Assuming I do my job to make sure everything would cash flow, and finding a good property manager for when I pick up and move across the country, am I missing any major pitfalls here?

So you don’t waste your timelooking at all locations, prioritize and pick locations that put youin a more favorable location between your future competitionand your residential customers.

If you want to learn you need find someone like myself who will sit with you one-on-one, ask you about what you seriously want to do, what you can do and then give you all the tools you need e.g. a business plan, business models and philosophies that help to keep you on a straight path when when you have business problems.You will never get that around a bunch of Big Mouth Wannabes and real estate brokers who are so ignorant and desperate for business they need to go to club meetings to pick on newbies because they don't have the brains to build a company with investors like myself.

I also pick up the rent in person every month so I don't think hiding a dog would be very easy for them if they do decide to not tell me

Did you recently pick this up?

This is rarely the case when you are picking up a property that has deferred maintenance.  

However for now, I'm interested in possibly connecting with investors or real estate professionals from the area to pick your brain about the best neighborhoods to purchase in that are affordable, safest neighborhoods, BRRRR vs house hacking, financing strategies, etc.

I'm not local these days, but perhaps you could learn from @Henry Washington and pick up some cool tricks that will be useful in NWA!

They had the cleaner pick up a coffee pot and drop it off for us.

People love to pick on "slum lords" or criticize landlords with low screening standards.