I'm a newly licensed Mortgage Planner and my girlfriend is a licensed Real Estate agent in the area, so I know we have the ingredients to success! 

Be willing to teach and ask questions, like a good financial planner, instead of a car salesman buying cheap for his car lot.Many REIs come from engineering "number crunching" type of skills.The "soft skills" of negotiating with NLP is a major key to success in Seller financing negotiations.  

I guess if you're putting together a dream team, a tax planner/specialist who knows aa lot about the rental business would be nice.

More soft skills, think like a financial planner...http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/soft-skills.as...

He is a personal finance planner and historian, but as it turns out his living comes from realty.

I agree with Joel, time to start looking for folks with years of experience and pick their brain: developers, architects, lawyers, planners, etc.  

However, lately I've been listening to podcasts like the Radical Financial Planner and others from the Mr.

I think both of you might do well working with municipal planners, identifying blighted areas for renovation and rehabilitation.

Give the group some free information about rent to own and gather data about their dream home in their finances.Try to get referrals think of people that advise people on financial matters such as CPAs and Financial planners; get the word out to them that you help people stop renting and get a mortgage through a rent a home program and ask them to look at their customer base and refer them to you.Think of giving speeches; are you giving speeches?

I've got the November 20 meetup in my planner, but doubt I can make a lunch meeting in Norcross.