I agree that a lot of the material on the site is... irksome. See the following podcast.
https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/biggerpockets-podcast-238-real-estate-millionaire-teacheraes-salary-michael-swanny-swan/The individual on the podcast talks a blue streak about how he was able to replicate and exceed his teacher's salary by purchasing blue-collar rentals in Ohio. That's amazing, you say! Wow! How did he get the multiple hundred k required to buy multiple apartment complexes in Ohio, though...? Oh, he sold a San Diego condo that had massive appreciation - so all you need to do to walk in his footsteps is hop in your time machine, fly back to the mid 2000s, and buy California property.
...sigh.
Basically, the advice on BP boils down to:
1) Buy a property at no more than the TOTAL of 70% of after-repair value (ARV) minus your renovation costs.
2) Renovate the property.
3) Refinance out your money, leaving you with little-to-no dough, but an essentially-free income stream.
4) Repeat.
Sooooo... if you can't buy property at a massive discount, the model doesn't work, period, full stop, do-not-pass-go-do-not-collect-$100.
Much less sexy are the stories where someone purchases one house a year, snowballs their rental income plus their w2 income into future purchases, and gradually scales up. I think BP as a whole does a disservice to this relatively-MUCH-safer method by convincing people that the "BRRR" (buy, renovate, refinance, repeat) is the only way to go.
Now, all that said, BP was an amazing resource for me simply because it provided a proof-positive case study (or a series of case studies) showing that you could, indeed, buy houses in an area far afield. ARebelSpy here did the same thing, and it was massively eye-opening / paradigm-shifting for me. I've got multiple cash-flowing rentals now, and while I'm not "infinitely cashflowing" a la some of these BRRR zealots, I'm stacking away, slowly but surely.
Bottom line: if you can understand underwriting and have a decent inflow of capital from a w2 job (or can save up enough from a lower-w2 job), you're in business. You'll need one of the following:
1) capital
2) access to capital
3) ability to convince people to part with their assets for less capital than they would get on the open market
Good luck! :)
ETA: When I say I own "cash-flowing rentals," for me the big advantage of a rental versus, say, a passive stock index is the ability to harness the bank's money and lever up. If I have 100k in the stock market and return 8% or 9%, that's an 8k return. If I have 100k in rentals and return 12% cash-on-cash returns (before accounting for principal paydown, tax benefits, potential appreciation of the underlying asset [!]), now I'm in business. I'm around 12% CoC returns for the year even with a massive capital expense (think: roof), so for ME, real estate trumps simple stock market investing because I'm willing to put up with a lack of liquidity for a better return.