Their talk was good but when I insisted on being put into contact with someone that had completed the program they went dark on me.

Ideally, if there's an investor in the Augusta, GA area I'd LOVE to shadow you or even do some rehab labor for you on weekends so I can get my hands dirty and see how the wheels really turn.Aside from that, if anyone has any general tips for making connections with local real estate investors or things I should be reading about, I'd love to learn from you!

There's a lot of great advice here, but the first thing I noticed was the dark photos that look like they were taken with an iPhone.

We who know John were more than shocked that he had “joined the dark side”.

Boy this is a hell of a shot in the dark…I was listening to a podcast several weeks ago…and the host/guest mentioned a book about building and scaling businesses. 

Unless you're on the beach, i'd avoid the flip flops and board shorts, but Also I think most people get defenisve or put off by suits when they are knocking on someones door, so Business Casual, collard shirt if that is something you'd wear or a Clean- Non Graphic T (unless you had your own made), clean cut dark denim jeans -- and some clean shoes. 

There are dark forces behind the current "unjuried" approach. 

I'm not sure where to start, but I'm hoping that I might be able to shadow an investor to teach me the in's and out's of the whole buying and renting process, so I can get a feel for what to expect and develop some prior experience.

Placed too much emphasis on who he was rather than the property itself (but this investment property still had plenty of equity) and then had to foreclose on him because he went dark.

Stuart I have been with my commercial banker now since 1993.. started with a little 100k  LOC to buy timber and within 8 years I was the largest borrower at that bank at about 15 mil.. ( small community bank)  but we fought through the GFC together I had to start over and my banker kept one last  1mil LOC open for me so I could operate and since those dark says of 2010 he has gone on to fund 5 subdivisions for me  300 plus homes and 100 plus million in loans and this is based on relationship 100%..