You have gotten all the advice you need so far and it looks like you get the point.

Only thing that I might add is to see if there is a fellow srp member in your area that is willing to meetup. An hour with a mentor from here is worth about 100 hours of you tube video and frustration. You can get your razor honed learn a few things and have him look at your stropping. If the AOS sales person was willing to cut paper as his sales pitch I was willing to be they do not use a straight razor so their stropping instruction may have been as helpful as the paper test.

Good luck and welcome to SRP. It really is not that hard, just a lot to take in at once.