The only things left for me to do was to add appliances in the kitchen, add a fence in the front and had a lot of tree that were almost falling on the house after hurricane Baril, so I had to spend almost 5k in cutting the trees.

It is usually dangerous to assume you can cut costs. 

I'm not cut out for podcasting unfortunately.

For me it cut down on the time to build an out of state team and gave me access to people who knew the area.

Talk to inspectors, local contractors and start walking properties (ask a local investor if you can tag along if they have projects in the works )- you start getting a sense of how much renovation costs are, what are major safety issues and what's minor, what your offer price should be, and the ARV.I can't speak to the mentorship program since I'm not in it.

In the competitive world of real estate investing, finding tough markets with great upside gives you an instant edge over the competition.

Wanted input on how much might be involved here to remediate, and what range of costs I am looking at, I fully understand that once the drywall is cut open there might be who knows how much damage to the framing, insulation, and whether it is worth it to even get involved with this property.

The “how bad do you want it “is a great headline” but not everyone is cut out to do certain things.

I'd assume the 'favors' don't constitute payment.What is the best way to cut ties with him?

Furnishing is death by 1000 cuts; you're putting a lot of money and a fair amount of risk into a property that you don't own to make $300-500/month per door if everything goes right.