This may not be an appealing idea for your wife. lol  The trick will be finding a house with enough beds/baths or a room that can be converted to another bedroom. 

There's a pretty big company not to far from my office that sort of has a monopoly on all the beachfront homes in that area so I may be able to trick them into giving me a contract ! 

What tips, tricks and education helped others get started?

Real estate investing is not about tricking people into giving you a good deal.  

What trick am I missing? 

can we all agree that there are a lot of so called inexperienced wholesalers that convince or for a lack of a better word trick homeowners into signing a sales agreement and not knowing that they are going into contract with a wholesaler .

This is going to be better than the old trick, which was to structure it as a purchase with a gift of equity. 

If you nail it into the floor, the floor will not expand and contract like it should.My favorite installation trick for floating floors is the set an entire row at once.

The trick would be finding a property that you can add a significant amount of sweat equity to, and buying it for less than market value. 

Here in AZ we don't use the heater much so I tend to recommend a straight cool AC system with auxiliary heat strips, that way their entire system is not having to kick on for the few rare times they turn on the heat, just the auxiliary heat strips are working and its enough to do the trick.