I am treating this as a personal business venture, not a get rich quick scheme and have even contacted an attorney (for entity set up advice) and started a business plan.

I am looking to do a joint venture deal and have about 15-20K to work with.

I've always had an entrepreneurial nature, and now as I begin to see more opportunities to delve into greater business ventures, I find myself drawn to real estate.At this point I'm just trying to educate myself as much as possible.

That sounds like a good joint-venture to me.

I appreciate all the advice I've read on here so far and look forward to learning and growing with the Bigger Pockets community on our real estate investment ventures.

I would venture to say it is not solid at all. 

While my wife likes property management, I have recently finished a MSRE degree in RE Development and have no desire to run another person's properties any more.We want babies, to start our own investing and real estate venture, and are always always super exhausted.

I'm literally just starting out with commercial real estate ventures, beginning with 30 unit apartments.

Generally, syndications, joint ventures, partnerships are structured in such a way that the investor is not buying an interest in real estate but an interest in a security, which does not qualify for 1031 Exchange treatment. 

We then pulled the remaining chunk of equity out of the rental portfolio (to a safe 70-80% LTV) and ventured into flipping houses.