I am trying to force as much equity and profit as I can, so doing my own maintenance and management in the early years will allow me to expand my door count much more quickly.Best of luck.

Counting on being able to physically fight someone is not an adequate defense, as there is always somene more capable than you.

Also, once you have 2 years of rental income reporting, you can count all new rental income for next purchases.

I'm not huge into marketing anymore, but one thing has crossed my mind with your plan.  

There are a number of good legit deals, no need to cross into the dark side.

I could grow grass, my only apprehension is the upkeep, mainly water. grass needs water to grow, while personally I like a nice clean lawn, I don't think I could count on tenants to keep it watered.

Fingers crossed! 

Not counting remodeling that we will need to do to make the rest of the place look decent and attract the right tenants.

I count with the biggerpocket community to help me reach my goal and tomorrow be a better biggerpocketer to pay back with my knowledge and good deals. 

These systems allow you to track leads easily rather than counting calls from Google Voice and trying to determine what was the cause for their call.