Employers want educated workforce.

I have recently been educating myself by reading books, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, and attending workshops.

If you’ve been through the process elsewhere please educate us.

Start by educating yourself online or through courses on the house flipping process, renovation costs, and market analysis specific to Chicago.

In addition to your creative financing education, start to include education around scaling your portfolio using the equity in your home.

These properties are my children's college education, I acquired them in 2005, only 1 loan no 2nd, never refinanced since purchased, but I am in a dire situation, any advice on where I can get the help I need to save these 2 houses, they both have equity... 

This is hands down one of the best investments I've made in my own education (for contrast: my BS and doctorate cost me $250K, and for RE, apart from books, I recently spent $18K on a syndication coach and $5K on multifamily strategy with Christian & Cody) -- and her course was a fraction of these costs at only $2.5K (Soli: you should up your prices, you are worth it)!

The cure to both - the 4 ions: education, action, progress(ion), not perfection".

I have been working and educating myself for many years toward this type of project 

You could start with your education without investing money re.