It's a lot of work but well worth it.There several tools and techniques.

I might be a bit late on this one, but you can achieve the same outcome as a company who specializes in credit repair yourself, you just need to know what techniques they use.

Welcome Chris McCall I would be very interested to hear your technique in negotiating owner financing on bigger properties.

Keep looking for lenders and JV partners, but I would concentrate on techniques that will be likely to happen.You won't want to hear this, I didn't when I was your age, but you sound quite young and by your own admission you're inexperienced....no crime there and I applaud the initiative you display.....but  I think hard money will be very tough for you.  

Bring a general contractor with you to the property and let them teach you how to identify problems and opportunities for improvement to bring the property to its full value.Go down to Home Depot and other individual wholesale materials stores and get a list of prices for everything you might use on this flip and every future flip.Go to the professionals desk at Home Depot and ask about discounts for bulk items purchased.It takes practice and a lot of trial and error at first to perfect the techniques to estimate costs.

Some examples of improvements include: a new deck, storm windows/doors, wall-to-wall carpeting, duct work, and insulationHere is link to a great forum discussion regarding this topic of Cap Ex vs Expenses: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/51/topics/70013-techniques-to-report-capital-improvements-as-repairs

Does anyone have any tips, techniques or experiences they would like to share on how a new real estate investor that is trying to get in the game should go about obtaining and mentor and establishing a team

What are techniques people have used to entice tenants to allow for an open house.Thanks

I had to prep  for  about an hour by listening to a few minutes of my Think and Grow Rich Audiobook and then i listened to the BP podcast on door2door techniques.

There is really no way to use a stacking technique here, as is at least theoretically possible in the case of lease-options.