I've also read that you can use your skills and work for them for free, which I am definitely willing to do.

Get a feel of what the market is demanding, a feel of dealing with sellers, negotiation skills and then scale up.

What would lead people to believe that it is anything but a very minute possibility that one can "invest" in real estate without any money, and, even worse, without any experience or skills when it comes to real estate? 

There's lots of people  skills necessary for the buy & hold investor.

Looking for mentor to help me learn and my skill in the real estate game. longterm goal is to build a great real estate business/portfolio and get into development. 

I'm looking forward to using these skills to give an extra edge to my real estate ventures.I recently returned from France where I lived 2 years as a volunteer for my church.

Theses folks deal with protesters all the time and should be skilled at dominating the meeting. 

That gave me a lot of great skills to transition into the field of real estate.

@ANGELA KRIV  They do a soft pull.

We then use Google Spreadsheets to track the numbers and then attach the spreadsheets to the Podio project page via soft link.