I have only been doing this for a month and I am kind of lost in the forest as to what direction I should take next.

Know your market, I was lucky on that first investment, had the market been declining I could have lost my shirt.

Sounds like you're lost, if you'd learn real estate before trying to deal in real estate, you'd know where you're at. 

I used Zillow to find this property. The story behind this guy was he had an extra property that he had to kick his son out of because of drugs and such.I asked him if he would sell it for what he owed on it and he sa...

If you were doing the waiting/paper pushing, and you could have been finding more deals you may have lost out. 

Landlord.com leases, they have some clauses that give your more control over your property.

For me I haven't had anyone then say get lost there might be some that politely turn the other way but for me it has been money in my pocket. 

I am in the bay area and know the market here for rentals is great and rents have been going up a lot over the last few years.You are lucky that you do not have rent control and can increase what you feel like.

You want to "control everything, own nothing" so as to be as unattractive a lawsuit target as possible.You want to assure that a lawsuit from one property will not endanger others, or at least not a "large" portfolio of smaller properties.You want to emplace a layer of protection between your entity structure and yourself personally, as well.

I'm going to say that it depends what your goals are in seeking education.Cruising these forums, you'll see stories where people lost money because of what didn't know or didn't know to watch out for.At the same time, you'll find a pervasive and powerful bias against paid education.You'll want to decide for yourself which is the greatest expense: losing money on a deal (may or may not be deductible) or paying for education to help prevent losing money on your deals (deductible as a professional development expense).