They all need to qualify independently otherwise you will be the landlord getting excuses from two tenants that can no longer afford the rent.Each must be able to afford the rent, which will be highly unlikely, and you need to be able to collect when they stop paying.Three friends in a SFH is a high risk for a landlord since it rarely works out.

Our goals, like many, are to become financially independent of our 9-5 jobs.

KW, generally from the man at the top, Gary Keller, follows a phyllosopghy of treating an "agent" like the independent contractors that we are.  

Would they see it as a sale or would it just be independent because I'm just transferring a contract?

I've tried several agents over the years.Also, I only hire independent contractors.  

I have aspirations to achieve financial independence through REI and all of my Google searches for educational info seem to ultimately lead me to BiggerPockets.com.

Now that I will be "self-employed" or an "independent contractor", will this hurt my chances of investing in another property?

You don't give them directions on what to do at any given time, you give them a scope and they do what they want with that, if you tell them to get materials from here and install it there, that does is already an employee and not independent contractor.

I'm not sure how many you'd get to successfully as I believe most trusts are typically managed by an independent party that may or may not forward on your mailer to any of the members.

So I enrolled in an online course and studied independently at work and at home, and began striving to read one book per week.