entire accounting degree 30 minutes of one class were dedicated to 1031.   

Find a few good property management teams in the markets, get in touch with them and get a feel of what they have to say about the market itself.

I dug a lot of answers out of the teams that came to look at it and know exactly what to do, the only thing is that I won’t be using their top of the line materials and plus, there’s always small little tricks (from experience) in any project to help improve the longevity.