I have some skin I can put in the game, but not much.

Me house hacking and living in the neighborhood that I invest in, puts more skin in the game to actually improve the neighborhood and lead by example

All closing expenses will be paid outside of funding.After I walk through these details I get the response something like “oh, you want 100% financing, aren’t you going to have some skin in the game?”.  

If you are going to find a mentor, find one who is willing to put skin in the game with you and offer the value that a true mentor should bring. 

In my opinion, if it's ambiguous whether you pay excise tax for assignments, another way to skin this cat would be to double close, but negotiate with either A seller or C buyer so that they can pay for the excise tax.  

I would definitely look into some sort of financing, but the ideas to raise capital are to get to the point where I can have some "skin in the game" with my own funds as I see is required for some of the more favorable financing options.

In that case, I pay a fixed amount for their equity and I'm responsible for the debt balances and the asset value.When I buy or create debt, my role is to have my debt sufficiently protected by adequate equity of the collateral such that the borrower has enough skin in the game that they don't want to walk away from their equity.

Finally make sure you know your market and get folks with no skin in the game but still a lot of local knowledge to give you a second opinion on the deal. 

The HMLs want you to have your own skin in the game so to speak.

Typically we'll acquire the lot or scraper house with cash and then the bank will refi us out a certain percentage when we do our construction loan so that we end up with 15-20% "of costs" skin in the game.