How does a budding real estate investor achieve financial freedom? A thread

Following the BiggerPockets sensation, many new investors go out and buy a 1-4 unit with conventional financing. This is great for getting your budget in order and saving better.

But it's not enough to retire on, so you buy a few more times over several years. Trouble now is you have a whole lot of leverage that you are personally guaranteeing and multiple properties to manage.

I'm an advocate for two approaches from here. A) you begin systemizing your properties: identical fixtures, automated management, become a master of efficiency and focus on paying down your loans — improving your balance sheet above all else.

Approach B) you go bigger and get out of residential financing. You trade your properties up for 20 unit properties and seek the same efficiencies stated above. The loans become commercial and the ability to increase the property value amplifies with more units.

Either approach can work great. Smaller properties are typically in more established neighborhoods and but bigger properties also have their benefits such as their valuation methodology and scalability.

The goal of this thread was identify an inflection point many of us face. What is it you are trying to accomplish? I would argue that it is a decision of being an investor (option A) or a real estate business (option B).

Personally I prefer approach B because I like the business aspect of real estate. Note: there's lots of holes in my breakdown but I don't want to take too many tangents in one thread. Thoughts?